Archive Files of Cajun, Creole, and Zydeco Musicians
Posted between 1999 and 2008

2008 CD: Cow Island Hop
Click here for high resolution photos of Feufollet posted on Flickr.

Click on thumbnails for larger image.

Cow Island Hop, the fourth CD released by Feufollet, features the most inventive and creative work they have done thus far, even though most of the songs are traditional. The opening cut lets us know that, while Feufollet is firmly rooted in tradition, they do not imitate or try to revive the past.  Their rocking version of Joe and Cleoma Falcon’s “Prend Courage” takes a classic early recording and makes its message of strength and optimism contemporary with our own times.

At least two of the other songs were also first recorded during the same era. With Chris Stafford on vocals, Feufollet delivers a hauntingly beautiful rendition of “Sur le bord de l’eau,” a very old ballad that apparently originated in Brittany, was brought to Acadie, and then traveled to Louisiana where Blind Uncle Gaspard from Avoyelles Parish recorded it in the 1929 (the Magnolia Sisters have a version, and French and Canadian groups also perform it).  The song describes a young woman who is lured aboard a ship by the enchanting voice of a sailor. Too late, she realizes that her virtuous reputation can never be restored.  Stafford also sings the last cut on the CD, Delma Lachney’s “Je m’en vas dan le chemin,” also first recorded in 1929 (Blind Uncle Gaspard plays guitar on the original recording). 

Stafford also handles the vocals on Adam Hebert’s “Blues de dix ans,” performed in country swing style with Richard Comeaux on steel guitar. He teams with Anna Laura Edmiston in the male-female repartee of “Jolie Fille,” a Cajun favorite from the Touchet Family.

Among the cuts featuring Anna Laura Edmiston’s vocals  are “The Eunice Waltz,” played with an upbeat tempo, “Madame Bosso,” and an especially beautiful version of “Chère  bébé créole,” with Ivan Klisanin’s mellotron adding richness and depth to Chris Segura’s fiddle melody.

The most surprising cut on the CD is “Femme l’a dit,” discovered in the archives of the Cajun and Creole Music Collection at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.  In Feufollet’s version, Anna Laura Edmiston’s seductive vocals set to guitar and fiddle with the fluid rhythm of Chris Courville’s brush drumming transports us to a Parisian jazz cabaret and then segues to New Orleans Dixieland featuring saxophone, trumpet and even tuba.

The CD includes two instrumentals, Stafford’s “Chère Beth” and the title cut by guitarist Josh Caffery. The story behind “Cow Island Hop,” told in an account on World Music News Wire, involves a wild evening at a Feufollet gig in the tiny settlement of Cow Island southwest of Lafayette in Vermilion Parish, inspiring both Caffery’s song and contributing to Jillian Johnson’s magically eerie cover art in which a barely visible ghostly outline of a map of coastal Southwest Louisiana is covered by a surreal landscape of cows, a skeletal tree, a mysterious old house, hot air balloons, and a biplane sailing past the moon: an exotic visual invitation to experience a new realm that the music in its own way manages to fulfill. 

Other band members who played on the CD are Michael Stafford on drums and Taylor Guarisco on bass (Philippe Billeaudeaux replaced Guarisco in 2008 after the CD was recorded). Jimmy Breaux plays drums on three cuts and Tiffany Lamson on one cut.

The CD was released in 2008 by Valcour Records.

Go to Feufollet's web site for more information about the band and the CD. Visit the band's MySpace page.

Click here to return to LSUE's first page on Feufollet.