Music Voyager host Jacob Edgar will profile five GRAMMY® Nominated Artists

The Music Voyager TV series gives viewers a backstage pass to the most popular and fascinating music from around the world.

DECEMBER 28, 2009 – Music Voyager, a new public television TV series that gives viewers a backstage pass to the most popular and fascinating music from around the world, announced that the second artist profiled in its ROAD TO A GRAMMY® special is Cedric Watson, the breakout Créole Cowboy out of Lafayette. Tomorrow night (December 29), Music Voyager will profile and film Cedric along with his band, Bijou Créole, at a live performance at Lafayette’s Blue Moon Saloon.

The Road to a GRAMMY special aims to tear down the wall between artists and fans, expanding beyond the traditional avenues of hearing the work that the artists have been nominated for and seeing their acceptance speeches. The special gives fans a more personal experience by showing them the road that has brought the artist to their GRAMMY nomination(s).

In the build up to the star-studded GRAMMY awards ceremony on January 31, 2010, Music Voyager host Jacob Edgar will travel across the US and beyond to visit five nominees for the 52nd GRAMMY Awards and invite them to give viewers an exclusive look at their personal background and inspirations.

The series is distributed in the U.S. through American Public Television, to PBS stations across the country, and internationally on various broadcast partners.

Visit the Music Voyager website

Here is more info from the Barbican website:

“The BBC’s Folk America series is a comprehensive survey of American folk music which goes all the way back to the dawn of recorded sound.

In it, the extraordinary people, the timeless songs and the multifarious stories intertwine to make up a great and continuingly relevant tradition.

In these two Folk America concerts we reflect, engage with and celebrate the music that has inspired the programmes.

Hollerers, Stompers & Old Time Ramblers focuses on old time music; the sounds of the Appalachian Mountains and of the Mississippi Delta which were first recorded in the 1920s and 1930s, and which still haunt the imagination today.

Maverick bluesman Seasick Steve will be joined by The Wiyos delivering a blend of vaudeville, hillbilly swing and old-time country, the authentic Hokum blues of CW Stoneking and the lonesome sound of Nashville’s Diana Jones.

Visit the BBC Folk America site

BBC Four will broadcast the documentary series on Fri 23 Jan, Fri 30 Jan and Fri 6 Feb. The Old-Time concert will air on Fri 23 Jan and the Greenwich Village concert will air on Fri 13 Feb. These will be accompanied by archive documentaries and sessions.”

Folklorist and Tulane Professor, Nick Spitzer, hosts American Routes

Feufollet will be performing along with a host of other Louisiana Jazz and Blues sounds in New Orleans at the House of Blues on January 16th for the 10th anniversary celebration of American Routes.

The show will air on NPR stations that play American Routes on February 18th, 2009.

Read the full press release below:

American Routes at Ten!

NEW ORLEANS – American Routes, the weekly nationally-syndicated public radio program devoted to music and musicians, stories and cultures from New Orleans, the Gulf South and America beyond is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a blockbuster concert at the House of Blues in New Orleans on January 16, 2009.

Produced and hosted by folklorist and Tulane University professor Nick Spitzer, American Routes reaches up to a half million people on over 200 stations nationwide. Launched in 1998 from its studios in New Orleans’ French Quarter, the program started modestly with national carriage on only seven stations. “A lot of people said the program,” which presents blues and jazz, roots rock and soul, country and gospel, zydeco and Tejano among other styles of American vernacular music, “was too eclectic and roots-oriented to succeed at a network level,” noted Spitzer.  However, “within two months we had thirty stations, sixty stations by year’s end, and within two years we’d reached a hundred.”

American Routes’ success has occurred even as public radio stations—long presenters of classical and jazz—were abandoning music formats in favor of news. “The audience for Routes is very loyal,” said Spitzer. “They write us a lot of letters from New York, Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix, Nashville and Austin, and even a lot of smaller places like Indian reservations, rural Alabama, and Midwest college towns. A lot of people don’t think you can find this kind of music on public radio,” Spitzer added. “Recently we added stations in Ft. Myers Florida, all of Oklahoma and eastern Washington State. Also, XM satellite radio has carried us for several years.”

To celebrate a decades worth of great programs, American Routes is hosting a 10th Anniversary Extravaganza in front of a home audience at the New Orleans House of Blues, 225 Decatur St, on Friday, January 16 at 8 p.m. The show, to be recorded for network broadcast during the week before Mardi Gras, will feature the spirited R & B of Deacon’s John’s big band, neo-traditional Cajun music from Feufollet, and Dr. Michael White’s Original Liberty Jazz Band. Additional guests include vocalist Topsy Chapman, Trombone Shorty and Al “Carnival Time” Johnson. A national travel contest will bring winning out-of-town listeners in from public radio markets across the country.  Tickets are available at the door, or from the House of Blues website, www.hob.com.

“We have been hoping to do more live events,” said an enthusiastic Spitzer. “Last year we did a live show at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul MN, and this year several shows here and around the country are planned. Personally, I prefer the spontaneity of a live stage with interviews, humor, and whatever else happens with great players and audiences like ours. It makes for very listenable radio the old school way.”

American Routes is heard locally on WWNO-FM 89.9 Sunday nights at 6 p.m., and on the station’s HD-2 channel Sundays at 2 p.m.

Information about the concert at House of Blues can be found at www.americanroutes.org. American Routes is produced in collaboration with Tulane University, and co-produced and distributed by American Public Media. Major program underwriters are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, and the Louisiana Office of Tourism. Additional support is provided by the University of New Orleans and Offbeat magazine. The anniversary concert and broadcast are underwritten by Louisiana Entertainment, in the state Department of Economic Development; Lafayette: Louisiana’s Crossroads; and the W Hotel of New Orleans.

As always, we will be hosting a stage at the festival that will feature rarely seen combinations of many of your favorite artists, playing stripped down tunes and just-for-fun collaborations.

Find out how to get tickets, how to get to the site, and who, when, and where artists will be playing on the official Black Pot Festival website. We’ll see you there!

Feufollet’s festival performances will double as their official cd release parties, so if you want to get your hands on their new cd, Cow Island Hop, be sure to catch their perofrmances and pick one up. Cedric and the Figs will have albums available at the festivals as well.

Download the schedule here.

The album is already getting lots of airplay around South Louisiana and is slated to be available in key markets nationwide early next month. Also, with festival season approaching, the album will be featured at listening stations and Cedric will be performing at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Festival International in Lafayette. We will soon post festival dates, times and stages for Cedric and all of our artists right here on the Valcour website.

In the meantime, please come out and show your love for this great music at the Blue Moon Saloon on March 28th!

The Black Pot poster, at left, was designed by Valcour’s own Lucius Fontenot. The Valcour Records Stage will be run by Joel Savoy.

More about the festival from blackpotfestival.com:

The South Louisiana Black Pot Festival & Cookoff is one of the most unique festivals in Acadiana. Held annually at Lafayette’s Acadian Village, the festival celebrates its 2nd year this November with two days of great music, dancing, food, camping & jamming.

Last year’s line-up of bands included Feufollet, Corey Ledet & Cedric Watson, Racines (Steve Riley, Kevin Wimmer & Mitch Reed), Pine Leaf Boys, The Figs, Drew Landry, Louisiana Purchase Bluegrass Band, Celjun, Ann Savoy & Her Sleepless Knights, Bonsoir Catin, and the Red Stick Ramblers.
This year’s lineup can be seen here.

The festival is a cooperative of south Louisiana musicians, artists and roots enthusiasts, creating an unprecedented gathering of south Louisiana’s hottest roots bands, as well as a number of groups from all over the country. Live performances range from Cajun & Zaricôt (zydeco), to Creole, Swing, Hot Jazz, Blues, Bluegrass, Americana, Irish & Old-Time, this festival has something for everyone. Plus, an old-fashioned black pot cook-off, accordion contest, called square dancing, and ample camping space for tents & RV’s and much more!

Each year, a portion of festival proceeds benefit Acadian Village and the Lafayette Association for Retarded Citizens (LARC). So come on out and support South Louisiana’s thriving culture and this great cause.

The Figs Album

Join those wonderful Figs at Chelsea’s in Baton Rouge (August 25, with Feufollet) or at The Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette (August 28, with the Pine Hill Haints) for their live release parties.

They’re playing gigs all over the place – learn more about where from the Figs website.

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“Professor Barry Ancelet celebrates Cajun and Creole drinking songs with The Pine Leaf Boys and special guests. Inspired by the latest Valcour Records release Allons Boire un Coup, Louisiana Folk Roots presents a special closeout to the Festival International’s big Friday night at the Scène Héritage. This hour is sure to get rowdy as Ancelet explores the drinking traditions of southwest Louisiana with stories and music provided by some of our top young Cajun and Creole Artists.”

Learn more about or purchase Allons Boire un Coup>

So we look forward to seeing you at the release, meantime you can enjoy all the great action shots of the recording process below.