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performance was put together for a tour stop on Ned Sublette and Ariana Hall's NOLA Reconnect, a
virtual visit to Louisiana with attendees from all over America and Europe. Featuring a deep sonic
collaboration with the tiny island’s frog and insect population, the set captures a more intimate

and acoustic performance than the higher-decibel, psychedelic shows the Melody Makers are
known for.

Their joint repertoire of Cajun and Haitian, Créole and Kréyol songs -- both original and
traditional -- coalesced in 2016 when Leyla joined String Noise for a special set at Louis's
residency at The Stone in NYC in 2016 (released in 2020 on Nouveau Electric as Le String Noise
under the L.E.S. Douze collection). Leyla first joined Michot's Melody Makers at New Orleans’s

Music Box Village for a socially distanced show in November of 2020, and the outfit continued
working together on outdoor shows at the Broadside Theater throughout the months of canceled
touring.

Louis Michot and Leyla McCalla have been collaborating since 2015. Both are lifelong students of
their respective linguistic and musical heritages from Louisiana and Haiti, respectively. They
appeared together on the title track of the 2017 Grammy-winning album Kalenda by Louis’s band

Lost Bayou Ramblers, and Louis guested on Leyla’s 2018 release, The Capitalist Blues.

Michot's Melody Makers’ first show was at the Pine Box Rock Shop in Brooklyn in 2015, and began
as an opportunity for Louis Michot to perform live with ad hoc line-ups; the first show featured
LCD Soundsystem’s Korey Richey on bass, Jason Robira on drums, and Jonny Campos on guitar. For
a while, the group’s line-up remained fluid and many charter members passed through its ranks
including Josh Leblanc of Givers, Bad Chad of Imagine I Am, and Roy Durand of Underhill Family

Orchestra. Finally the rotating cast of characters coalesced into a dedicated line-up featuring Mark
Bingham on guitar, Bryan Webre on bass, Kirkland Middleton on drums and Louis Michot on fiddle
and lead vocals; the latter three are also members of Grammy-winning Cajun progressives, Lost
Bayou Ramblers.

Michot’s Melody Makers won the Best Cajun Band honours in 2018 and again in 2019 at Gambit
Weekly’s Big Easy Awards. Their debut release on Sinking City Records, Blood Moon, provided the

first glimpse of how this electric string band could push the boundaries of Cajun traditional music.
It was followed by Cosmic Cajuns from Saturn, and now Tiny Island pushes those boundaries even
further.