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CNN Saturday Morning News
Midtown Music Fest Features Zydeco
Aired May 04, 2002 - 09:19 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go check out Kyra Phillips now, who might just call these rainstorms hellacious, right - wouldn't you? Nightmare would be another term that...
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, yes...
O'BRIEN: ... comes to mind.
PHILLIPS: Yes, we could use a few of those mint juleps after what we went through, Miles.
O'BRIEN: We'll ship them right to you.
PHILLIPS: As you can see, we're -- yes, OK, thank you. We're inside now. We got away from all the weather and the situation outside. We came inside because we learned a new expression. Miles, do you know what "la jalais (ph)" means?
O'BRIEN: La jalais...
PHILLIPS: Yes. Ooh, you say that so well.
O'BRIEN: ... can you say -- wait a minute, can you say that on TV? Can we say it on TV?
PHILLIPS: Yes, we can say it on TV -- it means...
O'BRIEN: Oh, it's cable.
PHILLIPS: ... let it go, let all your troubles go. It's Cajun...
O'BRIEN: All right, what is it...
PHILLIPS: ... exactly...
O'BRIEN: ... les -- what about "les bons temps roulees (ph)," les bons temps -- that's...
PHILLIPS: Yes, let the good times roll.
O'BRIEN: ... let the good times roll, that's another...
PHILLIPS: That's another... UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Laisser les bons temps roulees.
PHILLIPS: Yes, see?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIPS: Charlie does it much better. I'm sorry, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Oh, sacre bleu, my French le suck, le suck.
PHILLIPS: Ah, oh, OK, we're not going to let him talk French anymore.
Zydefunk is the name of this band. They are awesome, and, you know, living in New Orleans, I got to say I've become a little addicted to zydeco music. But it's a little bit of everything, right, Charlie? It's blues...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.
PHILLIPS: ... it's Cajun...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A gumbo of grooves, Louisiana grooves, is what it is.
PHILLIPS: I love it. How did this band get started?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, a high school friend of mine ran into me here in Atlanta, and he was playing accordion, and we just started playing and doing this, and he does a lot of directing for plays and stuff, so he was always out of town, which (UNINTELLIGIBLE) why we brought Mark Kuffner (ph) in, and, you know...
PHILLIPS: That's right, and we're going to hear Mark jam in just a second, aren't we?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right, yes.
PHILLIPS: All right.
All right, now, you guys, you're here for the Music Fest, Midtown Music Fest. And you're going to get us going this morning?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure enough.
PHILLIPS: You going to wake us up?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If y'all are ready.
PHILLIPS: Do we have to start to boogie?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're ready to boogie.
PHILLIPS: All right, you play us to break, Charlie. OK.
(MUSIC) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: And welcome back to CNN SATURDAY MORNING. Of course we're bringing you a little zydeco from the Midtown Music Fest, and we're going to kind of stay on that Louisiana theme.
I want to tell you about a new book, it's called "American Pie: Slices of Life from America's Back Roads." And I promise this is all going to fit together. I'm going to bring Pascale le Draoulec in. Pascale, am I saying your name correctly?
Can you hear me OK, Pascale?
PASCALE LE DRAOULEC, AUTHOR, "AMERICAN PIE": Yes, I can hear you great.
PHILLIPS: Yes? All right, say that last name for me.
LE DRAOULEC: Le Draoulec.
PHILLIPS: What -- all right, very good, all right. I seem to have a little hard time with that French.
Look, let's talk about your book. Tell me how you got this idea and how you put it together.
LE DRAOULEC: OK. Well, I was living in San Francisco, and I was offered a job in New York. And I had always wanted to drive across America, it's been a lifelong dream. I've traveled all over the world, but I really had never explored the back roads of my own country.
So I decided to drive instead of fly into my new life. I looked at the map, and it was just so overwhelming, with all those little squiggly lines. And I knew I didn't want to take the interstate, I wanted to take the back roads so I could get a real sense, a raw slice of America.
And so just looking at the map, I thought it was so overwhelming, I didn't know how to pick a route. So I decided if I went on a quest, it would be easier, and I decided -- I picked pie, because what's more American than pie? There's pie in every state.
And so what I did is, I...
PHILLIPS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) metaphor, isn't it? It's a metaphor for kind of slowing down your life.
LE DRAOULEC: Exactly.
PHILLIPS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) stopping to smell the roses, make pie, right?
LE DRAOULEC: Exactly. I mean, I knew that I was moving to a very -- to a frenetic place, and there was a part of me that knew that I needed to slow down a little bit and -- exactly, making a pie requires you to stop your life for just a little while and sort of, you know, slow it down, take it down to a pie pace.
And that's exactly how I traveled. I literally would pull up in small towns and try and find the most typical local person. It's funny, in Kentucky, I tried to find a horse trainer, obviously, because of the Derby, to tell me where to go for pie.
And (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
PHILLIPS: What about, what about Mammy's Cupboard? You have...
LE DRAOULEC: Mammy's...
PHILLIPS: ... a special story from there.
LE DRAOULEC: Yes, Mammy's Cupboard is in Natchez, Mississippi, and we had stopped on the flanks of the Mississippi to have some mint juleps, actually, after a long day's drive. And some people sitting at the table next to us were locals, and so we said, Hey, where do you go for pie around here? And they sent us to Mammy's, which is an amazing restaurant that's shaped literally like an old black mammy.
And the woman who owns it served us an apple-blueberry pie, and it had such an amazing story behind it. Her husband had been very ill with cancer, and when he was diagnosed, he planted scores of blueberry bushes. And unfortunately he died before they have ever actually had a chance to bear fruit.
And so when she took over this cafe, she made a promise to herself that she would every day on the menu serve something with blueberries in it. So she has, you know, blueberry lemonade, blueberry things. And one day she was making an apple pie and she ran out of apples, and so she grabbed some blueberries and threw them into the pie, solving, you know, two problems with one batch of blueberries.
And the result was this amazing pie that was clearly, you know, one of the best on the trip. And, you know, the thing that made the pies so great were the stories behind them and the people who told us how they came up with the recipes and, you know, obviously, food tastes always better when you've got a story like that behind it.
PHILLIPS: Absolutely, the stories are heartwarming. And also I know there's a number of recipes in your book, the blackberry pie is one specifically I wanted to talk about, because it's from Louisiana, when you went through there...
LE DRAOULEC: Absolutely.
PHILLIPS: ... and we're here live at the Midtown Music Fest, and we have a zydeco band with us, Pascale, today...
LE DRAOULEC: Oh, wow.
PHILLIPS: ... and we're going to have them play again, yes, coming up in a few minutes. But once again, the book, "American Pie: Slices of Life and Pie from America's Back Roads." Thank you so much. It's a wonderful book...
LE DRAOULEC: Thank you.
PHILLIPS: ... you have some terrific stories. And we want to check that out, not only for that, but also the recipes.
Thanks, Pascale.
LE DRAOULEC: OK, thanks. Bye-bye.
PHILLIPS: All right. We'll be back once again after this break for a little more zydeco music. Stay with us.
O'BRIEN: Hey, hey, Kyra, Kyra?
PHILLIPS: Yes, yes?
O'BRIEN: When you come back -- were you dancing?
PHILLIPS: Do you want me to play the drims -- the drums?
O'BRIEN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- oh, yes, we'd like that. But I -- I mean, when those zydeco guys go, you just got to dance, don't you?
PHILLIPS: Oh, we were dancing. You should have seen us, all standing behind the camera crew.
O'BRIEN: All right, all right, well...
PHILLIPS: Yes, you want me to bring the crew in and we'll all dance with you?
O'BRIEN: Next time I want to see the crew and you dancing, OK?
PHILLIPS: Hey, Charlie. Oh, they're out there -- yes, they're out there, you know...
O'BRIEN: All right, well, you-...
PHILLIPS: ... talking about how wonderful that first time was. We'll get them back here. Or I could just play you to break. You want me to...
O'BRIEN: Play us to break, play us to break, please.
PHILLIPS: All right, here we go. All right, we got more coming right up. Here we go.
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