Louis Michot is a GRAMMY-winning musical ambassador from South Louisiana, but Rêve du Troubadour (The Troubadour’s Dream in English) is his first solo album. The multi-instrumentalist plays with a variety of sounds and guests throughout the intriguing record.
Rêve du Troubadour starts off with a plum pairing as Michot welcomes Quintron to provide the bumping groove around Michot’s always excellent fiddle work on “Amourette”. Michot focused on writing and singing in Louisiana French for the full album, adding a unique sense of lyricism to the tunes. The album also started life during the pandemic when Michot would record at his home houseboat studio, allowing him to capture the backcountry swampy sounds of his environment.
Those can be clearly heard on tracks like the easy breezy “Les Beaux Jours” and the title track which places the listener in the middle of bird-filled skies before leading them out of the swamps with marching drums, electric guitars, and whistling, supported along the way by Rising Stars Fife & Drum. Both feel more natural than the experimental sound collage of closer “Chanquaillier-Tchen-Ka-Yay”, but Michot has always run that gamut, moving from traditional to noise flights with his band The Lost Bayou Ramblers.
While Rêve du Troubadour is a solo album, the guests are a major draw, however, not all are a perfect fit. Both the pop rock direction of “Ti Coeur Blue” with Langhorne Slim and the French rap experiment of “Boscoyo Fleaux” with Dickie Landry take divergent paths (showing the range of Michot), but never fully connect. Things improve when String Noise and Layla McCalla show up on “Souvenir de Porto Rico” delivering a sense of ominous excitement with layers of strings, electric guitars, cello, and fiddle all buzzing with abandon.
McCalla also helps out on one of the album’s two standouts “Le Cas de Marguerite” which also brings guitar ace Bombino on board. This mixing of Tuareg and South Louisiana bayou culture is a winning combo as the killer groove becomes hypnotic with the sound swirling around ringing six-string notes, deep bass, percussion, strings, and passionate vocals. The other dynamite track is “Acadiana Culture Backstep” which keeps things much closer to home for Michot, bringing on labelmate Corey Ledet’s accordion for a traditional South Louisiana get-down that spins out with ease.
Those two driving forces, the desire to twist and experiment while also keeping this culture’s traditional sounds alive, are at the heart of Louis Michot’s music. His debut solo offering, Rêve du Troubadour successfully plays in both of those worlds.
