The Beaudoin Legacy

• Beaudoin Legacy CD
• Beaudoin Legacy dates
• SING OUT! Magazine Teach-In: Louis Beaudoin
• Beaudoin Legacy website – about the band and the Beaudoin family’s cultural heritage

Stepdancer Glenn Bombardier gets airborne at the 2008 American Folk Festival in Bangor ME, with Donna Hébert and Nate Ouellette (fiddles), Pam Gonyer (bass) and Max Cohen (guitar)

Louis Beaudoin did more than inspire me to play French-Canadian fiddle music, he gave me my cultural identity as a Franco-American. He made me proud to claim my heritage, proud to be French. (see “Why I Play Franco-American Fiddle Music,” The Muse of Joy and Sorrow: why we play the fiddle.) At the time, I was unaware that he was also infecting me with a fiddling virus for which playing crooked French-Canadian tunes is the only cure!

One page cannot begin to document Louis’ life, cut short in 1980 at age 59. All we have left are fragments – memories, photos, interviews and recordings – and the joy that courses through us when we play his music! Sometimes it even feels like he’s there in the room. In addition to the Vermont Folklife Center’s Beaudoin Collection of family memorabilia and recordings, we are building the band’s Facebook page as a medium to gather stories from friends and family to document Louis and Julie’s lives and their family’s contributions to Franco-American music.

George Wilson (Amherst Bulletin photo)

Blessed to have such a giant among us, those like myself and George Wilson have tried to keep not just his music, but his attitude about the music and the people who play it, in our hearts and hands. There was always a welcome for newcomers when Louis was there. He made you glad you’d come. We’ve tried to pass that on. And now we’re paying if forward – back into the family! We’ve reconnected with the Beaudoin family and since 2006 we’ve been performing with them. Louis widow, Julie Beaudoin dubbed band members honorary Beaudoins, adopted into the clan, which is better than being knighted by the Queen in my book!

Nina, Julie and Carmen, 3/29/08 (Melissa Kosswig photo)

Julie sang with us in March 2008 at the Blackstone River Theatre in Cumberland RI. It proved to be her last concert as she passed away only 10 days later while visiting the Grand Canyon with her daughters Nina and Carmen. She was 87, a great lady and we miss her terribly. I was visiting the canyon only a month earlier when I received a call about my own father’s passing. In honor of both my dad, Rodger E. Hinds, and Julie Beaudoin, I’ve written an air called Raven’s Wing with Beaudoin Legacy guitarist Max Cohen. It’s the last track on the band’s live CD, recorded at the Blackstone concert.

Glenn Bombardier, 3/29/08 (Melissa Kosswig photo)

Playing music with Beaudoin daughters Carmen Bombardier and Nina Beaudoin is almost too much fun and Carmen’s step-dancing daughters Elena Alexander and Nicolle Charbonneau are thrilling to play for. Then there’s the opportunity to play with and teach Louis’ grandson Glenn Bombardier, who was only five when Louis died. Now Glenn is sharing the music with his niece and godchild, the latest Beaudoin clan member to take up the fiddle. And so the circle is unbroken.

Live concert CD

recorded at the
Blackstone River Theatre,
Cumberland RI, March 2008

Other band members’ French-Canadian music jams and concerts:

Every other Thursday – Bristol CT – Daniel Boucher’s French Folk Jam. Contact Dan for details: flr2lys AT yahoo DOT com

Donna’s performances with Daniel, Josée Vachon and others. 

Louis Beaudoin, 1976 (Ann Meuer photo)

Louis Beaudoin Teach-in

- Winter 2008 Sing Out Magazine

SING OUT! Magazine asked for a Teach-In article about Louis Beaudoin. Since 2005, I’ve been making prescriptive transcriptions of all the audio samples of Louis that I can find, with 40 tunes transcribed so far. Multiple listenings are necessary to glean all the goodies from these recordings; melodies, bowings, drones, syncopations and rhythmic variations just begin to scratch the surface. There’s something magic in his playing that can’t be quantified, that I can only describe as joy. No way to write that down. Just have to play the music and feel it yourself!

Here are links to the SING OUT! article, with transcriptions for fiddle. Each tune is sampled once through with Louis playing.

Louis Beaudoin Teach-in – PDF

Blackberry Quadrille two page PDF sheet music

Blackberry Quadrille - MP3 of Louis Beaudoin

Les guenilles - PDF sheet music

Les guenilles - MP3 of Louis Beaudoin