History, experience have musicians on same page
by Dominick Cross
LAFAYETTE, La. — Tony Broussard don’t play.
Well, ok. He plays sax. And he sings.
But where he doesn’t play is with the bands he’s put together or been a part of over the years, which is to say chocked full of some good musicians.
Take Boogaloo, Force, Sound Advice and All-in-All, and, especially now, Basin Street Band.
Time was on Broussard’s side when he got the itch to return to the music scene with a new band after being away for several years.
He started scratching that itch in 2016.
“I wasn’t in a rush,” Broussard continued. “It was just going to be on my terms and my time table. And it was going to have to be the right guys.”
And that’s fine. However, an unexpected obstacle — “a huge revelation” — revealed itself at the outset.
“Everybody is playing in every band,” he said.
Friend and musician, Daryl Fontenot, informed Broussard of a new reality: “There are no bands anymore that start up and you have dedicated players in that band,” Broussard said he was told.
In other words, it seems the Gig Economy had even encroached on the profession where it probably got its name in the first place.
“Everybody’s playing in five, six different bands,” said Broussard. “How do you put a band together with any kind of continuity if you always have different players sitting in with the band.
“It just boggles the mind.”
Broussard took note, figured in some ego and financial reasons and more or less concluded: “I don’t know, man. I think there’s both aspects to that,” he said. “And I think the other thing is that there’s just no music. No money. The money they’re paying is the same money I was making 30 years ago.
“That’s just the way that it is. That’s just the music business. There aren’t the venues that they used to have,” said Broussard, who may have touched on an inconvenient truth when he added: “And just the social attitude about drinking alcohol and driving and all of that, it’s changed the landscape of the music industry.”
Still, he persevered.
“So, it took me probably three years before I started to get people together to try and put a band together,” said Broussard. “I knew what I needed as far as the players went, what kind of players I needed for this band to make it work and give it the groove it needed.”
Talent and skill are one thing, but a key ingredient for Broussard was experience.
“And it’s not something you can teach anybody,” Broussard said. “You can’t teach somebody about a groove if they’ve never experienced a groove.
“A band that can get in a groove together is such, man, an emotional thing,” he said. “It’s just not something you can teach. It’s a chemistry. Not only is it a musician chemistry, but it’s a musical chemistry. And it has to happen naturally.”
So, while time was on Broussard’s side to put a band together, timing was a whole different thing.
“By the time I did find the right group of musicians to start playing,” he said. “It was the middle of COVID.”
No worries, by the time COVID cases came down and masks pulled off, Basin Street, after a change of personnel here and there, was ready to rock and roll — with a stellar line-up:
Tommy Shreve, guitar; Ron Fruge, guitar, Jimmy Hebert, bass; Dudley Fruge, drums; Sarah Gauthier, vocals; and Broussard, alto/tenor sax.
And all of the musicians can and do sing.
“What’s really cool is that I’ve never played in a band with the caliber of musicians that are in this band,” said Broussard. “It elevates everybody’s playing. You don’t have to think about what you’re doing and you can just concentrate on making the music.
“And that’s where we are with this thing, man. It just happens naturally,” he said. “It’s scary-good sometimes. It really is.”
It doesn’t hurt that musicians in the band have a history together, some going back decades.
“Tommy Shreve and Dudley Fruge were roadmates when they toured with Zachary (Richard),” said Broussard. “Jimmy (Hebert) played with Zachary for a while.
“And Dudley’s brother, Ron, is a freakin’ monster on his own. Great guitar player, great singer,” he said.
And Hebert and Broussard also go way back to Boogaloo. Hebert has performed and/or recorded with Zachary Richard, Hunter Hayes, Richard Lebouef, and Kevin Naquin.
A result of such high caliber musicians who know each other, “You don’t have to teach anything,” said Broussard. “You don’t have to say anything because it’s happening.”
It’s what folks have come to expect after witnessing the talent and skill of Shreve, the Fruges and Hebert over the years; they hardly need an introduction.
An unknown quantity, however, was Gauthier.
“I didn’t know this girl from Adam. She happened to be sitting in with Major Handy,” said Broussard. “Somebody had taken a video and that’s how I first became exposed to Sarah.
“And man let me tell you, Sarah just brings just a whole other thing — just her style and versatility — man, I can’t say enough about Sarah and her stage presence and how she presents a song,” he said.
Ted Thibodeaux, a local musician who returned to the area not too long ago, concurs. (Editor’s note: I couldn’t make a recent Basin Street gig, so Ted took some of the photos and talked about the band for this story when they played at The Ruins.)
“I never saw Sarah (Gauthier) sing before,” said Thibodeaux. “I don’t know where she came from — Saturn, maybe? Seems like she’s from another planet she’s so good.”
Thibodeaux explained: “Anybody who can sing Janis Joplin and then jump like that with no hesitation to sing ‘At Last’ (Etta James) is really good.””
Gauthier teaches theater (her first love) in the Louisiana Public School Systems Gifted Program and she runs Theatre Acadie.
“I learned I could sing later on in life and so this gives me the opportunity to fulfill my performance desires without having to be in a six-week long rehearsal for a play,” Gauthier said. “So I’m still able to get on stage and do what I love doing.”
She got her late start singing with New Iberia’s Blue-Eyed Doll from 2011-2015. These days, Gauthier also sings with the band Ask for Ashley.
Then Basin Street came calling.
“When they asked to sing with them, I was like, ‘Yes.’ It was not even a question,” said Gauthier. “I like singing rock and roll. And I think there’s more of a performance aspect there.
“But with Basin Street, I really get to hone in on my vocal craft. They are stellar musicians with a ridiculous amount of experience. I’m learning a lot as a musician with those guys.”
Gauthier said there’s a lot to appreciate being a member of Basin Street.
“I love it that I’m not the only singer in the band,” said Gauthier. “Every single person in the band sings and four of us sing lead, so I get to sing a lot of backup and I just get to dance and play the tambourine.
“I feel like everybody is singing from their soul, so that’s great because that’s the only way I know how to sing,” she said. “Everybody puts their all into it.”
And like Broussard, Gauthier can feel the intangible vibe within the band.
“It’s kind of magical. We really have a good mesh on stage,” she said. “There’s a really great connection and it’s hard to find that where everyone feels really comfortable with one another.
“You can feel when somebody’s kind of changing the groove or adding something to it and we all just go along with it,” said Gauthier. “It’s great.
“They know music backwards and forwards, so even if we skirt around and do a little something, we all know how to get back to where we were.”
Broussard said having pair of stellar guitar players like Shreve and Fruge goes a long way with a band.
“When they can work together, it’s very rhythmic. Percussive might even be a way to put it as far as how that contributes to the groove just by the nature of having two guitar players,” Broussard said. “There’s a percussiveness in the sense in how a guy plays guitar and rhythm guitar and letting songs breathe.
“You don’t have to have music at every second of the song,” he said. “In my opinion, the tightness of a band is not how they manage all the notes, but how they manage the quiet time — those spaces — how precise they are with the dead spots of a song.”
Basin Street covers plenty of genres, from rock and roll, R&B, to local music from Wayne Toups, Zachary Richard, and Marc Broussard.
“It’s kind of magical. We really have a good mesh on stage.”
Sarah Gauthier
“You have to do your standard stuff. You got to do like, ‘I Got Loaded,’ and some of the swamp pop things just because of South Louisiana,” said Broussard. “But we mix it up with some Neville Brothers. We do ‘Pockaway.’ Some bands just do that during Mardi Gras. Man, that’s a great song.”
You can also expect to hear some Robert Palmer, Janis Joplin, The Band, Aretha Franklin, Delbert McClinton, Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett and other crowd favorites.
“We can present a song and give it our own flair and flavor, but also be precise and consistent of what it is we’re playing,” he said. “It’s a mixture of stuff, but it’s been our goal to do great music that not many bands, if any bands, are doing.”
Thibodeaux said Basin Street left an impression.
“Phenomenal, man. The level of talent in this group and the camaraderie and the professionalism…” Thibodeaux trailed off. “The sound was good. It wasn’t too loud. It was mixed. He had a variety of strong vocalists.
“I don’t even dance, but for some reason this night, I was dancing,” he said.