Andre Thierry
Andre Thierry and his band perform at The Woodshop in Palo Alto. Photo by John Noltner.
The 32-year-old star of the West Coast zydeco scene, Andre Thierry has deep roots in the culture. His parents and grandparents were all part of the migration of Louisiana Creoles to Northern California. Thierry spent much of his childhood living with his maternal grandparents, Houston and Lena Pitre, who organized the famous dances at St. Mark’s Catholic Church in Richmond. Thierry would be present when visiting musicians like Clifton Chenier stayed at the Pitre home, and Chenier correctly predicted that Thierry would be a great accordionist because of his long arms.
By the time Thierry was eleven, he was performing at the 23 Club in Brisbane, California. More than two decades later, his band Zydeco Magic performs several nights a week—at clubs, festivals, fraternal-hall dances, and parties in California and elsewhere. In this clip, Thierry reminiscences about how his grandparents recreated rural Louisiana at their California home.
Andrew Carriere
Andrew Carriere and his dog Jimmy at his home in Alameda. Photo by John Noltner.
Andrew Carriere was a late bloomer on the accordion but has been making up for lost time ever since. He performs regularly throughout the Bay Area, both with his own band and with the Creole Belles. His repertoire features zydeco, but also includes more traditional French music as well as country and rock ’n’ roll. The sight of the 74-year-old’s enormous biceps as he squeezes his accordion is truly wondrous.
Carriere is the son of fiddler Joseph “Bébé” Carrière and the nephew of Eraste “Dolon” Carrière, two of the most renowned Creole musicians of their generation. Growing up, young Andrew loved listening to zydeco, but didn’t become a serious musician himself until after he had landed in California in the early 1970s and began working as a welder on a nuclear submarine. Eventually he began singing and playing triangle with the California Cajun Orchestra, and then moved on to the accordion. In this outtake, he explains how this childhood passion turned into a later-in-life career.
Blair Kilpatrick & Steve Tabak
Blair Kirkpatrick and her husband Steve Tabak at their home in Berkeley. Photo by John Noltner.
Blair Kilpatrick, a psychologist, and Steve Tabak, a teacher, are part of the new wave of non-Creoles playing Louisiana French music in the Bay Area. The couple discovered the music during a trip to New Orleans, which triggered a chain of events that landed them in Northern California. Kilpatrick studied under Creole accordionist Danny Poullard, who hosted regular jam sessions in his garage. She chronicled her journey in the book Accordion Dreams. She and Tabak (who plays fiddle) founded the band Sauce Piquante and try to carry on Poullard’s legacy by hosting jam sessions in their Berkeley home. In this outtake, they talk about the swamp tour that changed their lives.
Mark St. Mary
Mark St. Mary in the ballroom of the Alameda Hotel, where he lives in Alameda. Photo by John Noltner.
Mark St. Mary’s family came to the Bay Area around 1960 in search of “better money” and greater freedom. “There was no civil rights,” he recalls of those days in Louisiana. “It was just bad. You can’t go to this wash house; you gotta be careful of the Ku Klux Klan.” The family later relocated to the Sacramento Valley but continued traveling back and forth between California and Louisiana. Most of the St. Mary family worked in construction, but they were more famous as performers of Creole music.
Today St. Mary lives in Alameda and calls himself the Delta King, a title he received at the Isleton Crawdad Festival. He plays a bluesy zydeco style influenced by accordionist Clifton Chenier. Depending on the venue, he might play pure zydeco, or he might “cut loose,” throwing in “a little R&B, jump, and a little down-and-dirty belly rubbing.” In this clip, he talks about the dances during his childhood in Louisiana—and how his father used tough love in encouraging his musicianship.
Queen Ida Guillory
Queen Ida. Photo by Ben Brown, republished under a Creative Commons license.
Queen Ida Guillory has brought her trademark Latin-inflected zydeco all around the world as California’s most famous Creole accordion player. The Louisiana-born daughter of rice farmers, she grew up cooking for the field hands, driving a tractor, and helping her mother harvest vegetables from their enormous truck patch. The family moved to San Francisco when she was 17. There, she drove a school bus for a living and played her accordion occasionally—until a San Francisco Chronicle reporter photographed her at a Mardi Gras masquerade and dubbed her “Queen Ida.”
That photo helped launch her on an international touring career, which included appearances on Saturday Night Live and A Prairie Home Companion. She won a Grammy Award in 1982 and was later named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts. In this outtake, Guillory explains how her parents decided to move across the country in the 1940s—and how they found other Creoles in California.
R.C. Carrier
R.C. Carrier near his home in Crockett. Photo by John Noltner.
R. C. Carrier comes from one of Louisiana’s most renowned musical families. He grew up around Lake Charles, Louisiana, where his parents cut sugar cane, pulled peanuts, and plowed with a mule. They raised other crops, too, along with hogs and geese. Like many in his community, Carrier worked in the fields as a young man. “We didn’t get a lot of schooling,” he says, “because we had to work to survive.” Back then, he adds, “if we saw a Black Creole guy that had a car, we thought he was rich.”
Drawn to the frottoir, a metal rubboard worn like a vest, Carrier played with such greats as accordionist Clifton Chenier. Now 62 and living in Crockett, California, he continues to play the frottoir and has performed with Motordude Zydeco and Andre Thierry & Zydeco Magic. In this clip, he talks about his early fascination with the instrument—and the thrill of holding a certain famous accordion.
Wilbert Lewis
Wilbert Lewis at the 23 Club in Brisbane. Photo by John Noltner.
Wilbert Lewis spent more than a decade playing the washboard for his accordionist sister Queen Ida Guillory. They traveled throughout Europe, and appeared on shows like Saturday Night Live, bringing California-style zydeco to a world audience. Lewis also played on several of Queen Ida’s CDs. Now 85, he can often be found two-stepping at zydeco dances throughout the Bay Area.
Born in Welsh, Louisiana, Lewis started attending zydeco parties when he was seven or eight. “You’d see some happy country people on Sunday evening, dancing their heart out,” he says. “They would go from house to house—they had no hall—or they’d dance outside in the yard.” But farm work in Louisiana was all-consuming, and in 1947 Lewis moved to San Francisco in search of opportunity. In this outtake, he describes how living in California helped him achieve the American dream.
Note: These bios were accurate in January 2012. R.C. Carrier died in 2023.
