Cajun cookin’ scores for Boston songwriter

“Life like stew…” is how the lyric goes in Digney's surprise hit GUMBO, picked as a finalist in the WUMB songwriting contest. - The Boston Globe

The “Cajun Opera” started to come together when I met Dave Mattacks in the summer of 2004 at the National Folk Festival in Bangor Maine. He agreed to play drums on a few tunes I had written, so we went into the studio in December of 2004 and recorded the first six songs on the CD. The project was beginning to take shape, and a musical theme was emerging, so I wrote a few more tunes that we recorded in May of 2005, (Mothers Day), to complete the recording.

As I was sequencing the songs something strange happened. The characters in the songs started to take on lives of their own. They began telling me the story of Johnnie Boudreaux and his adventures on the river. How a man “too good lookin’ for his own good” could live himself to death, and still manage a laugh at his own funeral.

It’s a story about love, lust, Voodoo and incest, moonshine, gangsters, and cheatin’ fools. Wrap that up in a natural disaster and you’ve got Johnnie’s world, New Orleans 1927.

(...more about the story of Johnnie Boudreaux)

THE STORY CONTINUES...

After the 2006 release of Trouble on the Levee, many people wanted to hear more about the story of Johnny Boudreax, the man "too good looking for his own good."

The Talk of the Town continues the story and incorporates many characters from the original tale, as Johnny returns to New Orleans to save his son from the noose.

"Sounding like Randy Newman in his heyday, Digney wrangles up 12 new songs that bubble with grooves so infectious, you're going to need a good linament to work them out." Doug Sloan, Metronome Magazine

Once again I was able to enlist the talents of world renowned drummer Dave Mattacks and most of the musicians who performed on Trouble on the Levee to bring this second chapter of Johnnie's "Cajun Opera" to you.

(...more about the story of The Sons of Johnnie Boudreaux)