Don’t have your own copy of the magazine? Read about the “Best of the Beat” winners here.
We’d like to thank everyone who voted for us in the 2007 Offbeat Magazine Best of the Beat Awards! Thanks to you we walked away with not only the Cajun Album of the Year for the acclaimed Allons Boire un Coup, but also with the Best Record Label business award.

We appreciate your support and your dedication to preserving real music and real artists. We at Valcour Records understand albums deemed “marketable” do not always accurately represent folk artists and we strive to offer you music that is palatable, yet organic. We seek out the most talented and unique artists in South Louisiana and offer their music to you in a natural, roots-oriented manner. We know that with these awards, you have placed your trust in us.

Please continue to support us as we develop our catalog and our artists. We promise to keep music musical and to offer you only the best of what Louisiana has to offer.

Valcour Records is now on Flickr. As our photo collection has grown, we have more and more great shots from recording sessions, festivals, concerts, parties, and otherwise that are too good to not share, but too numerous to put here. Our resident photographer extraordinaire, Lucius Fontenot, who produces nearly 100% of our photos, will be managing the Valcour Flickr collection.
Just click through the pages of photos, view a slideshow, or use the sets on the right side of the Valcour Flickr page to view photos by event. For example, we have the largest online collection of photos from the 2007 South Louisiana Black Pot Festival and Cookoff, which you can view by clicking the Black Pot link on the right side of the page. Look around, leave some comments, and add us as a contact. We’d love to hear from you!

Allons Boire un Coup has been nominated for offBeat Magazine’s “Best of the Beat” contest in the Best Cajun Album category. In addition to ABUC, many more great albums and artists have been nominated for various categories. So if you’re a Louisiana music fan, please, click here to share your voice for the Best of the Beat!

More info from WWLTV.com:

“OffBeat Magazine-New Orleans’ only publication solely devoted to promoting Louisiana music-celebrates the Crescent City’s unique culture of music.

Every year, OffBeat celebrates our music and musicians by presenting the Best of The Beat Music Awards, a benefit for Renew Our Music.

Nominees for Best of The Beat Music Awards are selected by the editors, writers and experts at OffBeat. You-the public-have the opportunity to vote for your choice for the best music makers in New Orleans. The Best of The Beat Music Awards and Party takes place on Saturday, January 12, 2008 at the House of Blues, 225 Decatur St., and is hosted by WWL-TV’s Eric Paulsen. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the party continues until 1 a.m.”

This month we’re featuring a well-traveled, infinitely versed, and paradoxically cynicoptimistcal artist from Lake Charles/Seattle named Gill Landry. Gill has recently released a fantastic album with the Nettwerk Music Group called The Ballad of Lawless Soirez. He plays music all over the U.S. and Europe, with substantial followings in the Deep South and the Pacific Northwest.

But please, decide for yourself what you think of Gill - after all you can listen (but not download) to his music right here, as he is December’s Artist of the Month!

Valcour Records is once again sponsoring the South Louisiana Black Pot Festival and Cookoff. This year, the festival will feature a Valcour Records Stage with many of our recording artists, and unique combinations of many of your favorite Louisiana musicians.

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.

As promised: the new Artist of the Month feature has become a reality!

Its taken a while, but now it’s rolling out with the extremely talented and beautiful Anna Laura Edmiston. You may remember her from a couple of tracks from Allons Boire un Coup, or perhaps you’re familiar with her band Feufollet. Well now she’s here to show off some of her tracks with Feufollet and others.

Each month we will be bringing you new featured artists for listening to or purchasing tracks. Some of the artists will be Valcour artists, some will be independent, and some still will be on other label. Regardless, they will all be artists we believe you will be interested in learning about aboud listening to.

As we compile enough tracks, we will periodically release albums that are collections of our best Artist of the Month material.

In this latest Valcour podcast, Lucius shares some music and news about how Valcour spent the summer and what kind of projects we have coming up. We’ve been a little silent, aside from the successful release of the fantastic Figs album, but we have a very busy Fall and Spring lined up - so look out!

We are experiencing some temporary technical difficulties getting this podcast onto the iTunes feed, but it will be up there soon enough. It’s not rocket science, we just aren’t natural born coders. In the meantime you can download the file right here (m4a, 12.9 megs).

Enjoy!

(Update: This podcast is now working properly - look for more to come soon!)

The Figs Album is ready to ship so get it today in our CD Store!

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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Ladies and Gentlemen, the Figs have arrived! You can purchase their cd now!

Visit the Figs Website

Get 99 cent Figs downloads in the Song Store

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Deep in South Louisiana, many an old-time yard boasts a bountiful fig tree of the variety Celeste. Several gangly trunks spread out from a central root, and the deep-lobed, dark green leaves bring to mind the predicament of Adam and Eve. It takes the blistering summer heat to ripen the brownish-violet fruits, their reddish insides pebbled with crunchy seeds. These figs, at once commonplace and exotic, are delectable by themselves. But cooked together in a heavy pot over a slow fire, with some sugar for sweet and some lemon for zing, they make a local confection called fig preserves that is—well, celestial.

Continue reading ‘The Figs‘

Valcour Records will be sponsoring the highly successful Black Pot Festival again this year, this time in the form of a Valcour Records stage. It will be a side stage featuring unique combinations of your favorite Louisiana musicians, the kind of stuff you won’t see anywhere else.

Mark your calendars for November 2-3 this year (2007). More info is available on the Black Pot Festival website.

Also, this year the Black Pot Festival planning committee has put together a special preview show for those of you who can’t wait till November (or for those of you who just happen to be looking for a good late Spring Lafayette show). On May 20th, the Blue Moon Saloon will host a Black Pot preview featuring, among others, the Red Stick Ramblers, the Pine Leaf Boys, and the Lost Bayou Ramblers. Check it!