Lay Your Burden Down

LAY YOUR BURDEN DOWN is the most ambitious, deepest and varied recording of Buckwheat Zydeco's career. It is a remarkably conceived, rocking album featuring five new Buckwheat originals and complete reinventions of songs by Memphis Minnie (When the Levee Breaks, made famous by Led Zeppelin), Bruce Springsteen (Back in Your Arms), Gov't Mule (Lay Your Burden Down), Captain Beefheart (Too Much Time), Jimmy Cliff (Let Your Yeah Be Yeah) and JJ Grey & Mofro (The Wrong Side). Guests on the album include Sonny Landreth, Warren Haynes, Steve Berlin, JJ Grey and Trombone Shorty. As New Orleans author Ben Sandmel writes in the liner notes, "LAY YOUR BURDEN DOWN pulses with music that tells a story. Since it's zydeco, this album will naturally get feet to moving. But LAY YOUR BURDEN DOWN speaks with equal eloquence to the head, and the heart." In this, Buckwheat's first post-Katrina album, Louisiana's life-affirming jazz funeral philosophy of renewal, partying in the face of adversity, is on full display, with joyful, rhythmic dance music and deeper, more intense songs sharing the same celebratory bayou sprit. With LAY YOUR BURDEN DOWN, Buckwheat Zydeco's large and loyal fan base will have to make room for a massive influx of new converts.