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Engaged couples may enjoy going out to dinner, having a drink or two and then heading home to watch a movie.
Lamar Caskey and Michelle Trahan are not the everyday couple. Their weekends are spent flexing their lungs to the sounds of modern and classic country tunes.
The two of them sing for Nashville South, a New Orleans-based country cover band. The group performs music ranging from hits by Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, Miranda Lambert, The Band Perry and Florida Georgia Line to legends Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline and Hank Williams.
Nashville South performs Oct. 24 at Live After Five in downtown Houma.
“What is cool to me is you are not doing the normal club stuff where you have some of your normal crowd there just having a good time. [Live After Five] is a large mix of people. It is one of the few times where you are able to look out and see kids and families enjoying it. You see older folks who would never walk into a club to watch us play,” Caskey said.
“What makes it really cool for me and Michelle is that both of our families get to be out there for that,” he added. “When we play at clubs or out of town, that is not always their scene. So when we do stuff like this, it is almost like mini-family reunions.”
Caskey and Trahan were both born and raised in Houma.
Trahan’s musical bloodline runs deep. Her family is local mainstay, The Dusenberry Singers.
“I am proud of my family. My dad, Mike Trahan, passed music down to me and now I am passing it down to my son Kaleb, who is 18,” Michelle Trahan said. “He is now playing my grandfather’s guitar and plays by ear, which is very hard to do.”
Caskey may not have the musical bloodline, but like Michelle Trahan, his family has had a longtime love for country music.
“When I was younger, we used to go to this camp in Cocodrie. We had a boom box at the time, and we blared Alabama, Ronnie Milsap and stuff like that,” he said.
The shift to country marks a 180-degree change for the couple. Locals may remember them as the voices fronting the rock band Vintage, which recently disbanded.
Caskey and Michelle Trahan had long wanted to shift to country because of their strong ties to the genre. Also, Nashville South drummer B.J. Triay had repeatedly invited the Houma pair into the band’s ranks.
“I thought, ‘Yeah, that would be fun,’ but then we kind of kept pushing it to the side because we did not have the time,” Caskey said. “We were playing with Vintage and just stayed busy with that. When we had time off from that, we kind of relished it.
“Earlier this year, we kind of decided to take a break on that front and focus on Nashville South. It seemed like fun.”
Joining Nashville South also meant joining a tight, experienced bunch, several of whom, ironically, have some serious rock ties. Triay, for example, learned percussions from Zebra drummer Guy Gelso.
“To be in a band with seasoned musicians, I don’t even know what to do with myself,” Caskey said.
But the transition from arena rock to country hasn’t been easy.
“I did not realize how much effort it actually takes to sing a country song. A lot of people think country music is easy. Nowadays, it has so much into it,” Michelle Trahan said. “It is not as effortless as people want to make it seem.”
Likewise, Caskey initially found himself in unfamiliar territory.
“For the first time in probably 15 years, I was actually nervous about getting on the stage. That was a cool feeling. It was something new,” he said. “It is a huge difference when you are singing [starts singing Bon Jovi] ‘Shot through the heart and you’re to blame,’ and then you turn around and do [breaks into Florida Georgia Line] ‘Baby you’re a song, you make me wanna roll my windows down.”
The move to Nashville South’s country groove has given the couple a gift they did not get with rock music.
“We enjoyed singing rock together. It was fun. With country, though, we actually get moments to sing to each other and perform duets,” Caskey said. “That is the coolest part to me.”
— michael@rushing-media.com
Michelle Trahan and Lamar Caskey (center), of Houma, recently joined Nashville South. The band includes drummer B.J. Triay, Tommy Dean, Ken Thompson and Steve Caronna.
