Rêve du Troubadour is the first solo album from Louis Michot, fiddler songwriter and lead vocalist for Grammy winners Lost Bayou Ramblers. Special guests on these recordings include Nigerian Tuareg guitar wizard Bombino, and critically acclaimed singer / cellist Leyla McCalla among others. Kirkland Middleton of the Ramblers engineered and mixed the album at Nina Highway Studios in Arnaudville, Louisiana with various musicians building on basic tracks Louis had recorded at his home, houseboat studio. Rêve du Troubadour is being released by Nouveau Electric Records on September 22nd on CD, streaming platforms and digital download as well as 12″ LP vinyl. The LP will be pressed on Ivory-Billed Woodpecker inspired red and black marbled vinyl and include a four panel insert with the lyrics in Louisiana French and English.
The album’s title, “Rêve du Troubadour” — “The Troubadour’s Dream” in English — refers to the manner in which Michot pulls his music from dreams into daylight, then fills it with storytelling. Though Michot has published over 100 songs, he feels that Rêve du Troubadour is his first collection of “writing” as these songs tell their stories in much greater depth than he’s achieved before and utilize words peculiar to Louisiana French which seldom appear in musical compositions.
Rêve du Troubadour came from long months during the first years of the pandemic of Michot documenting musical ideas in his backyard “studio,” a dry-docked houseboat named “Sister Ray, given to Louis by Korey Richey of LCD Soundsystem. Sometimes waking up at 4AM, he’d have his parts nailed down before daylight. While recording, Michot kept a pair of stereo mics live outside Sister Ray to capture the sounds of birds and insects; as the bird and bug population would change throughout the days and seasons each song wound up with a unique environmental seasoning. More tracks were then added at Nina Highway Studios, a short walk from Michot’s house, by Louis, his rhythm section and various guest musicians.
The final track sequence is highly diverse. There are songs that incorporate poetic rapping to hand-laid beats, updates of vintage Acadiana, environment soundscapes, acoustic guitar driven ballads, and even Michot’s interpretation of a seminal work by 19th century Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk. But they’re all tied together beautifully by Louisiana French language and Louis’ vivid storytelling throughout.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the video for the standout track “Boscoyo Fleaux,” which finds Michot inviting the talents of avant-garde saxophonist Dickie Landry to lay down his silky and soulful sounds over a beat that he describes as swamp-rap. Indeed, the Cajun and Creole French lyrics and flows bring to mind French rap of the 90s but with a sound rooted more in the bayou than in the urban jungle. Michot’s delivery is haunting and sparse, accentuated by beautiful bursts of saxophone. This song also marks an exciting direction for an artists who has never been afraid to take risks and push the boundaries of his own musical roots and culture.
Louis Michot describes the inspiration and process behind the song:
‘Boscoyo Fleaux’ is a swamp-rap song I composed on my birthday in 2022, as I took a solo trek to get lost in the wilderness. As I would walk, following the palmetto filled contour lines to stay above the mud, I would sit on a dry log to continue writing the lyrics I was hearing flowing through to my mind. One thought came to mind, as I was writing in the endangered dialects of Cajun and Creole French; that the Louisiana French language could be likened to the elusive bird who has been dodging extinction for the last hundred years: the ivory Billed Woodpecker.
As I searched thru the hidden swamp for myself, and the solace of nature, I was reminded of my father, Tommy Michot, who has been searching for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker for almost 5 decades now. Thought to be extinct since the 1940s because of loss of habitat due to deforestation of the old-growth forests cut for lumber, there are those, such as my father, who believe the majestic woodpecker is still alive and breeding, hiding from humanity to keep it’s species alive. My father and his colleagues have recently published recordings of the call of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, recorded in an undisclosed location in Louisiana over the last few years.
The Ivory Billed Woodpecker has been given musical references for centuries now, with John James Audubon describing the call of the Ivory billed Woodpecker in 1831 as “resembling the high false note of a clarinet”, and in 1932 ornithologist Frank Chapman used the analogy of “a nasal yap sound of a tin trumpet”.
I asked avant-garde saxophonist Dickie Landry, who lives only a few miles down Bayou Teche in Cecilia, if he would lend his freestyle interpretation in his signature “quadrophonic” delay style to this Louisiana French nature-rap track, to which he agreed, driving up and perfectly melding his sound onto the rhythms. I then sampled the 1935 recording of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker by Arthur Allen, and laid it in the track, an appropriate accompaniment to Dickie’s performance.
WATCH:
