Hey Chad,
I you don't mind, could you send me an e-mail and pass on Wilson's e-mail address to me. I need to contact him about some info on the Liberty Theater.
Thanks,
Jude
Wow, a Steve Riley instructional DVD! I will be seeing Cory Ledet tonight at the TK Club in Conshocken PA. I will try and get the word from him about the DVD and post it. I understand he has Cedryl Ballou playing drums for him on this tour so there should be some great accordion fireworks tonight because Cedryl is a great player too. I understand that Cory lets Cedryl do some songs as part of the show.
I'd love to know what keys Cory's triple-row accordion will have. What keys do people find are most common in zydeco. I play single row C and B-flat boxes, and was thinking about an EAD 3-row to open up some new keys for the band, but have a sense that's a rarely used setup.
Last time I saw Lory in La he had a dino baffetti FBE, it was pretty nice. Everyone I know has a FBE box so I would say thats the most popular and GCF the second choice. I would think he would be using an FBE for the video. As far as EAD accordions go both BooZoo and Beau Joque did tunes on EAD accordions. Just be aware that an EAD box is the lowest tuned of all the key combinations and if you get one with 3 or 4 reeds it will be heavy and you will be using a lot of air. Hope this helps.
I would say that the single most common is F/Bb/Eb, followed by G/C/F (a good percentage, but significantly less than F/Bb/Eb). Other key combinations will be few and far between, but it is true that Boozoo used E/A/D on one album, and others may have as well.
I have both F/Bb/Eb and G/C/F, but at gigs I only use F/Bb/Eb. E/A/D would probably work well for me, because it would get down in my singing range a little more comfortably, but I doubt that I will get one.
Ease of singing should be very high on the list of decision making factors. Zydeco is much less restrictive than Cajun in terms of which keys are "acceptable", therefore you should get whatever key works for you.
Saw Cory on fri.nite. His three row is a Five reed 9 switch Dino Baffetti in F,Bb,E. Of course I didn't think to ask him anything important like what key he will use in the video. Duh! But let me say he is a monster player who has mastered all three accordions (Pa, Triple and Single note) who can really sing and put on a show as well. HIs playing has a lot of Beau Jocque in it with a lot of the modern pyrotechinics a la Chris Ardoin. He does some licks I have never sseen or heard before that are killer. I sure hope he puts a couple of those on it and slows it down. He will be doing the video as soon as he gets back to La which is this week I think and he anticipated that it will take only a few days to shoot. I did pick up his new CD and it is highly recommended. I believe you can get it from his website. By the way, Sean Ardoin uses an EAD Baffetti in his shows.
I took a group lesson with Steve at
Louisiana Heritage and Gifts when I
was in Louisiana over the holidays.
I think he is a great teacher. And I'm
an educator so I'm extremely critical
of how people teach.
He broke it down clearly..in chunks..could
put it back in context..checked to make sure
the students were getting it...it was all good.
and...Wilson does a good job in producing these videos
I had a glimpse of the Mitch Reed fiddle DVD
and that looks like its well done.
Hi Mark - Life is good. My new band, RedLine Zydeco played 2 dances this weekend (Ithaca and Rochester) to big satisfied crowds. I'm pretty close to picking a 3-row to add some more color and keys to the band. I'm looking forward to Steve Riley teaching at Augusta this year, not to mention his new DVD. I've been playing Cajun music with Betsy Fuller and some friends, but the zydeco thing is in the ascendancy at the moment. There's a blurb and a sound clip from our debut show at the link shown to the side of this message.