Tom Rigney and Michael Doucet of BeauSoleil

MICHAEL DOUCET AND TOM RIGNEY, WITH FLAMBEAU
-
Two of the finest roots music fiddle players on the planet (Michael Doucet and Tom Rigney) are joining forces for a series of live performances in Northern California. Backed by Rigney’s hot band, Flambeau, the shows will feature material from their latest CD, Roll On, which spent ten weeks on the Roots Music Report’s World Album Chart, climbing all the way to Number 1 and staying there for several weeks. The title track, “Roll On” (featuring special guest Marcia Ball on piano) hit Number 1 on the RMR World Singles Chart the week of December 10, 2022, and stayed in the top ten for more than two months.

Roll On is a follow-up to Doucet and Rigney’s critically acclaimed, Cajun Fandango. That disc received a Best of the Beat nomination as Best Cajun Album of 2016, and was named one of the fifty best Louisiana albums of 2016 by Offbeat Magazine. Roll On features a wide range of Root Music styles and dazzling interplay between the two fiddles. Special guests on the album include Marcia Ball, Jon Cleary, Anthony Paule, and Chad Huval, among others.

Michael Doucet, the two-time Grammy-winning fiddler and leader of the Cajun band BeauSoleil, has been the premier Cajun fiddle player of the past several decades. Originally from Lafayette, Louisiana, he has taken Cajun music out of Louisiana and put it on the stages of the world. He has both preserved the music of his culture and expanded its horizons. A dynamic force of nature on the violin, he is a constantly inventive and compelling soloist.

Tom Rigney has, over the past several decades, become one of the premier blues and roots music violinists in the world. After fifteen years at the helm of the Swamp Rock band The Sundogs, he put together his current band--Tom Rigney and Flambeau--in 2000 and has toured and recorded extensively ever since. A prolific composer and songwriter, he has released more than a dozen CDs of original songs and instrumental pieces since 2000. His high-energy, virtuosic playing and his commanding stage presence are hallmarks of Rigney’s performing style.

Rigney and Doucet, friends for several decades, began performing and recording together in 2015 and the results have been incendiary. The spontaneous, virtuosic, high-energy interplay between these two American Roots Music masters is guaranteed to raise the pulse rate and lift an audience to its feet!

“Two of the finest fiddlers in the music world, Michael Doucet and Tom Rigney, have convened for a dream session consisting of Cajun, blues, and roots music. Whoever decided to bring these two great artists together deserves an award of some kind. Hopefully, they will do it again soon." - Graham Clarke, Blues Bytes