I have a confession to make. I absolutely adore the music of Nathan Abshire, warts and all. In fact, although I do enjoy more modern sounding acts like, as for an example, Steve Riley & The Mamou Playboys or Beau Soleil, as well, it was Abshire who got me hooked on cajun music in the first place.
I still love his music as much as I did the first time I heard it. I had borrowed a compilation album of cajun music at my local lending library for what must have been close to twenty years or more ago. I liked all of the music on the disc, but Abshire's song, Les filles du Canada, just blew me away.
Abshire's style was distinctive to say the least. The music was traditional cajun and as traditional as cajun gets with his accordion squeezing out tunes to a traditional backing band in the background. Primitive? Yes! Raw? Yes! That is not the same thing as to say it's bad, quite on the contrary, it gives a certain laidback feel to his music and a devil may care attitude.
The singing is in French (of course!) and I don't know French, so please don't ask me what he was singing about, but what I can say is that his voice blended perfectly with his music. It was as raw and primitive (in a good way, keep in mind!) and between singing, he'd laugh and grunt. Utter genious!
Musically, the tunes on this record are the traditional mix of waltzes and blues tunes in the cajun vein and performed by one of it's all time masters.
Abshire's perhaps most famous tune, Pine Grove Blues is the opening track and after that, the classics keep coming out like a cat of the bag. Included is also a different version on the aforementioned track called Pine Groove Boogie and although there are no bad cuts on this disc, that song is perhaps my fave tune.
There is no bad thing to say about this album. It's sheer genious and anyone who likes old school cajun will appreciate this record enormously. If I was you and if you haven't heard cajun music before, I'd perhaps start with something lighter, like Steve Riley or Beau Soleil and progress to heavier stuff like Abshire or The Balfas later. There's loads of videos of Abshire on youtube, just so you know!
A perfect album like this naturally gets 100% in level of satisfaction!
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