Editor’s Picks for September
August 29, 2013
BOB Profile: Susan Cowsill
August 30, 2013
It’s fitting that Roddie Romero’s band is named Hub City Allstars.
As the Hub City draws the people and culture from the five parishes that border it, the band channels influences from the same Lafayette region, producing Cajun and zydeco tunes with a modern rock twist.
It’s bands like Roddie Romero and the Hub City Allstars that have taken the initiative to evolve the traditional sound.
Romero said he understands that he’s one of the flag bearers for genres encompassing hundreds of years, sounds that have meshed at the cultural confluence that is Lafayette.
“Growing up in Lafayette, I got to hear all of that great music, whether it be the Cajun dance hall stuff or the zydeco that was coming out of the clubs or the blues. It’s the Lafayette sound,” Romero said, citing Sonny Landreth, Buckwheat Zydeco, Zachary Richard and Clifton Cheniere among his influences. “That sound is embedded in my brain so deep and in my soul, that it’s going to come out. It’s our job, now, as ambassadors, to speak that and say that and let people know out there in the world about Lafayette, Louisiana.”
Romero, who fronts the Allstars as a songwriter, guitarist and accordionist, sat in with Marc Broussard during his Best of the Bayou set last year. He returns this year with his own band.
“When I was a kid, we used to travel and play south Louisiana much more than we do now,” Romero said. “Maybe a reintroduction, I guess, is what I’d like to accomplish (at Best of the Bayou) of who we are in Lafayette and who I am.”
The festival performance is a homecoming for bassist Chris French, a Bayou Blue native. He’s joined by Eric Adcock (piano) Jermaine Prejean (percussion) and Chad Viator (guitar) in rounding out the Hub City Allstars.
When off-stage, the band has been working on its second album, tentatively scheduled for release this winter. Romero’s crew last released an album in 2008, with “The La Louisianne Sessions.” The 23-track double record garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album.
John Porter is producing the in-progress, 15-track album, recorded at Dockside Studio in Milton. Twelve of the songs are originals, with cover tracks including products of Bobby Charles and Allen Toussaint.
“Right now, we’re finishing vocals in New Orleans, and hopefully we’ll have something out at the beginning of the year,” Romero said.
