Wayne Toups, Celina Record

Zydecajun founder Toups to headline Celina Cajun Fest Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com Apr 7, 2016 These are busy times for Wayne Toups. Earlier this year the Grammy Award-winning musician and his wife, Casey, welcomed a new baby - a son named Emery Marlon. “He is amazing. I’ve never felt so much joy in a long time,” said 57-year-old Toups, who is considered the founder of the Zydecajun music genre which he describes as “a Cajun rhythm and blues that will knock your socks off.” As he has done since its inception four years ago, Toups will again headline Celina Cajun Fest in Celina’s downtown square this weekend. Later this month, the man who has been called “the Cajun Bruce Springsteen” will release a new, self-titled studio album - his first in a decade - after having recently signed a recording deal with Mississippi-based Malaco Records. The album’s release will coincide with what is traditionally the busiest segment of Toups’ annual touring season, when he and his band perform at numerous Mardi Gras- and Cajun-themed festivals and events throughout the southeastern U.S. “We’re fixin’ to get really busy,” he said during a recent call from his home in Lafayette, Louisiana. “We look forward to wearing ourselves out.” Toups, who plays the accordion, said his career “continues to evolve,” as evidenced by the 11 songs on the forthcoming disc. Its first single, “The Good One,” was released a few months ago. “It shows a different kind of side of Wayne Toups, a more of a country, R&B side of Wayne Toups, and everybody is starting to be surprised how versatile I can be,” he said of the album. “I can be a good ol’ Cajun singer, or I can be an R&B singer, or I can be a country singer. So I want everybody to know and hear what Wayne Toups is all about – the whole package, not just one pigeonholed squeezebox player who grew up in Louisiana. “This is my culture. I live and breathe it. That is the heartbeat of what I do. But … I’ve always been a little different kind of accordion player than everyone else, always on the cutting edge, always trying something new.” Toups may not be a household name, but his career has been lengthy. He began playing the accordion in the early 1970s and performed with small Cajun bands. He was sidelined for several years, however, while supporting his first wife and son by working in oil fields. He returned to music in the early ’80s, and later that decade had a hit with a song called “Johnny Can’t Dance.” Toups has recorded more than a dozen albums. His song “Two Step Mamou” was featured on the soundtrack of the 1989 film “Steel Magnolias,” and he has worked with some of the country music’s biggest names including Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson and George Jones. He won a Grammy is 2013 in the Best Regional Roots Music Album category for “The Band Courtboullion,” which he recorded with fellow artists Steve Riley and Wilson Savoy. Toups said his live shows are “80 percent accordion-music fueled,” and he still regularly performs the first song her ever wrote, 1985’s “Mon Ami.” “I’ve been touring for a long time, but it’s not what I do that keeps this (Cajun music) tradition so great,” he said. “It’s the hundred little bands that play every night of the week around here (in Louisiana) that do it for the love of it … they do it for the fun, and they might not be on a big stage but on the inside it’s grand to them. They’re the ones that keep this tradition alive.” Toups, on the other hand, is “the one who takes it on the road and makes everybody want to research exactly where that music comes from,” he said. “I’ve groomed myself over the years to be able to take that load … to be in this position to say, `Look, this music, this tradition is mine.’ It doesn’t belong all to me, but for some reason somebody put me in the front. Now I’ve gotta be able to take the load, and I do and I love it.” Toups said he is not the least bit concerned about possibly alienating any of his longtime fans with his new sound. “I feel that it’s Wayne Toups’ music. I’m not doing another genre of music. I’m making it a Wayne Toups song by the way I sing,” he said. “I might sing a country song, but there’s going to be something inside that song that you’re going to be able to tell it’s Wayne Toups singing. I’m going to do one of my famous little screams or something that’s going to make it distinctive. If I feel the songs, then it’s me.” Follow the Celina Record on Twitter @celinarecord.