Band Gets a Formal Hearing

IRVINE —  You can bet that when Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys do their round of Mardi Gras shows next month on their home turf in the Cajun country of Louisiana, they’ll be joshing with the locals about having just gotten back from a philharmonic gig.

Saturday night at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, the mild-mannered Riley quipped as he thanked the evening’s sponsor, the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, that the organization’s name had too many syllables.

Cajun music is an earthy folk style that needs a dance-floor full of appreciative waltzers and two-steppers to be its truest and most vibrant self. But if the Philharmonic Society wants to shoehorn fine exemplars such as Riley and his band into a formal box like the Irvine Barclay, well, it’s worth remembering that the first definition in Webster’s for “philharmonic” is not “jacket and tie required,” but “loving or devoted to music.”

There was room in front of the stage for dancing, and Riley invited everybody to jump up right at the start. The surroundings just weren’t dance-conducive, though, until the very end, when about 20 or 30 fans let loose to an infectious zydeco tune set to an irresistible, pumping train rhythm.

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That left the five-man band to give a concert. It wasn’t as dubious a proposition as asking that other California-sojourning Louisiana native, Shaquille O’Neal, to make a few foul shots. But performing the music to be soaked up, rather than reflected back and forth between players and dancers, isn’t Riley’s strong suit.

He doesn’t cut a commanding figure like Michael Doucet, the leading figure in Cajun music today, whose wit and authoritative presence compensated somewhat for the empty floor in front of him in another dance-free Cajun evening about a year ago at the same theater.

Riley swayed and bopped and shook a leg while he played his button accordion, and his dimpled chin, wavy hair and purple velvet jacket over black jeans and T-shirt made him look like a Cajun Glen Campbell. But his low-keyed demeanor while speaking or singing just wasn’t geared to riveting a sit-down crowd.

Maybe Riley, who is just 27, can work on presence and showmanship if he wants to be a concert act. But he and his four bandmates fully met all the purely musical requirements of fine Cajun music during a two-hour performance with an intermission sandwiched in between.

If this had been a venue fit for dancers, they would have been greatly pleased. From the opening sequence, which emphasized the most folkish side of Cajun fiddle music, to the “Okie From Muskogee” sound-alike “Church Point Breakdown” to the R&B-spiked;, electrified zydeco music workouts that capped both sets, Riley & the Mamou Playboys were at home with the range of music that has come out of southwestern Louisiana since the 1920s.

Given their youthful looks, you might think that Mamou Boy Scouts would fit better than Playboys. But bassist Peter Schwarz, with his blond, tousled curls, and drummer Kevin Dugas, who is trying to grow a persuasive mustache, were baby-faced killers when it came to laying down emphatic rhythms, and ever-smiling guitarist Jimmy Domengeaux was a valuable player who mainly helped drive the rhythm, but excelled with each blues- or rockabilly-inflected solo.

Versatility was a weapon: Riley’s playing a serviceable acoustic guitar and fiddle as well as his nimble accordion; lead fiddler David Greely picking up a tenor saxophone for the R&B-leaning; numbers, and sounding more comfortable on it with each solo, and Schwarz fiddling as well as playing electric bass. Greely gave the band a second solid lead singer, and Schwarz blended in well on backing vocals--all of them in French, except for a zydeco tune that went, “boogie-woogie, boogie-woogie, all night long.”

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Songs by such pioneers of Cajun and zydeco as Dewey Balfa, Dennis McGee and Clifton Chenier came to life without any inhibiting sense that they were being held up as reverential objects. But what will make this band worth watching in the years to come is its recent movement toward material that applies a tradition-steeped sensibility and skills to songs that can reach out to a contemporary, pop-grounded audience.

“Je Me’en Fous Pas Mal,” with its bold guitar chords and rock ‘n’ roll beat, might have a shot at adult-album radio. “Lovers’ Waltz,” a beautiful instrumental ballad, showcased Greely’s sweet, piercing fiddle tone, which differed from the more tart, flattened quality of old-time Cajun fiddling.

These songs and “La Toussaint,” a deep and brooding meditation on the dead and their cultural legacies (it’s the title track from Riley and the Mamou Playboys’ current album, the one to get if your interest is piqued), all worked as concert pieces.

Though Riley doesn’t have the outstanding, instantly endearing vocal gifts of his Rounder Records label-mate Alison Krauss, it’s not inconceivable that he and his band could raise Cajun music’s profile among mainstream pop fans, much as she has done with her pop-accessible, yet tradition-honoring strain of bluegrass music.

If Riley’s ambitions run in that direction, shows such as Saturday’s make lots of sense: He’ll need to get more acclimated to the sit-down halls--even if it’s in the dance halls where Cajun music spreads its most infectious contagion, which enters through the feet.