by DOMINICK CROSS
LAFAYETTE, La. — It was the before times, 2019 to be exact, at a jam session just steps away from Festival International de Louisiane in Downtown Lafayette, when Josh LeBlanc and his trumpet met The Flying Balalaika Brothers.
And in no time LeBlanc was asked to join his newfound, yet strangely familiar, musician friends on a Festival stage.
“I just randomly jammed with them,” said LeBlanc, an Abbeville native living in Lafayette. “The next day, they asked me to play with them at Festival. I even had less time to prepare the last time. It was literally the day after, but I just pretty much improvised over a lot of their stuff.
“(Zhenya Rock) was quickly showing me stuff back stage as best he could,” LeBlanc recalled, adding that his days with gypsy swing band, Vagabond Swing in 2009-2010, had helped in the endeavor. “And I was like, ‘I’m very familiar with these modes and scales and style.’”
Upon Festival’s 2022 return, it was this past Thursday evening that the Russian/Ukrainian/U.S. band and LeBlanc were reunited on Scene Laborde Earles Fais Do Do.
And this time around, it was smooth sailing.
“I’m just kind of looking at him, waiting for him to give me the signal,” said LeBlanc. “But I had a chance to chart-out everything and write charts for it — in-between other bands I’ll be playing with for Festival.”
‘It just felt like, immediately, I’d been playing with them forever.’
Josh LeBlanc
LeBlanc had a gig later that evening with Malentina & the Lafayette Latin All-Stars at the Grouse Room, Downtown Lafayette.
And come 7 o’clock Saturday evening at Festival, LeBlanc will sit in on a couple of songs with Delgres at Scene LUS Internationale.
It wasn’t a stroke of luck that LeBlanc, who also plays bass with the band, Givers, finds himself blowing his horn with international musicians, it was a choice (and, of course study, practice, practice and practice).
“I was a marching band geek. Whenever I discovered jazz, that’s when I changed. That was in college,” he said. “Once I discovered jazz, I was like, ‘Cool. I can improvise and make my own music.’ I tried doing classical trumpet for a while, but it wasn’t for me. It’s too rigid.
“Thankfully, I studied jazz so I can do things like this and just improvise,” said LeBlanc, with a nod to the stage as Haiti’s Lakou Mizik set up, now that it was vacated by The Flying Balalaika Brothers. “Just tell me the key and then I’ll try to make up something that fits.”
So while Vagabond Swing, in some ways prepped LeBlanc for The Flying Balalaika Brothers, there was also a connection with the band members at that 2019 jam that defies description.
“There was something about meeting them, I felt like immediately I knew them somehow. It was like a weird thing,” LeBlanc said. “You know, Russian culture and then Louisiana culture, you wouldn’t think there’s an intersection there, but for some reason, it just felt like, immediately, I’d been playing with them forever.”
Festival, conceived as a multi-faceted cultural event of international scope and significance, continues through Sunday.
The remaining schedule:
For Dogs’ sake
As a matter of public safety, animal safety and basic common sense, do leave your pets at home when attending Festival.
We, the upright, two-legged mammal with opposing thumbs who actually enjoy loud music, tons of people we don’t know, and can traverse Downtown’s hot sidewalks and streets with ease without burning the pads off our feet, should use our status on the food chain and do right by our pets.