Excerpts from the "BeauSoleil: Live in Louisiana" album liner notes by producer Todd Mouton and bandleader Michael Doucet:

Live (adjective): a recording where both performers and audience are physically present; also, exerting force or containing energy (verb): dwell; also, to have a life rich in experience in Louisiana

Our legendary joie de vivre has at its heart a stubbornness, a determination to face all of life open-hearted and head-on. That collective spirit has carried the Cajuns and Creoles through storms, strife, even exile.

That life force predates history and flows through the haunting medieval melodies and propulsive rhythms of BeauSoleil. The band took its name three decades ago from the Acadian resistance leader born in 1702. But since even before the time of BeauSoleil Broussard, strong winds have blown through the twisting branches of Louisiana’s live oak trees, which have endured.

Talent, dedication and a great spirit of adventure have fueled these artists’ journeys. These forces led French pioneers in search of a better life to settle in present-day Nova Scotia three years before Jamestown was founded in 1607. Those possessions could not be stripped during Le Grand Derangement, the great expulsion of 1755 which led many of the refugees to a hot, humid Spanish colony where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico.

BeauSoleil’s music is older than the trees under which the band members’ ancestors have played for hundreds of years. Their live music, like the live oaks, like the people who live in Louisiana, celebrates life, defying death.

The tempests of our history have surely forged this moment. But they don’t hold sway over our destiny. Our culture will have the final word, and we hope you enjoy this album made with a lot of help from our friends.

Live in Louisiana.

Thirty years … and counting!

Few bands – or solo artists, for that matter – have been around for 30 years. The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, Los Lobos, The Radiators, The Hackberry Ramblers, Dennis McGee & Sady Courville and Canray Fontenot & Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin come to mind. The members of BeauSoleil learned firsthand from the latter dearly departed duos and have taken their music to stages frequented by the former groups, joining some of them and their members in performance and on recordings while playing Carnegie Hall, the Super Bowl, the Grammy Awards, the Grand Ole Opry and countless festivals and nightclubs in all 50 states and plenty of places abroad.

The band’s members are among the greatest acoustic musicians on our planet, and they’ve incorporated players and influences from around the world and across the musical spectrum during their time together. BeauSoleil’s live alchemy has simultaneously invigorated and expanded the foundations of Louisiana folk music.

The band members’ list of influences and masters they’ve worked directly with reads like an encyclopedia of Cajun cultural history: Nathan Abshire, Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin, Dewey Balfa, Rodney Balfa, Will Balfa, Pee Wee Broussard, Bebe Carriere, Eraste Carriere, Boozoo Chavis, Clifton Chenier, Sady Courville, Luderin Darbone, Octa Clark, Varise Conner, Hector Duhon, Canray Fontenot, Freeman Fontenot, Claude Fox, Wade Fruge, Doc Guidry, Doug Kershaw, Iry Lejeune, Preston Manuel, Dennis McGee, U.J. Meaux, D.L. Menard, Walter Mouton, Austin Pitre, Aldus Roger, Marc Savoy, Jo-El Sonnier, Rufus Thibodeaux and Lawrence Walker. These artists are among the many players whose lives and music have been a part of BeauSoleil’s ongoing quest for and desire to honor "The Spirit of Cajun Music."

In many parts of the world, if you say "Cajun," people know little more than BeauSoleil. And that’s just fine. After all, the band’s unofficial motto is "On va les embeter! (Let’s fool ’em!)