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have a certain feel for this style of music and it tickles

me when I meet other Zydeco bands from around the
world, from California or from other places or countries
and I just laugh to myself because they’re imitating what
we’re feeling.

BiTS: I understand that. Does that frustrate you?

DD: It only frustrates me to the point because when
people think of Zydeco, if that’s their first experience, to
think that’s what Zydeco is. With the help now of the
internet, then yes, you can pull up what is Zydeco, and
you’ll see Clifton Chenier, you’ll see Rockin’ Dopsie.
You’ll see people like C.J. Chenier, Buckwheat Zydeco,
myself and other Zydeco musicians that have travelled

and really been out there. I definitely appreciate the appreciation of them wanting to play the
music, but you have to be a very established accordion player to really play Zydeco and a lot of
these bands around the world, they’re only imitating. It’s like if I see a cooking show on TV, I might
love what he’s doing or love what she’s doing, and I’m going to imitate it, but it’s not going to have
the same taste and feel because I don’t feel the ingredients that they feel they need to put there to

make it taste a certain way.

BiTS: Dwayne, I’m a great lover of your latest album, the one called “Set Me Free”, which I think is
absolutely terrific. I’ve played a few tracks on my radio
show. Tell me something about it. Was it hard to make?
Was it just go straight into the studio and do it, or what
happened?

DD: No, it was something I was thinking about for

quite a while and what the pandemic did is it gave me
time to get out there and do exactly what I had on my
mind because every song that I put on there was
something that I was thinking about from that song
‘Shake, Shake, Shake’. I envisioned a juke joint back in

the 50s and people dancing to the Zydeco and this place
would just be hopping on Friday and Saturday night.
Every song on there has a different piece of my brain
that I thought about, went over, and this is something
that is my best project. That, I definitely believe.

BiTS: A lot of the tunes that are on it - in fact, most of the tunes that are on it are very fast. Is that

a signature of the kind of music that you like to play? Fast music?

DD: That’s actually what Zydeco is. Zydeco was never meant to be a slowed-down type of music for
people to learn how to dance to and that’s what’s happened over the last almost 15, 18 years as a lot
of bands came about. When you listen to Clifton’s Zydeco two-step - it’s a two-step. It’s not the slow
bub bub bub bub. No, that’s not Zydeco because Zydeco, it has pep to it. Zydeco is shuffles, back
shuffles. A two-step is not just a one beat music.