Eclectic Company: Brief Encounters — Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble at KZWA's Zydeco Brunch at the Blue Duck Café; Jason Boland and the Stragglers, and Brad Broussard and Bliss Bujard at Wayne and Layne's Deli (Sulphur); Pastiche at Church of the Good Shepherd

Three musical events I recently attended in Lake Charles and Sulphur highlight the variety of local, regional, and national acts that the assiduous music fan can find playing around our area, in all sorts of venues.

Radio station KZWA's Diva D (better known as Darlene Wesley when she's at her day job, working for the City of Lake Charles) hosted the first Vibe 105 Zydeco Brunch at the Blue Duck Café on Saturday morning, May 30. The Blue Duck provided the chicken and sausage gumbo, cornbread, and red beans and rice for a nominal price. The cover charge was even more nominal, and bought you a seat or a piece of crowded dance floor real estate to two-step along to the music of Diva's cousin, Curley Taylor, a young, handsome, and talented accordionist/songwriter/vocalist, who led Zydeco Trouble, his hot band, through taut sets of his own and well-loved zydeco and popular tunes zydecized for a live remote broadcast. Harold Guillory, former host of Louisiana Zydeco Live, a pre-Hurricane cable television dance show that was Zydeco's answer to Soul Train, not only got up on the floor with several lucky women (including Marilyn Cox, who cut a rug with hubby Senator Jimmy as well), but also sat in on froittoir (rubboard) and muscular tenor lead vocals for a soulful and sensuous version of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." Blue Duck owner and Bad Roads guitarist Briant Smith allowed himself to be coaxed onstage as well. In a single song he proved that Zydeco Trouble's versatile players have other musical tricks hidden up their short shirtsleeves, as they backed his expressive and familiar blues solos. There's always blues on Friday nights at the Blue Duck, but zydeco music makes the rounds downtown on fewer occasions. This was an A+ brunch date; Diva and KZWA intend to serve seconds and more, beginning with Keith Frank. If you don't know how to dance the Zydeco, try some of Harold Guillory's Louisiana Zydeco Live videos on youtube, starting with this one.

Opening for nationally touring country artist Jason Boland and the Stragglers at Wayne & Layne's Deli in Sulphur on June 5, were local country singer-songwriters Brad Broussard and Bliss Bujard (who moonlights as a Vinton Town Councilmember!), with Mike Alexander playing plastic tubs and lobster pot lids as a drumkit. While we waited for Boland's roadies to set up, and the band to come in from the bus, I chatted with Alexander about his rough and ready "acoustic" drum set (which actually got the job done, oddly stylishly), and tried to corner Fu Manchu-bearded Deli co-owner Wayne for an interview (he said he wanted to chat, but I never could get him to stand still for two minutes). Maybe next time. Alexander told me he'd been making a living as a musician for nearly 20 years out of Lake Charles, but said that even at the best of times (and these ain't them) he couldn't rely on local work only, so he's gone on tour with acts like Mike Zito, David St. Romain, and Chris Harper, whenever they've called for him. At the moment, his steady gig is with local blues, R&B and pop vocalist Laurel (Barineau), but he's always available to play other styles, as he did that night with Bliss and Brad.

And then sweet-faced and likeable Jason Boland's Oklahoma/Texas country rock band dropped in and wailed, sometimes pursuing the Charlie Daniels' fiddle up the devil model (which young Noah Jeffries did ecstatically, without self-consciousness), sometimes leaning heavier on the lyrical alt.country rock back story, propelled by the rock-steady rhythm section of Brad Rice (drums so powerful they had to be contained behind Plexiglas) and Grant Tracy (highly tasty bass), and sweetened by Roger Ray's clean and efficient lead and steel guitar solos. Boland's songs were familiar to me from a few rounds on country music radio, but the audience knew them all, singing or mouthing along verse chorus verse second ending, and shouting out encouragement between songs, nearly going crazy when he sang "Sons and Daughters of Dixie," a paean to the survivors of Katrina. Comal County Blue is Boland's latest release, which you can find at www.thestragglers.com.

Finally, I dropped into the third of Good Shepherd's Summer Music Festival XXII's events on June 16, and heard Dancing On The Edge, a program selected by the self-described "whimsical" classical ensemble, Pastiche, now a quintet of McNeese music faculty members, including pianists Fred Sahlmann (McNeese professor emeritus and Good Shepherd's choir director) and Lina Morita, Jan Fillmore Scott, clarinet, Dave Scott, trumpet, and Lonny Benoit, drums and percussion.

For this concert, Pastiche built a program of dance works or dance-themed pieces. I missed Don Freund's "Rough and Rumble," and half of Paul Bowles' "Music for a Farce," but what I did hear of the Bowles, and what I heard in the Igor Stravinsky "collage" of dances that followed, which included a March, a Tango, a Polka, and, ending with a flourish, a Gallop, was energetic and charming. Benoit's use of a wide range of percussive instruments and his gentle explanatory introductions grounded the group, but all were in full gallop throughout "Partly Sunny," their standard humorous closer and a commissioned work, that's a witty take on "You Are My Sunshine," interrupted by musical quotes and mild jokes, and played in a light spirit that always leaves audiences feeling good to go.

The group's next to closing number was one of five commissioned works played that night — an arrangement of pieces from "Caroline, Or Change," the musical written by Lake Charles's own Pulitzer prizewinner Tony Kushner, whose musical partner, Jeanine Tesori, composed the works, which were arranged for Pastiche's unusual combination of instruments by Rick Bassett, orchestrator for the Broadway production. Like the best of Pastiche's commissions, "Suite From Caroline, Or Change" allows the unusual ensemble of clarinet, trumpet, piano and percussion to make from their quirky component parts, a sound that's bigger, fuller, and absolutely right for the music they're interpreting. I don't know how they do it. It must be magic. Write if you get a different inkling. You can email me at .