Accordion Player Luke Huval: An Old Soul In A Kid's Body

McGee’s Landing and Family Restaurant
1337 Henderson Levee Road
Henderson, LA
Saturday, February 18, 2012
7:30 PM

There may be more musicians in southwest Louisiana than crawfish. There are hundreds of Cajun and Zydeco bands within an hour’s drive from Lafayette. Every native I’ve talked to here knows a musician or has a father, brother, uncle, or grandpapa who plays an instrument.
 
Case in point: Saturday night at McGee’s Landing, a family restaurant in Henderson. The place has a small dance floor. The musicians set up against the wall on chairs and play a few feet from the tables.
 
Joe Hall of Joe Hall and the Cane Cutters is playing with an ad hoc group tonight. Joe says he learned to play the accordion from his granddaddy. Joe’s employer in his day job? Fiddler Terry Huval, leader of the popular Cajun band Jambalaya (and Director of Lafayette Utilities System, but that's another story).
 
Tonight, the drummer, whose name I didn’t get, sings most of the first set, two steps and waltzes in French. Pretty much standard fare. But I notice that the kid playing fiddle looks like a tenth grader.
 
After the break, Three kids sit in to play on their own: 15 year-old Zack Fuselier on fiddle (who was playing in the first set), 13 year-old Luke Huval on accordion, and his 17 year-old brother Phillip on guitar. Luke and Phillip are sons of Terry Huval whose band is Jambalaya. These Huvals are distant cousins to the 13-member Huval family that fronts the Huval Family Band. (You have your scorecard out yet?)
 
From the looks of it, three kids who probably practice once a week in someone’s basement and are getting a chance to stretch their wings here on a slow Saturday night. That’s when lightning strikes.
 
The accordion player begins to sing. If you had your eyes closed, you’d never guess he probably hasn’t even begun to shave. Open them up and you see a musician totally inside his music. His right knee pounds relentlessly up and down with the beat. He sings with urgency, as if his life depended on the effort.
 
The songs are infused with the dark energy that has animated Cajun music for 200 years, bitingly sad, piercingly wistful. This is an old soul in a kid’s body. The songs feel like they’ve been rolling over the waters of the Atchafalaya Basin for 200 years.
 
I put down my fork. I don’t want to miss one beat of this music.
 
Luke Huval has been playing accordion for about ten months. “I pretty much taught myself,” he tells me after the set. Forget talent. The kid is gifted.
 
Zack Fusilier has been playing fiddle for all of two years. He’s been playing with Joe Hall for a year. Joel Huval has been playing guitar for about six months. The three families are neighbors in nearby Scott, a few miles outside Lafayette. Zack’s mom and dad are sitting at a table near band. One of the men from the table gets up and sings a couple of songs with the trio. Does anyone here not play an instrument or sing?
 
Toward the end of the set, Luke gets into a Zachary Richard song “Travail es dur” (“Work is hard”). Stunningly simple, viscerally a blow to the solar plexus. A woman weeps at my table. I have a lump in my throat.

You want history of a culture? Listen to this anthem to survival. And marvel that a 13 year-old kid can transport a room at McGee’s Landing back to a shack somewhere in the bayou way out there across the bay in front of the restaurant.
 
“Luke won the Youth Division at the Cajun Squeezebox Shootout Accordion Championship in Jennings this afternoon,” says Patrick Fuselier, Zack’s dad, as the band packs up to leave.
 
No small wonder. And no small wonder that with kids like this carrying the banner, Cajun music will have an audience for a long time to come.

Photo and video by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8tZDaDmA8k&list=UUpO59RlFb0TWCXQLKYfisdA&index=1&feature=plcp

Comments

[Bart]

Thanks, Paul
I know Terry and will fwd this great article to him.

[Janine Dugas]

Paul,
I sent this to Luke's father.
You might want to correct it.

[Terry Huval]

What a nice story (although he got Phillip's name wrong - where did he get Joel??)

Thanks for sharing it with me.

[May Louise White]

Loved this piece. I have heard all of these kids play and it makes my heart happy just to listen to them and watch the enjoyment they get from "making music". As long as this goes on, the Cajun culture will certainly continue. I have nothing but the highest praise for Terry Huval. He is the personification of a truly "good man". The next time you are here remind me to tell you a couple of stories about Terry that I know first hand which highlight his sterling character.

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

May Louise,

I was floored at how powerful Luke's singing and playing were and how ably he was backed up by Zack and Phillip (I found out I got his name wrong in the original story). The intensity of Luke's singing and playing sticks with me to this day. Some of Luke's riffs, including imaginative "stops", were way off the beaten path. Other accordion players may play these but I've never heard them.

I did a double-take when i saw Zack Fuselier playing at the Youth Tent at the Tee-Mamou Fat Tuesday celebration in Iota. The men running the show, all good musicians themselves, played backup for young vocalists, accordion players, fiddlers and Zack actually played most of the time with the men.

I first heard Terry Huval play last year at Lundi Gras at Outlaws in Lafayette when he played with D.J. Menard and Steve Riley. I've never heard his band Jambalala play and will look for them during future visits.

Thank you for your comments. I'm looking forward to hearing your stories. I'll be back in Lafayette for Festival International de Louisiane!

[May Louise White]

Terry Huval's band, Jambalaya, plays every Friday night at Randol's.