Interview: Tab Benoit

It’s the kind of music industry story that dates back to the earliest days of regional rock ‘n roll—but with a twist. In the early ‘90s, aspiring Cajun roots-rock musician Tab Benoit signed his first music industry contract. Barely out of his teens, he had no idea he was locking himself into a deal that would lead to a 14-year absence from the studio.

 Like so many of those early artists, Benoit was naive enough to sign on the dotted line without first having the contract reviewed by a lawyer. The result was a string of albums that, due to the influence of producers and record company executives, too often fell short of his expectations. 

Now, after finally waiting out his contract, Benoit is doing a full-band tour to promote his new album “I Hear Thunder.” Released on his Whiskey Bayou label, it’s the album the Fender Telecaster-wielding musician has long wanted to make, a self-produced collection that captures the unvarnished energy of his live performances. 

But the real twist, and what makes Benoit’s story truly unique, is he could have fulfilled that contract long ago by delivering just one more album to his previous label. 

Instead, the four-time Grammy nominee and multiple blues awards winner devoted his time to extensive touring. He also organized the annual All-Star Voice of the Wetlands Festival to support efforts to save Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, which are disappearing at a rate of one acre an hour.

Benoit recorded “I Hear Thunder” -- which was written with his long-time collaborator Anders Osborne and also features Meters legend George Porter on three tracks -- in his lifelong hometown Houma, a Louisiana community that’s still reeling in the aftermath of Covid and the devastation brought on by a direct hit from category 4 Hurricane Ida in 2021. 

In the following interview, Benoit explains why he went so many years without recording an album. He also talks about working-class values, serenading gators and not taking the easy way out.

Q: At what point did you decide to stop making records? Did you just find yourself putting it off as the years went on?

Benoit: No, I’d already had enough, so I decided that I wasn’t giving another album to a record label again. The original record deal that I signed was when I was 21 or 22 years old, and I signed it without a lawyer. So I’ve been locked into this bad deal that I finally got out of after 30 years. I was just gonna wait it out and see what happens, and this is what happened. 

I understand that on “I Hear Thunder,” you had the final say over everything. Has that not always been the case?

No, not really. I mean, this is the first album where I didn’t have anybody to answer to: no producer, no record label having to approve of anything. To go in there and try to make magic while somebody else on the other side of the glass is analyzing it, there's that feeling in the back of your mind like, you know, they ain’t gonna like this. And that’s going to change how you approach things and how open you are to playing in the moment. 

I couldn’t talk about it, because they could have come after me. If they saw interviews with me saying I ain't giving them another record, they could have sued me. But I did not want to give another one away, you know. I think I only owed them one more record. But I wouldn’t have had any control over it. I couldn’t reproduce my own stuff, I couldn’t go put it on vinyl for people, I couldn’t do any of that.

Couldn’t you have done what Neil Young did with “Trans,” just put out an album you didn’t care about to fulfill the contract?

I can't bring myself to do that, either. I wouldn't know how to go out and release an album of junk just to get out of a deal. I would feel terrible about it, because people that have been die-hard fans of mine since the beginning, they’re still coming to see me. You know, we're growing old together. We become friends. When I go to their town, we always catch up. And if I put out that kind of record, I couldn't face them. I mean, you put an album out, it's forever. Can't take it back, and it's gonna represent me after I'm gone.

I've seen where people do these big, elaborate albums, and you go see them live, and they can't play it like that, especially now in the digital world with all the post-production and everything being manipulated to the nth degree. People might go, wow, that's impressive, but to me, what's impressive is how John Lee Hooker could make that sound with two fingers. And there's no way that I can reproduce that, or anybody could. And if you went in there and tried to clean all that up, you’d strip the life out of it. Go put auto-tune on Otis Redding and see what it does. It’s gonna ruin it.

You're one of the few musicians playing today who has successfully explored the crossroads between Cajun music, rock, and the blues. Can you talk about what those styles all have in common? 

Well, I mean, all that comes from Louisiana. Rock and roll was invented in New Orleans. It was piano music. It was Fats Domino and Huey Smith and Professor Longhair. People forget that the first song that was considered rock and roll was a piano song. That's when they played a real piano. But you know where all that came from, right? And you know where I live, I mean, New Orleans and South Louisiana and just the Mississippi Delta in general was where all this music was coming from. 

With my generation, the live bands around here were playing swamp pop, which is early New Orleans rock and roll and piano songs, but using guitar to do it. It’s all the things you said -- blues, R&bB Cajun music and rock and roll -- all mixed together.

So how often do you get out to your fishing camp these days? 

As soon as I get home, that's where I go.

Does being alone out there help you write songs?

I do write songs by myself, but I don't go out to write a “lot” of songs. It’s not like I write hundreds of songs and then pick the best for the album. It's never like that. Everything I write, I use.

And with Anders, we write all this stuff very fast and very naturally. I had Anders and George Porter come out to my fishing camp, and took them out in the swamp, and we’d sit out there and write songs. Like with “Watching the Gators Roll,” we're writing the song to an alligator who's swimming in the current to stay right next to the boat, because he’s listening to what we’re doing and he’s digging it, So I'm sitting there singing the song to him, and, you know, Anders and George are going, ‘Wow, this is cool.’ And I'm like, I told y'all, when we go out in the swamp, it ain't just us, you know? It's alive out there. 

One last question: How is Houma doing? You got hit by both Hurricane Ida and Covid. Is it on the rebound? 

Well, there's a lot of things that ain't there anymore. Obviously, it doesn't look the same, especially down on the bayou. A lot of people lost homes. And, I mean, everybody had to get at least a new roof. When you have 165-mile-an-hour winds for eight hours straight, it's amazing that a house could stand up to that. 

The people where I live are one of a kind. We get knocked down a lot, but that’s what make us who we are, and that’s what makes us stronger. Everybody down there pulls for each other and is very helpful and generous. That’s why I have a hard time even thinking about moving out of there. 

But, you know, they keep changing the flood zone maps and the insurance stuff on us. It feels like they're trying to get rid of us, you know? But, man, that's where all of the stuff that we love -- and that people love about us -- comes from. And I gotta have a swamp to go write these songs, or it ain't gonna come out the same.