Rain forced a change of venue, but it couldn't dampen Salt Lake City's enthusiasm for Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Zydeco Band Sunday night at Kingsbury Hall.
When it was over, even the rain had been swept away by her infectious smile, throaty French patois lyrics and jumpin' music. If there was a worry left, you couldn't see it.This was probably as close as Salt Lake City will come to the night "fais deaux deaux" still common in Creole/Cajun communities, where generations meet to dance and socialize.
It may have been a Sunday night, but the aisles were filled with mothers dancing with sons, fathers waltzing with toddlers on their shoulders, lovers embracing for all the slow songs (even a pair of adolescent boys couldn't keep their feet still). All that was missing was a decent place to dance, a little gumbo and some sweet potato pie.
That's how a Queen Ida concert is: It begins in your feet and ends in your heart.
But what else would you expect from a musical style so unpretentious it gets its name from the French word for snap bean? This is a style so absorbent it can begin more than a century ago in Nova Scotia with French Canadian folk tunes, soak in flavors from the Caribbean, Germany, American country/western, blues, rock 'n' roll, jazz (and, doubtless, many others), and still squeeze out a vibrant, unique sound of its own in the 1990s.
Queen Ida chose the rumbling drums and decidedly country/western flavor of "Capitaine Gumbo" to open the evening, but most of Sunday night's crowd waited a full song and a half before Ida's irresistible accordion and Bernard Anderson's delicious saxophone began to fill the aisles with dancing.
Backed by her son Myrick "Freeze" Guillory (an accomplished zydeco musician in his own right) and the smooth guitar licks of Dennis Geyer, Queen Ida followed with the rousing "Choupik Two Step" and charging, ironic "Hey Negress" ("Where did you go last night/when you came home, the sun was shining bright . . . ?").
By the time Queen Ida turned over her accordion to Freeze for a set of songs from his own album as well as from her latest, the aisles were full - and stayed that way for the rest of the night.
Songs from nearly all of her eight albums were represented, from "Oh Teres" and "Creole de Lake Charles" of her first to "C'est Moi" and "La Bas 2 Step (Hey La Bas)" from her latest.
But it wasn't enough. An exuberant ovation brought Queen Ida back for "Tayo Zydeco," a rollicking, good-natured piece - and one of the first zydeco tunes she ever performed. Midway through her final song, "Raywood," Queen Ida put her push-button accordion down and raised her arms in farewell, singing "Byebye baby, byebye baby, so long . . . " For at least one member of the audience, it still wasn't enough.