KEEP WhAT'S LEFT

THANKS FOR INVESTING YOUR TIME HERE-The music I love came from the dirt roads and dance halls of South Louisiana & East Texas. You can still hear it in an old Fats Domino Record, when KBON plays a Slim Harpo recording from Crowley, from the crew of songwriters including Townes that started off with in Houston, when Lil Buck talks about Clifton Chenier playing the first shows for Clifford Antone in Austin, on the Bobby Charles' Bearsville recordings w/ the Band, on the Doug Sahm album Mac & Freddy Fender played on, or when the chutes open & the prison band plays for that 8 seconds at the Angola rodeo. That fusion between gospel, Country, western swing, R&B, & the folk songs passed down for generations is where you find real inspiration. For most folks-that place doesn’t exist anymore, but the trinity of Jimmie Rogers, Leadbelly, & Woody Guthrie is not far undergroud.What was once a celebration of life and a break from working the plow is now a commercial enterprise. There's so many people trying to do the same thing it can be a task to find something authentic on the radio ... and that may be the root of the problem- TRASh in Trash out. Then again, maybe not everybody wants to hear the real thing. It's our job is to find and support artists & songs that will have merit in a hundred years...Drew Landry landed his first gig as a roadie on a Scott Biram/Hank iii tour. Since Williams asked him to open that show Landry has shared the stage with Billy Joe Shaver, The Angola State Prison Band, Lazy Lester, David Allen Coe, Charlie Louvin, Dwight Yoakam, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Doug Kershaw, Johnny Winter and countless others. Landry's first album "Keep What's Left" was called "The Equivalent to Lomax's field recordings for the 21st Century". The sophomore effort, "Tailgaten Relief" was featured as live nations "Ones to Watch". Bandryland or the "Drew Landry Band" is a group of over 20 South Louisiana musicians who helped Landry record this album. Sharecropper's Whine was to be the soundtrack for the unreleased documentary film "Last Man Standin". Advance copies of this album had already charted when the project's untimely delay kept Landry's music from reaching his fans. Without the resources to get his songs to a national audience, Landry walked away from music and found redemption in the swamps of his native South Louisiana by helping coastal citizens deal with the BP disaster. Finally, the cult classic will hit itunes thanksgiving week 2011 with 3 bonus tracks. The album not only takes a hard look at where Landry comes from, but where the proverbial snowball headed for hell might take us all. Kris Kristofferson was quoted as saying Landry's State of the Union Address/folk song, "Last Man Standin" is the "best he's heard in 30 years". Landry's singing testimony to the Presidental Oil Spill commission would bring his music back to the limelight and lead to a deal with Warner Bros. Their Charity single "BP Blues" gave money to coastal citizens with spill related health issues. He joined forces with Dr. John and many other artists to finish the Deepwater "Memorial EP" and continues to work on the Bobby Charles inspired "Solution to Pollution" Project. Although this release has been delayed more times than the new iphone, Sharecropper's Whine deserves a listen and we are proud it will finally see the light of day. Copies will be available on his Gulf Coast Tour starting Thanksgiving week & in record stores the first week of January 2012..
2004- RECORED IN KEN VERON'S OLD OFFICE BY STEVE SUBBLEFIELD OF STARLINGS, TN. FEATURES CHRIS BREAUX, ALAN LEFLEUR, KEN VERON, TROY RICHARD, MARTY CHRISTIAN, LEE ANN & PUDD SHARP, JASON MEAUX, BLAKE SIMON, HORACE TRAHAN, & MANY OTHERS..

TAiLGaTEN' RELIEF

2006- LANDRY'S RESPONSE TO THE STORMS OF '05 RECoRDED BY AL BERARD IN HIS STUDIO ACROSS FROM CECILIA H.S. BLAKE SIMON, JASON MEAUX, GARY GRAEF, BECCA BEGNAUD

BP BLuES iTuNES SiNGlE

2010- LANDRY/WARNER/iTUNES CHARITY SINGLE. PRODUCED BY GARTH FUNDIS iN NASHVILLE. RECORDED AT DOCKSIDE STUDIO w/ MICHAEL JUAN NUNEZ, JERMAINE PREJEAN, CHAD WILLIS, & ERIC ADCOCK

SHARECRoPPER'S WHINE

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Drew Landry/Charlie Louvin Interview Times of AcadianaHouse of echoesby Cody Daiglecdaigle_theadvertiser.comTucked inconspicuously near a side entrance of Bourque’s Social Club in Scott is a small, weathered display case. Its purpose: publicly displaying all the required permits necessary to run the establishment.The case, in essence, is a history lesson. Along with all the permits for the building’s contemporary incarnation, it holds permits from the past 60 or 70 years, curling and browned with age, layered beneath the recent ones like rings on an oak tree.And tucked in the corner of the case is another little nod to history — a cobalt blue Hadacol bottle.“You check that out?” Drew Landry, the club’s owner and operator, says as he gestures toward the permits in the case. “They go back a long time.”Take a casual glance around Bourque’s Social Club, and you’ll find a lot of things that go back a long time. The turn-of-the-century building’s white clapboard walls are chipped and peeling. The floor can creak with age. A peek into the building’s back room reveals an interior staircase to the building’s second floor that reminds one of old Cajun homes along the bayou. And the beautifully detailed wooden bar and backing evoke the memory of black-and-white film westerns.And the building remains absent of central air. The two overhead ceiling fans and open doors and windows serve the purpose.In contrast is Drew Landry, a bearded, laid-back guy in his early 30s. Best known locally as a musician, Landry has been at the helm of Bourque’s Social Club for the last three years. Landry is a no-frills kind of guy, seemingly most comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt. There’s nothing superfluous about Landry — he’s reserved, unpretentious and direct.Yet while he may be short on words, he’s long on enthusiasm. And though his youth may seem out of place among the ghosts that inhabit Bourque’s, Landry is the perfect complement to his surroundings.Nestled along St. Mary Street in Scott, Bourque’s Social Club is a local institution. The building dates to 1902, and in its first incarnation, the building was known as Bourque’s Bar. The establishment’s namesake, Albert Bourque, fashioned the building as a Western-style saloon, and it was dubbed “an all-men’s bar and a meeting place for old folks.”Bourque fashioned the building after Western-style saloons because, as history has it, Bourque believed Scott was “where the West begins,” a slogan that remains with the city to this day.The story-and-a-half structure looks much the same now as it did when it was first built, except the shingle roof has been replaced by tin and the dormer windows have been removed.The bar took a hiatus in 1918, when it was transformed into a general store due to Prohibition. Once Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Bourque’s Bar was back in business.When Albert Bourque died in 1960, his two sons, Clovis “Pete” and Wilson “Toot” Bourque, who’d worked with their father in the bar since they were 10 years old, took over the business. And the two bachelor brothers ran the bar until 1976, when it was finally closed for good.Since the bar’s closure, the building has gone through a series of different identities, most notably the main gallery for local artist Floyd Sonnier.And now, because of Landry, the building is returning to its roots.“This is just an old building with a lot of good spirits,” says Landry of Bourque’s. Those spirits are company that Landry seems very glad to keep and, in many ways, they are the reason he was drawn to the building in the first place.In Landry’s hands, Bourque’s Social Club has become an under-the-radar destination for fans and aficionados of American roots music, specifically the country and blues roots that are firmly entrenched in the area, and the history that has created it.The venue has housed performances by a host of local musicians (including Michael Doucet, Scott H. Biram, Horace Trahan, Zachary Richard and D.L. Menard), as well as national and regional acts worth noting (including upcoming gigs by Willie Heath Neal and Country Music Hall of Famer Charles Louvin).The venue even hosted a performance of the Angola Prison band.But Bourque’s also serves as a gathering place for folklorists and amateur musical old-timers with a love of old songs and the stories of how they were created. Friends and locals show up at Bourque’s regularly to pluck a few tunes on the guitar or swap stories of Scott’s sometimes checkered history. There’s a constant but casual flow of activity through Bourque’s, and everyone seems to leave a little piece of themselves behind.For Landry, those two elements — music and history — are irreducible partners.“I think historians tend to put themselves in front of the history,” Landry said. “For me, I think you should just let the history speak for itself. And that’s what I try to do here. Just preserve it, celebrate it.”When Landry talks about his vision for Bourque’s Social Club, he’s quick to point out that the venue isn’t a bar. In his words, the place is “a listening room,” a venue where the music is king.“You go to some places to hear music, and people aren’t really listening to it,” Landry said. “What I want this place to be is a place where you really listen to the songs or listen to the stories.”To that end, the venue doesn’t sell alcohol. And due to Landry’s main gig as a traveling musician, the venue has a sometimes erratic booking schedule, fitting shows in when they’re important enough to do and when Landry is in town to do them.“That’s kind of kept the place quiet for most people,” Landry said. “We’d do some shows, but then I’d be on the road for a while. But the people who do come here really support what we’re doing. And that’s what I want this place to be about, not just about going out somewhere.”It’s one of the reasons Landry has resisted doing any aggressive publicity for Bourque’s, relying instead on word of mouth and the network of fans the venue has built over the last few years.“I’ve been kind of scared to do it, you know,” Landry said. “Because the people that come here now get the place and what it is. For them and for the place, I want to make sure we get people here who respect that.”For the regulars of Bourque’s Social Club, Landry’s vision has been a success. But there is much more Landry wants to do with the venue, and he’s working toward making those dreams a reality.Landry is in the process of outfitting the venue with the means to record the performances that come through — in both audio and video formats — for the purpose of creating a musical archive. Landry also plans to use the system to record interviews with musicians, folklorists and Scott locals in an attempt to document the area’s fading history.“Once these people are gone, the people who grew up speaking only French, the people who lived here all their lives,” Landry said, “they’re gone. Their stories are gone.”For Landry, the impulse to honor history is a personal one.“Before my grandmother died, I recorded this interview with her,” Landry said. “I put some of it at the end of my CD. To have that, now that’s she’s gone, is invaluable to me.”At Bourque’s Social Club, it seems wherever you turn, the present is colliding with the past. While the building retains almost every detail of its turn-of-the-century design, it’s been outfitted with electricity. The wooden bar sits opposite a makeshift stage outfitted with sound equipment. Even Landry’s youth seems to butt heads with the history of the venue he’s developed.But that collision is commonplace for the people of South Louisiana. Here, the past is always present — in the food, the music, the language, the life. And the collision, as it does in every other circumstance, produces something beautiful.And if you venture down to Bourque’s Social Club for a show, the collision looks a lot like a two-step, danced to an old-time song your daddy learned growing up, kept in rhythm by the rolling beat of history.On April 5, Bourque’s Social Club will host a special performance by Charles Louvin, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and one half of the famed Louvin Brothers.Last year, Drew Landry had the opportunity to interview Louvin, and what follows is Landry’s take on meeting Louvin and excerpts from their conversation, which Landry had recorded.It’s another great example of what happens when the past and the present collide.InterviewLast year I was in Nashville for the Americana Music Conference. I wanted to see what was left of “Country Music, USA.”Between the cover bands and karaoke, the tourist traps and billboards, there’s still a contingency of faithful classic country musicians and fans waiting for the second coming.The first original song I heard was by a street performer who claimed the place had been “bum-barded.” He said, “I use to make a pretty good livin’ in this town.” Heeding his warning, I made my way up Broadway past Ernest Tubb Records and hung a left toward the Country Music Hall of Fame. Glen Campbell was playing a free show there, but I ran into Charlie Louvin and never made it to see the Rhinestone Cowboy.The Louvin Brothers (Charlie and Ira) helped popularize the two-part vocal harmonies that became a staple of American music. The duo had 12 hits on the Billboard Country Charts between 1955 and 1962. Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Uncle Tupelo, George Jones, the Byrds and countless other artists have covered their songs and imitated their style. Even after his brother’s death, Charlie never quit playing. He is a walking piece of history, a member of the Grand Old Opry and a staple at the Country Music Hall of Fame.I took off with Charlie’s crew for lunch and happened to have a voice recorder in my guitar case. He agreed to help with my Nashville education over a box of fried chicken.Here’s some of what he had to say:Drew Landry: How did your journey begin?Charlie Louvin: We started off with what they call folk music today. Knoxville Girl, Mary of the Wild Moor, I’ll Be All Smiles Tonight, and those kinds of songs. We weren’t beggars, and never did work churches like most gospel groups. And they thought we were a carnival act because we played stringed instruments.DL: What about your first recording contract?CL: Ira and I got our first decent recording contract with Capitol the first of ‘52. The label agreed to sign us as a gospel duo because they already had a secular duet by the name of Jim and Jesse (who got their deal by singing a Louvin Brothers song). We had a hell of a time getting on the Opry and still believed we had songs that wouldn’t insult God-fearing people. So we took a chance with When I Stop Dreaming and it opened up the world for us.DL: What was the risk?CL: If the gospel fans would have stopped buying records because we recorded secular music, the label would have dropped us. But we did what we knew how to do, what we started out as, and never changed. When Ira and I were together, we were the hottest duo in the country.DL: So what happened to the Louvin Brothers?CL: Ira was a drinker and I couldn’t deal with a drinker. I told the label I’d like to try to do it on my own and I Don’t Love You Anymore did very good as my first release. I never got rich, but my wife managed to raise three good kids while I was on the road.“My brother’s gift was professing the word of the Lord.” Charlie paused, “He went down the wrong path and paid the price.” (Ironically, Ira Louvin was sober on June 20, 1965 when a drunk driver took his life.)DL: How is country music different today?CL: It’s generic. Hell, if the jockey don’t tell me who’s singing I could guess 10 times and be wrong 10 times. There’s a whole flock of them that sound the same. If you got a style that works for you, stick to what you’re doing.DL: How do major labels work now?CL: A label will record eight artists. If one makes ‘em money they’ll kick the other seven off and get ‘em eight more. There’s so many people like Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Merle Haggard that made the label tens of millions of dollars, but when you get up to 45 years old they drop you. You ain’t supposed to be able to sing anymore. That’s not what I hear from out in radio land.DL: How do you put out recordings now?CL: I guess you call it a small or independent label, but we have distribution. Now I’m working to the great- grandchildren of folks that first bought our records.Then I realized Charlie, the street performer and I were fighting the same battle. At 81, Mr. Louvin is one of those rare people who will never waver. If music is your calling, you have to get out there and play for whoever will listen. Sure, it’s great to make money, but there’s nothing better than finding someone your songs have made a difference to.Last thing Charlie said to me was, “If I got anything for you, I want to give it to you while you can still see it, smell it, and touch it. The s--- that I stack on your grave don’t mean nothing.“The old song, ‘Give me the roses while I live, that which cheer me on. But useless are flowers that you give after the soul is gone,’ people should remember that. If you got something for somebody else that would make life easier or just make ’em happy, give it to ’em while they can remember that you did it. ’Cause when they’re gone, they’re gone.”Over the years, many have predicted the demise of country music. Ira wasn’t too fond of Elvis, but even the King’s mother loved the Louvin Brothers. When The Silver Fox burned John Denver’s Entertainer of the Year envelope in 1975, he wasn’t just drunk, he felt the music he helped create was heading for hell. Even today country purists consider Garth Brooks the Anti-Christ.Either way, talking with someone truly authentic then stepping out of the Country Music Hall of Fame to see a Billboard of The Honky Tonk Ba-donk-a-donk is like walking into a bar with 27 different kinds of light beer when you just need a shot of whiskey.If there is hope for the future of country music, it lies in learning from the lessons of the past.— -Drew Landry

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Review: Sharecropper's Whine [+ countrychart.com Still Standin [+ Offbeat Magazine/ Nick Pittman Still Standin By Nick Pittman Tailgaten Relief and Hurricane Companion EP [+ Chip Withrow - 03/04/06 -musesmuse.com [+ Cheezeball.net We get CDs from people we don't know all the time,... Pete Gow [] americana UK Reviews: D.Landry &The Dirty Cajuns “Keep What’s Left Will Blythe [+ Oxford American magazine Sometimes an inspired amateur can achieve an origi...

BP BLUES DREW LANDRY GIVES $5,000 AND A SONG TO PROTECT THE GULFMon, 2011-08-15 16:27 | by Waterkeeper Alliance.The following blog is from Paul Orr, Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper.You may remember Drew Landry's testimony to the presidental oil spill comission last year.The troubadour urged the committee to "do the right damn thing". For Landry, this means restoring the health of the gulf coast. He says, "The only way we can fix the problem is first to be honest about the conditions on the coast. Then you support the groups that are working to get that truth to the public. We have to have clean water to hunt, fish, work, and live on the 3rd Coast." For Landry, his Warner Bros. contract ends with a donation of $5,000 to the Louisiana Enviornmental Action Network. "Drew has been a tireless advocate for the Gulf Coast and his generous support is greatly appreciated. We are all grateful that he has applied his talent to these issues." says Marylee Orr, Executive Director of LEAN. Also, a gift of the itunes single, BP Blues, will help create a continuous source of funding for the 7 Save Our Gulf Waterkeepers. A donation is made to the Save Our Gulf coalition for each download of the single. Lend your support to this ongoing work! Download BP Blues from iTunes by going to: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bp-blues-single/id389899419 BP continues to earn record profits while pumping billions into Universities, lawyers, political coffers, and PR campaigns, yet oil still washes in daily along the Gulf. Many who can no longer make a living on the water will tell you it's far from over. Because of the lack of oversight, the tens of thousands with unpaid claims, the general lack of urgency for public health, and the fact that sealife is left to rot on our beaches we believe the long term recovery of the Gulf of Mexico can only be guaged by independent research and ensured by citizen oversight." Landry says, "Waterkeepers are an asset to those who fight to protect our freedom to navigable waterways and restore our fragile estuaries." After spending most of last year on the Gulf Coast, Landry will begin touring again in September. Landry continues to work with Dr. John on the Bobby Charles inspired Solution to Pollution Album. This will be a showcase of artists from around the world who believe that clean air and water are basic human rights. Please visit leanweb.org or saveourgulf.org to be part of the solution.

Drew Landry - BP Blues (CPSAN committee meeting)

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