The spirit of New Orleans Cajun music will come alive at the 15th Annual Sugar Maple Music Festival with THE MID-CITY ACES, Saturday, August 4.

2:30  Mid-City Aces and Sam Broussard workshop (Roots & Reasons Stage)

4:10  Mid-City Aces (Main Stage)

6:00  Cajun jam with Mid-City Aces (Jam Tent)

The band is composed of Cameron Dupuy (the aptly named Accordion Prince of New Orleans),  his father, Michael Dupuy (guitar), and Gina Forsyth (fiddle).

“Cajun” harks back to “Acadian”, the historic heart and culture of French Louisiana. Heavy on squeezebox accordion and fiddle, this three piece set is fresh, acoustic, and rich in New Orleans tradition while at the same time honoring the Lafayette sound. “The fact that we’re keeping it as traditional as possible, while also being from New Orleans, that separates us from everyone else,” says Dupuy, while promising, “we keep it pretty close to the Lafayette style.”

An accordion prodigy, Cameron Dupuy and his father Michael Dupuy have teamed up with fiddler Gina Forsyth, an award-winning singer/songwriter who is known for her wizardry on fiddle and guitar, to form this traditional Cajun music trio.

In 2015, Forsyth asked the Dupuys to help her record an album of herself playing fiddle to old Cajun songs. “It was her solo project, really, with us helping,” remembers Dupuy. “But we liked it so much we decided to start booking gigs as a band.”

so…….

LAISSEZ LES BON TEMPS ROULER!

(Lay-Say lay bon ton  rule-ay!)

LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!

–written by Pam Lockstein and Peggy Lewis

Tuneful melodies, eloquent lyrics telling arresting stories, powerful guitar work and a clear, honest voice – these are the building block of the best Americana, and one of the most dazzling practitioners of the art form working today is Sam Broussard.  The Sugar Maple Festival is excited to welcome Sam to the stage this year, to share with us the same magic that defines his acclaimed solo albums and his impossibly long list of credits with roots legends Sonny Landreth, Michael Doucet, T-Mamou, and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, along with Linda Ronstadt, Michael Murphey, April Verch and many others.

Sam conjures his uniquely inventive open-tuned guitar wizardry from the fertile southern Louisiana French music culture that formed him, refracted through four decades of touring and the countless records (some Grammy-nominated) on which his aggressive Cajun/funk/slide hybrid stylings have been featured.  Sam can do anything on guitar: for just one example, watch his intricate fingerpicking on Vinie Jilie:

–written by Brad Wolbert

The Sugar Maple Music Festival invites you to play along!  Join local fiddle phenoms Rin Ribble and Tina Thompson as they lead the Little Fiddler’s workshop designed for young fiddle players of all skill levels. Participants will learn about the musical styles they’ll hear all weekend long at Sugar Maple.

And don’t miss this chance to attend a guitar workshop with Molly Tuttle!  A graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music, Molly might be young, but she has already earned a reputation as one of the most virtuosic guitar players on today’s bluegrass scene. In this interactive workshop, Molly will demonstrate different styles of rhythm guitar to help participants improve their own rhythm playing.

Want more chances to play along?  Start your Saturday morning right at the Bloody Mary jam at the Roots & Reasons stage then move over to the jam tent where hosted and ad hoc jams continue through the day.  There will be a bluegrass jam hosted by Southern Wisconsin Bluegrass Music Association, a Cajun jam hosted by T’Monde and an old-time jam hosted by Glass Mountain.

T’Monde is French for little world, so it’s not surprising that bandmates, Drew Simon (accordion/vocals), Kelli Jones (fiddle/vocals) and Megan Brown (guitar/vocals) have created their own musical world where old French, Creole, and Cajun styles fuse with country music to form a new Acadian sound.

Anyone who loves old Cajun music by the likes of Joe and Cléoma Falcon, Iry LeJeune, Belton Richard, and Lawrence Walker, or old country tunes by Webb Pierce, Lefty Frizzell, and The Davis Sisters, is bound to enjoy T’Monde.

Got you curious? Click the link below to watch T’Monde videos and look for their 2015 release Yesterday’s Gone. Discover this remarkable trio in their new reality that holds both Louisiana’s past and present.

Don’t miss T’Monde at the 2017 Sugar Maple Festival on August 5th. These accomplished musicians are bound to impress—they’ve got 10 GRAMMY nominations between them!

“a creative fusion of classic country and out-of-the-way Cajun” -Offbeat Magazine

–written by Daniel Seifried

Sugar Maple Music Festival welcomes Cajun Country Revival with Foghorn Stringband to the High Noon Saloon Tuesday, March 7.

Spanning generations from across the nation the Cajun Country Revival is a veritable supergroup of American roots musicians. Comprised of Cajun musicians Jesse Lége and Joel Savoy and Portland Oregon’s Foghorn Stringband, this group presents a music that seems to embody all of the things that make life wonderful and together they’ve delighted audiences around the world celebrating rather than “performing” the music that brought them together: Cajun music and early Country music.

Son of Cajun music royalty Marc and Ann and the founder of the Louisiana-based label Valcour Records, Joel Savoy is a GRAMMY winner for his production work with The Band Courtbouillon and a nine-time GRAMMY nominee, as well as a two-time winner of the Cajun French Music Association’s Fiddler of the Year Award. Having grown up literally at the feet of the Cajun great he represents his culture with an authority that few people his age can and his playing leaves no doubt that Cajun music is still very much alive. He has worked and played with the best of the best in south Louisiana as well as folks like John Fogerty, Linda Ronstadt, Steve Earle, and T-Bone Burnett.

Sharing the stage with Joel for the last 15 years is the legendary Cajun powerhouse, Jesse Lége. Growing up in a rural pre-electricity home in Gueydan, LA, Jesse spoke Cajun French and learned music from relatives, neighbors, and the family’s much-loved battery-powered radio. Today he is one of the most admired Cajun accordionists and vocalists in the world, known especially for his high, clear, “crying” vocals. Jesse has been playing traditional Cajun music and singing Cajun French songs for over 35 years performing with a variety of well-known musicians in various Louisiana and southeast Texas dancehalls. He is a winner of numerous CFMA awards: Traditional Band of the Year, Accordion Player of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year, Band of the Year, and Song of the Year. In 1998 he was inducted into the Cajun Music Hall of Fame.

Completing the revival is Portland Oregon’s Foghorn Stringband, made up of Caleb Klauder (WA) and Stephen “Sammy” Lind (MN) and Reeb Willms (WA) and Nadine Landry (Québec). Credited for igniting the Old Time Renaissance in Northwest, the Foghorn Stringband continues to stand out as the shining gold standard for American Stringband music. With their 8th album, Devil in the Seat in hand, thousands of shows and over a decade of touring under their belts, it’s no surprise that this band, as proclaimed by Stuart Mason, The Fiddle Freak, “has blossomed into a full-blown force of nature that threatens world domination.” Through all of this, they’ve never let the music grow cold; instead Foghorn has been steadily proving that American Roots music is a never-ending well of inspiration.

Tickets on sale here.