Jourdan Thibodeaux is a born storyteller. Fluent in Cajun French with an accent as sugary as Steen’s cane syrup, Thibodeaux is 32 going on 72, making his stories even more endearing.
Thibodeaux was a child when his pipe-smoking, fiddle-playing neighbor hounded him, “When you gon’ to let me learn you to play that fiddle, boy? They’re going to take you all over the world and put you in nice hotels.”
Thibodeaux later learned the fiddler was Louis Foreman, a member of Aldus Roger’s famous Lafayette Playboys band. Thibodeaux hustled to save $80 for a pawn shop fiddle.
Two weeks later, Foreman died. Thibodeaux never received a lesson.
After Thibodeaux finally learned the fiddle, he was 21 years and diagnosed with throat cancer. Songs kept popping into his head as doctors planned to remove his larynx. His voice would be gone.
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“I kept singing at the house, but I said, at the minimum, I would record something and give it to my kids,” said Thibodeaux, who lives in Cypress Island. “If ever something would happen and I can’t talk, or if I’m dead, they would at least have something to say, ‘That was Daddy’.”
Now cancer free and his voice intact, Thibodeaux has put many of those songs on his brilliant, new CD, “Boue, Boucane et Bouteilles" or “Mud, Smoke and Bottles,” published on Valcour Records. The 12-song, all-original and all-French album swings with Thibodeaux’s stories backed by a stellar band filled with Grammy nominees, like Cedric Watson and Joel Savoy.
The disc grooves out of the gate with “Belle Menteuse,” an encounter with “Beautiful Liar” — and her husband — at a dancehall. “Blues Reconnaisant” pulls from juré, the call-and-response hollers at the foundation of zydeco. Savoy’s guitar solos soothe a lonesome ballad, “Si Je Reviens Pas (If I Don’t Come Back).”
Thibodeaux’s refreshing takes have helped him land sweet gigs at SXSW in Austin, the National WWII Museum, Taste of Chicago and more.
“I love that the people love it,” said Thibodeaux. “It does something to you that I can’t explain. It makes you feel good to see people feeling good and to know you’re making them feel good. That I like.
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