Photo by Alex V. Cook
Where the party’s never stopped since 1936.
Out in the dark wilds of French Settlement, countless twists of blacktop away from the main road, the bars have a reputation.
Some portray it as a backwater of cheap beer, bad tattoos, fights waiting to break out, and marriages being tested by Cajun gals in short shorts dancing to cover bands. In other words, a lot of fun. There is no better way to see if that reputation holds water than a Wayne Toups show at the Moonlight Inn on a humid Saturday night.
Open since 1936, one guesses the Moonlight Inn has seen its share of dustups over the years, perched out there on a bend in the road. When older music fans talk of clubs like these back in the fifties and sixties, the running theme is the epic fights commencing two steps past the door. I can’t speak to every night, but a recent Saturday night at the Moonlight had a slightly more civilized tenor to it, even with Wayne Toups and ZyDeCajun playing.
Toups was born in 1958 in Crowley where he picked up the accordion at age thirteen and has basically never put it down. He recorded for Mercury and Polygram in the eighties and early nineties, becoming one of Cajun music’s brightest stars. He called his band and his style of music ZydeCajun, a raucous mix of rock, Cajun, zydeco and R&B, sung in English and French. With a mullet worthy of Hercules, his signature Hawaiian shirt, and an appetite for partying that matched the ferocity of his music—earning him the nickname “Cocaine Wayne” in years past—Wayne Toups was a force to be reckoned with.
Perusing his merchandise table, the only sobriquet I see for Wayne Toups is “The Boss” and, no disrespect to Bruce Springsteen, it fits. Mellowed some with age, Toups stands like a mountain holding an accordion, the pink and blue stage lights giving his resolute swagger a shimmering aura. His band couldn’t be tighter. Lead guitarist Freddie Pate glides from rhythm guitar to blistering leads and back like he’s on a greased track. Bassist Chevy Foreman and drummer Matt Janise keep everything in check while a second, hyperkinetic percussionist Darrell Toups adds a little sonic danger from his standing kit out front. Center to all this is the Boss, hollering, crooning, and squeezing all the juice out of his accordion and each song.
During a fast number, one young cowboy next to me stomps his boots so hard as he swings his gal around the floor, I can feel it in my chest. The whole room is in motion, be it couples on the dance floor or women from ages twenty-one to sixty-one weaving through the crowd holding a lit cigarette like a beacon, accenting their party outfit, usually with a dude or two trailing in their wake.
Cajun music never sounded so Nashville as when keyboardist Adrian Boudreaux dropped pedal steel lines and Floyd Cramer piano fills against the accordion. As that country moan subsided, things got suddenly distorted. Pate dive bombed into a hard rock solo, Toups’ squeezebox sounded possessed as he bellowed “Is everyone having a good time?!” Everyone is.
Like a thunderstorm drying up, Toups steered the band into a majestic English/French reading of “New Orleans Lady” and the crowd fell in step, going from hayride mayhem into prom night under the barlight glow. A couple near me swayed, eyes locked, holding Styrofoam cups behind each other’s backs as they embraced. Toups can sell a crooner—rich unwavering voice in sync with a five-man soul machine. Wayne Toups is the Boss. Springsteen might need to shop around for a new nickname.
The band laid into George Jones’ “She Thinks I Still Care,” and weaving through the vast dance floor, through the back bar where older folks hang out, it’s like cutting through time. My favorite thing about Cajun nightclubs is how people grow up there and hang on to hang out with the next generation.
Cutting across the jam packed parking lot, gibbous moon over the Moonlight, the air is alive with pecan smoke (getting ready for the Sunday afternoon barbecue), a miasma of tree frogs and faint strains of Wayne Toups tearing through “Ramblin’ Man” (and Lord, he was one) but he and the Moonlight Inn have settled in quite nicely together out there in the wilds of French Settlement.
Details. Details. Details.
The Moonlight Inn
16757 LA Highway 42 (at the junction of LA Highway 16)
French Settlement, La.
(225) 698-6759
Open seven days a week from 6 am–2 am.
Wayne Toups and ZyDeCajun
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