Psycho Zydeco: Creole Over.

Psycho Zydeco play the Woombye Pub on Thursday, at the Australian Beer Festival at the Parkwood Tavern on Friday, at the Tarong Coal Food & Wine Festival at Kingaroy on Saturday and at the Beach Hotel in Byron Bay on Sunday.

Zydeco is an enchanting music born in the hotbed of hoodoo and Creole in the swamps of Louisiana. It seems incongruous that such a musical form should find voice in the great southern continent, yet judging by the growing numbers of fans, Psycho Zydeco have successfully emancipated the idiom, playing festivals around the country, even taking their swamp sounds to willing audiences across Europe.

Based in Sydney, Psycho Zydeco came together in 1991 when Stefan Sernek (vocals, accordion, bass) and Greg Hatton (vocals, guitar, frottoir) stumbled across the sounds of zydeco and Cajun music. They were soon joined by Chris Wilson (vocals, saxophone, frottoir) and Gene Gill (drums). Their first album, Swamp Box, was released in 1995, followed by Sell Your Soul in 1997 and Zydeco Factory in 2000.

The year’s 2002, some 18 months since the release of the previous album, but alas it seems another CD is still some time away. Zydeco Factory is selling more strongly than ever and touring commitments will keep the band busy.

Chris speculates about the next album: “My personal wish would be to see us do a live album where we play stuff we’ve already recorded but never play live, stuff we’ve never recorded but play all the time live. As well we’ve got four or five new songs that we play live at gigs anyway that are ready to go. So there’s actually quite a lot of stuff to put together, but we haven’t got a date set for recording.”

Though a trip to the studio is not on the agenda, Psycho Zydeco are not laying idle. They have found a ready audience among blues fans around the country and may yet be taking zydeco back to its homeland.

Chris elaborates: “In the last month we’ve done quite a few festivals, a lot of blues festivals over summer including the Thredbo Blues Festival, the Mount Buffalo Blues Festival and the Australian Blues Music Festival. So we’ve had good momentum to start this year. At the moment we’re negotiating to possibly go to America in April. We’ve been invited through reaction to our CD to a large music industry conference in Boston. We’ve been invited to go and play a showcase there, where you go and play a set in front of music fans as well as industry representatives—agents, record industry-type people, all that kind of thing. So we’re just organising ourselves, hopefully to get over there and take up the invitation.”

“We’ve just been offered another gig in America which is in Wells Fargo, Iowa. It’s a summer music festival. They want us to come and play and that’s in July so we’re just looking at that one. So we’re starting to get invitations from overseas festivals now, which is our goal. That’s what we’re really working on. We’re letting our web site work for us in terms of putting our music around the world really easily. I think it’s helping.”

Though blues is just one element among many in the fuzzy gumbo of zydeco music, Psycho Zydeco has been warmly embraced by the Australian blues community which is renowned for its purist leanings.

“I’m surprised at the degree of acceptance from the blues scene. The blues scene has accepted us more than any other. We tend to present more of a foil at the jazz festivals, because to me we’re just not jazz. Jazz is a slightly stricter idiom. They still like the sound. It’s from the same region originally. Jazz came from New Orleans originally, so does zydeco. Every musician can hear that connection.”

“I think there’s enough blues in the style Psycho Zydeco plays for blues people to get off on. And we play some out-and-out blues songs that have an accordion in there.”

“I think the fact that Clifton Chenier was such a great blues man and being the pioneer of zydeco, that was one of his provisions almost of playing good zydeco was to have a lot of blues in it, whereas in Cajun it’s not as obvious. We follow in his lineage a little bit because Stefan plays the piano accordion, there are two streams of zydeco really—there’s button accordion and there’s piano accordion, and there’s those elements as well. Because of Clifton Chenier I think we fit in with blues quite comfortably.”