Louis Michot

We’re very excited to be speaking today with acclaimed fiddler, songwriter and lead vocalist for Grammy-winning sensation Lost Bayou Ramblers, Louis Michot; greetings and salutations, Louis! Before we meander down the proverbial musical Q&A pathway - and now that autumn is nigh upon us - how was your summer of ‘23?

The summer was long and hot! But we made the most of it with a Midwest tour thru Chicago, St. Louis, Little Rock, Memphis, and Houston, plus a July residency at The Maple Leaf in New Orleans. Now the weather has finally turned and we’re enjoying some good outdoor venues.

Major congratulations on the freshly-minted new release of your debut solo album Rêve du Troubadour! Can you talk about some of the things which inspired this incredible solo turn?

I never really meant to make a solo album, but I had been recording my own new material throughout the pandemic, and when it came time where I asked some of my fellow Lost Bayou Ramblers and Melody Makers to come record some tracks, they convinced me that this new material was more of a solo project than anything, and I finally embraced my own name and decided to move forward with Rêve du Troubadour.

We’re big admirers of the gem of a tune Boscoyo Fleaux which is from the new album. This song also happens to be the very first single off of Rêve du Troubadour. What made this little gem the perfect choice to introduce listeners to the new LP?

Boscoyo Fleaux is avery personal experience, about me walking alone into the swamp across the street from my house, and the metaphorical meaning of me walking out alone creatively. It speaks of my beliefs, and how one has to navigate life standing in both confidence and humility. The song also narrates my creative process, and uses animal imagery to represent the spiritual lessons I’ve experienced along the way, and the song is bookended by the call of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, the bird my father has been searching for since the 1970s. He and his colleagues have recently published evidence that has helped keep the species off the extinction list, which I also liken to the Louisiana French Language and how it can be really hard to find as a living language if one doesn’t know where to look.

What was it like working alongside such collaborators and special guests such as Bombino and Leyla McCalla on Rêve du Troubadour?

When I first recorded Le Cas de Marguerite, I knew immediately that my dream guest would be Bombino, but that it would be highly unlikely to have him perform on the track as he lives in Niger, Africa. But alas, he came to Louisiana a few months later to perform on tour, and agreed to come record and even stayed at the house for a few days! I then got Leyla McCalla to join me on vocals on that same track, and lay down some cello on Souvenir de Porto Ricoalong with String Noiseand Bryan Webre. Even though Leyla and I have become close friends over the years, it still took until the very end of the recording window to find a time that worked for both of us, as we’re both parents to three children and have full touring schedules. I was also thrilled to have guests such as Quintron, Shardé Thomas of Rising Stars Fife and Drum, Dikcie Landry, Langhorne Slim, String Noise, and Corey Ledet join in on the album.

Did you have any jitters branching off from the Lost Bayou Ramblers to create Rêve du Troubadour?

Not really, it was kind of perfect timing, as we still perform regularly with Lost Bayou Ramblers, but I’ve retired multiple other bands over the last few years for different reasons, and as is true for many musicians, it takes a diverse roster to stay busy as a full-time musician. In the start of 2020, I had 9 bands I was performing with and managing, and now it’s just Lost Bayou Ramblers and Louis Michot, which is a nice change of pace. The repertoire on Rêve du Troubadour is so different from the Lost Bayou Ramblers set, that we actually had to make multiple rehearsals to prepare to perform the new material live, which is something we never do for Lost Bayou Ramblers as most of our writing inspiration hits live on stage or in the studio.

Speaking of the Lost Bayou Ramblers, Kirkland Middleton from that band engineered and mixed Rêve du Troubadour. What was your collaboration process like with Kirkland while working on the album?

Kirkland and I have been producing music together since 2016, when he came no to record my entire 12 show residency at The Stone in New York’s Lower East Side. Since then we’ve recorded multiple projects together, and working with him on this album was really appropriate as he was able to commit from start to finish, and follow my needs and notes as they arose. We left no stone unturned on this project, and really obsessed over the details, which is not always easy to do in studio environments as time is expensive and engineers are busy with multiple projects.

I started the recordings of many of these tracks myself, using a 4 track reel-to-reel and a 4 track Protools setup in my dry-docked houseboat turned studio from 2020-2021. Then in 2022 I turned the engineering over to Kirkland at Mark Bingham’s Piety Studio, which happened to be in my front yard, so the entire album was produced on my land here in Prairie Des Femmes, Louisiana. It was so nice walking a few hundred feet with my instruments in hand to go to sessions, and really added to the feel of the record, and not having to drive an hour or more and always be on the clock.

Rêve du Troubadour is seeing release via Nouveau Electric Records. What makes Nouveau Electric the perfect record label for you and your music?

I started Nouvea Electric Records back in 2018, for projects like this that are part of the niche Louisiana French creative realm, as they have a hard time finding national exposure with such a regional genre and the linguistic barrier. I never envisioned that I would release my own solo album, but now that the label is 5 years old, I was lucky to be able to bring my resources together for this release, which came right on the heels of another important release, Corey Ledet Zydeco’s Médikamen, a Zydeco album sung purely in Kouri-Vini, a creole dialect very specific to our area which Corey has been learning from his family.

On the heels of the release of Rêve du Troubadour, can fans look forward to seeing you on the touring/performing circuit?

Yes! We have been working hard to tour this album with performances across the country, and have even produced a visual show with the lyrics to the songs displayed in Louisiana French with English translations, which ahs been an amazing experience. People have expressed to me how much of a different experience it is to be able to understand the subject matter of the songs, and as this new repertoire is lyrically extensive, it made complete sense to include a visual and lyric element.

We’re finishing off our first year of touring as Louis Michot with a run to New York, NY and New Haven, CT, as well as a few shows in Texas and Louisiana, and already have plans for more national tours in 2024. My live band consist of the bas and drums of Lost Bayou Ramblers: Bryan Webre on bass-six, synth, and 404 sampler, and Kirkland Middleton on drums, triangle, and SPD sampler. We all play multiple instruments, and the set is really fun and dynamic.

Who inspires you musically?

My musical inspiration comes from far and wide. I love all kinds of musics, from the musics of other cultures internationally, to jazz and blues here at home, and of course I draw a lot of inspiration from some of the older recordings made in Louisiana in the Cajun and Zydeco realms. The historic repertoire included in the Louisiana French music genres is really diverse, and includes influences from the peoples that make up our region, including local Native American tribes, French, Spanish, African, German, and all types of cultural fusions that have come from living in the same region of hundreds of years.

When working on Rêve du Troubadour, what did your creative process generally look like? Was there rhyme and reason, or was it a little more freewheeling than all of that?

My writing process on this album was unique for each song. Some songs like the title track Rêve du Troubadour and Acadiana Culture Backstep came from hearing melodies in my dreams, and waking up and recording them. Other songs like Le Cas de Margurite and Ti Coeur Bleu came from real life stories that hit me in the form of rhyme and melody, and I kept writing till they were complete. The creation process on the album is as diverse as the songs themselves.

At the end of the day, what do you hope folks walk away with after listening to Rêve du Troubadour?

As a musician who has been writing and performing music in Louisiana French for lover 25 years now, Rêve du Troubadour represents a new step in the ability to expand the use of language in music, and to continue to evolve the artform beyond what we know as traditional musics in South Louisiana. The writing style I was raised with in traditional Cajun music is based on a a melody and two set sof verses, usually four lines each, and sometimes repeating the same verse twice, and usually sings of love and loss. With this album, I bring a personal perspective to the songs, and include both modern and historical stories, which allows me to tap into a deeper vocabulary than typically used in traditional songs. I think it is important to expand beyond the familiar writing patterns, partially for the sake of evolving the music to stay relevant, and for the language as well, as so many beautiful words and sayings become obselete as time pushes forward. The music has been the biggest vehicle to keep the language alive in South Louisiana, but it has to evolve out of it’s own comfort level to stay fresh and keep future generations interested. I created this album mainly for myself and to fulfill my own creative needs as a lifelong artist, but I hope that music lovers locally and internationally are able to dive deep into the sounds and lyrics in these songs.