Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys will release their new CD Grand Isle on Feb. 22, 2011.  As their official site says:  “We hope to get your pre-paid copy of “Grand Isle” to you in early January 2011 before our national release in late February!”  You will recall that they solicited advance purchase of this CD from fans and the public as a way to support its production.  More info on the CD with two streaming tracks:  C’est l’heure pour changer and Chatterbox.  As this page says:  “They toss aside roots-music formulas to channel the energy of an entire community of multi-ethnic, hard-hitting eccentrics and activists”  The cover features an oil-covered bird, a reference to the recent massive BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.   Illegitimi non carborundum.   (See also BeauSoleil’s The Problem with the chorus The Man at the Top Has Got To Go, a post-Katrina/Rita activist slogan.) C.C. Adcock is again working with the band, and this is not your grandaddy’s Cajun music. 

Though it’s not on their web site, the Liberty Theater’s Rendezvous des Cajuns lists “Vorance Barzas & the Original Mamou Playboys with Steve Riley”  on Jan. 15.  Here’s a very non-traditional version of Balfa Toujours’ La chandelle est alumee (from the excellent CD Live At The Whiskey River Landing, Rounder 6096, 2000) performed with the Canadian band The Duhks.