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Back row: Nelson Blanchard, Rod Roddy, Mark Duthu, Tony Haselden
Front row: Leon Medica, Jim Odom, Randy Carpenter, Keith Landry
Louisiana's LeRoux
received a Grammy nomination in January, 2007, for its work
on Tab Benoit's Brother to the Blues album.
Tab's follow-up album, Power of the
Pontchartrain, recorded with LeRoux, was in the Top 5 on
Billboard's Blues chart for over 15 weeks and the single
"Shelter Me" went to #4 in the U.S. on the iTunes Top 10
Blues Songs. Recent events include recording a double live
album and DVD, Night Train in Nashville, with
Tab,
Jimmy Hall, Kim Wilson, Jim Lauderdale,
Johnny Sansone, and Waylon Thibodeaux. Members
of LeRoux toured in 2008 and 2009 with
Tab
throughout the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. On October
10, 2009, LeRoux had the distinct honor of being inducted
into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
Leon Medica was inducted into
The
Louisiana Music Hall of Fame on January 29,
2010.
"New
Orleans Ladies" won the
Louisiana
Music Hall of Fame's
Favorite Louisiana Song 2010 (Year of the Song) competition!
Leon Medica and Ed White of White Oak
Productions put together an all-star band for a Texas
Roadhouse Corporate party on April 14, 2010 at The Statue of
Liberty in New York. The band included the members of LeRoux
with The Doobie Brothers' Tom Johnston, Blues
Brothers' Steve Cropper, Wet Willie's Jimmy Hall,
Jimi Jamison, Toto's Dennis Frederiksen, and
Journey's Steve Augeri.
Tony Haselden was also inducted into The
Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame on May 16, 2010.
Leon Medica was also inducted into The
Louisiana Songwriter's Association Hall of Fame on May
16, 2010.
Always with an eye on the future, LeRoux
continues performing in 2011, and has begun a new
recording project – tentatively titled Full Circle or Lightning In This Bottle – with
Jimmy Hall (Wet Willie);
Bobby Kimball
(Toto); Sonny Landreth, Slide Guitar Master;
Steve Cropper
(Blues Brothers, Booker T. & the MG's)
and Tab Benoit,
legendary blues
singer and guitar player.
Their 1978 Capitol press release
read: "LeRoux takes its name from the Cajun French term for
the thick and hearty gravy base that's used to make a gumbo."
Louisiana's LeRoux (the first album) was a musical gumbo
that blended various instruments and arrangements for some spicy,
mouth-watering pop-rock. Using blues, R&B, funk, jazz, rock,
and Cajun as their base, their Southern anthem "New Orleans
Ladies," voted Song of the Century by Gambit Magazine, simmered
with the laid-back feel of the "Big Easy," evoking images of
Bourbon Street and the bayou. That song, together with their
smash hit "Nobody Said It Was Easy," brings LeRoux daily airplay
from Washington, DC to Baton Rouge, and they remain cult heroes
to this day.
The act began to gel in 1975 in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as The Jeff Pollard Band. They
came into their own in 1977, touring the United States and Africa
with Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown through an arrangement
with the US State Department. The group's big break came when
Leon Medica, the band's producer and one of its founders,
presented a demo tape to Paul Tannen at Screen Gems-EMI
while doing a session in Nashville and making trips to Colorado
to contribute bass parts to a Dirt Band album at William
McEuen's Aspen Recording Society Studios.
McEuen, Tannen, and Attorney
John Frankenheimer helped Medica secure a recording contract
for the band with Capitol Records. Renamed "Louisiana's LeRoux,"
they recorded two albums, both produced by Medica, of Louisiana-flavored
pop-rock (their eponymous debut and Keep The Fire Burning),
and a third, Up, which saw them shift styles to accommodate
Jai Winding's more mainstream production.
In 1981, LeRoux moved to the RCA
label, which decided to break the band as a singles act. They
succeeded with the Top 20 hit "Nobody Said It Was Easy" and
received heavy MTV airplay with the Top 5 AOR hit "Addicted,"
both featured on their Medica-produced fourth album, Last
Safe Place.
Soon afterward, however, lead singer
Jeff Pollard left the group to start a Christian ministry,
and was replaced by Dennis "Fergie" Frederiksen. When
percussionist Bobby Campo also exited, Berkley School
of Music Graduate Jim Odom came aboard for the group's
fifth album, So Fired Up, which included their chart
single and MTV hit, "Carrie's Gone" (written about Carol Burnett's
daughter, who was dating Fergie at the time).
LeRoux toured for eight years, headlining
and supporting numerous groups including ZZ Top, Kansas,
The Doobie Brothers, Bob Seger, Journey,
The Dirt Band, John Prime, and Muddy Waters.
LeRoux's many television appearances included Don Kirshner's
Rock Concert, Solid Gold, Midnight Special, MTV, and their own
Public Broadcasting live video, Rocking the Nottaway,
filmed in 1997.
In 1983, Randy Knaps replaced
Fergie, and Medica, along with members of Kansas, The Doobie
Brothers, Pablo Cruise, Steven Stills, Santana,
and Cheap Trick, performed for the USO on four overseas
tours. Haselden and Knaps also accompanied them on the Around
The World tour.
Bassist, producer, and songwriter
Leon Medica recently co-produced Anders Osborn and
Wayne Toups, and produced Brian McComas for Disney's
Nashville-based label. He has recorded with many acts and for
numerous soundtracks, and he produced Tom Johnston of
The Doobie Brothers on one of the biggest-selling soundtracks
of all time, Dirty Dancing.
Tony Haselden, guitarist
and vocalist who wrote some of LeRoux's all-time favorites,
relocated to Nashville, Tennessee several years ago and is one
of the top songwriters/producers in Country music. Tony wrote
many #1 Country hits, including "That's My Story" by Colin
Ray, "It Ain't Nothin'" by Keith Whitley, and "You
Know Me Better Than That" by George Strait; and he also
produced The Kinleys and The Wilkinsons.
In 1996, the band's Bayoudegradable:
The Best of Louisiana's LeRoux CD Release Party at the House
of Blues in New Orleans created a renewed demand for the band
to perform live. After the success of the disc, Medica, Haselden,
Odom, Roddy, Peters, and Knaps—along with new members Nelson
Blanchard and Mark Duthu—began to perform selected
live dates, reviving some funky musical spirits from the bayou.
Today LeRoux continues to perform
and share the stage with some of the biggest names in Classic
Rock, playing primarily in the southeastern states where LeRoux
continues to have a strong fan base spanning two generations.
Some of the festivals where LeRoux has recently performed are
the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Worldwide
NYE 2005 telecast from the New Orleans French Quarter,
Birmingham's City Stages, Mobile Bayfest, Shreveport's
Red River Revel and Mud Bug Madness, Natchitoches
Jazz and R&B Festival, and Lafayette's Mardi Gras & the
Cajun Heartland at Cajun Field. Other festivals include
the International Rice Festival, Contraband Days,
Cotton Festival, Strawberry Festival, the Shrimp
& Petroleum Festival, and most major festivals throughout
the southeast.
