the hum / By Bob Doran

Cajun Boogie

The Pine Leaf Boys, plus Camper Van Cracker, weirdness on campus, Baths and jazz

(Aug. 19, 2010)  The young men who make up The Pine Leaf Boys all grew up in a region of southwest Louisiana steeped in Cajun culture. For example, the band’s button accordionist, Wilson Savoy, is the son of Marc Savoy, an accordion builder who recorded several albums with fiddler Michael Doucet of BeauSoleil.

And, Wilson points out, “He has Cajun music jam sessions every Saturday morning at his shop. My mom is also a musician; she wrote a book about the history and culture of Cajun music and all that.”

Pine Leaf Boys PHOTO BY GABIE SAVOY

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While he started out playing boogie-woogie piano a la Jerry Lee Lewis, Wilson caught the Cajun bug when he was 18 and picked up the accordion. He and a bunch of friends started learning the old tunes. “We had a house; we all loved Cajun music and decided to play it. We used to go play on the local university campus. One day we were playing and the cops came and told us to get off campus, that we couldn’t play there anymore. The newspapers found out and wrote stories about it and we started getting gigs elsewhere. We started playing bars and parties. One thing led to another and we started doing it fulltime.”

Three albums and a couple of world tours later, they’re filling dancefloors playing semi-trad Cajun tunes. “It’s traditional, but it’s also a bit contemporary in that it’s young guys playing it,” says the 20-something Wilson. “Traditional in the sense that we’re all from Louisiana and we sing mostly in Cajun French, but we have rock influence: heavier on the drums and heavier on the bass.” 

You can hear them rock out when Humboldt Folklife brings the Pine Leaf Boys to Humboldt Brews Sunday night. Wear your dancing shoes.

When Camper Van Beethoven first formed in the Inland Empire in 1983, there wasn’t any alt. rock per se. Their strange songs about aliens and such set to a mash of punk, ska, country, world beat and rock proved a bit much for SoCal punks, but when they moved to Santa Cruz (then S.F.) they found audiences in tune with their peculiarity. Songs like “Take the Skinheads Bowling” became modest hits, at least on college radio, and the alt. press loved them. The end of the ’80s saw them scoring a Billboard “Modern Rock” No. 1 with “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” a semi-ironic cover of the Status Quo tune from a non-status quo band.

It was perhaps too good to last. By 1990 the band split relatively amicably, with lead singer David Lowery moving on to form to the rootsier (and more successful) Cracker, and others spinning off the darker Monks of Doom. Friendships were maintained and in 1999 CVB reassembled. Lately CVB and Cracker have been touring in tandem. Right now they’re making their way down the West Coast — they’ll hit Arcata Monday night for a show at Humboldt Brews, appropriate in that the space once housed a bowling alley. Bring your skinhead friends. 

HSU is back in session starting next week. If you’re new in town, welcome to Humboldt, and welcome back to those who were away. As the campus springs back to life, CenterArts and AS Presents kick off their respective 2010-‘11 seasons with a bit of weirdness. It begins Monday when self-proclaimed weirdo “Weird Al” Yankovic brings his accordion, a full band and a multimedia stage show toHSU’s Van Duzer Theatre for an evening of demented pop parodies.

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