BLAIR KILPATRICK, who founded the band, plays the 10 button Cajun accordion and does most of the singing. (It's all in French!) She fell in love with this haunting music almost twenty years ago, during the first of many visits to Louisiana, and she's never looked back. She has studied with many of the accordion "greats" (Steve Riley, Bois Sec Ardoin, Eddie LeJeune, Delton Broussard, Jesse Lege.) Her primary teacher and mentor was legendary Creole accordionist Danny Poullard, the guiding spirit of the Bay Area's Louisiana French music community until his death in 2001. Blair is also the author of "ACCORDION DREAMS: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music" (University Press of Mississippi, January 2009.) STEVE TABAK plays the fiddle. He started out as a bluegrass mandolinist, but happily followed Blair into the world of Louisiana French music. He has been particularly influenced by Creole fiddle styles, and he considers Ed Poullard his primary influence. He also makes a fine gumbo. He and Blair host regular jam sessions at their Berkeley home. ROBERT RICHARD is a lifelong blues-roots-folk guitarist. He has a special tie to Cajun-Creole music, since he grew up in a French-speaking Acadian family in Maine. KATHY "KP" PRICE grew up singing and playing piano. Her years of Cajun-zydeco dancing in the Bay Area rekindled her desire to make music, so she took up the electric bass. The band often adds a drummer, especially when they play for dancers. They have played with Lisa Leal and Kathy Dodge in the past. These days, they usually call on Bay Area favorite David "Killer" Hymowitz, who appears in some of the band photos
Influences
Danny Poullard, Edward Poullard, Bois Sec Ardoin, Marc and Ann Savoy, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, Balfa Toujours, The Lost Bayou Ramblers. And many more!
SAUCE PIQUANTE plays stirring old time Cajun-Creole music. The sound is sweet, raw, and a little wild. It's the back porch music of South Louisiana's bayous and prairies, the fuel for dancers at fais-do-do's and honky tonks and crawfish boils. They have an infectious joie de vivre that lets the good times roll!
Since 1999, the band has played an active part in the San Francisco Bay Area's vibrant Cajun-Creole-Zydeco music scene, the largest outside the Gulf Coast. SAUCE PIQUANTE plays regularly for dancers at local venues like Ashkenaz, McGrath's, Bobby's Back Door, the West Sacramento Moose Lodge, DeMarco's, and others. The band has performed at many festivals, including the Isleton Crawdad Festival, Boogie on the Bayou, the Berkeley Farmer's Market Cajun Festival, the San Francisco Free Folk Festival.
Discography:
Sauce Piquante Live: Vieux Temps Passé (2003, available through CD Baby.)
Upcoming CD: Recorded and mixed by Alec Tabak of NYC indie rock band Attack Release. You can listen to a few of the tracks here.
Sauce Piquante Cajun-Creole Band's Friend Space (Top 20)
It is in all the newspapers, it is on all the TV channels, even the birds are talking about it, so it must at last be official ....... It is the first day of Spring!!
Hi Blair-- Thanks for the kind comment, and for befriending me and Paint It Black! So glad you liked my pep talk. Wishing you inspiration and stamina in the final week. Stuff the critic in the closet and keep rolling toward that goal. All best, Janet F.
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