A Silver Tray Q/A with Secret Cajun Band

Prepare yourself for the most-amusing interview to appear on this iteration of Silver Tray to date. It’s also, the humor aside, a fantastic deep dive into St. Louis’ ska and rock’n’roll scenes of the 1990s. That said, let’s let Matt Nichols and Miguel Figueras of Secret Cajun Band tell us their story, including their recent return to life.

I'm reading the stories behind the birth of Secret Cajun Band. Lots of names and references to “Cajun Fest.” But can you super-simplify things for this oldster and remind me: when was the first show? Who was in that version? And was there really only one attendee at the gig? Perseverance is underrated and coming back from a one-fan show is awesome!

Matt: I believe our first show was in June of 1989 headlining Cajun Fest, which was a party Swamp Daddy put on in his backyard. He cooked made-up Cajun food like Cajun Monkey (hamburgers) and Cajun Spider (hot dogs). Our lineup was meant to include myself, Miguel and Swamp Daddy, but when Swamp saw that only one person showed up (true story!), he backed out and refused to play. So the show consisted of me on keyboard, Miguel on guitar, and we took turns playing drums.

Miguel: We invited several friends and they all said they would come; but no one showed up. We saw a guy that Matt and I knew from our grade-school soccer team walking by so we invited him to come in. We probably held the event on a Tuesday afternoon at 2 pm. I’m sure that’s why no one came because who wouldn’t want to hear us play?

Is it possible to run down the different lineups and iterations....? Or were there too many twists and turns to make that make sense?

Matt: That is a tall task. I can only take it so far, up to the point that I took my hiatus from SCB.

It started with myself and Miguel in my basement. Then Swamp Daddy joined us in my basement. We then added Erik Rogers on lead vocals and sax and 2-Beer on drums and moved to Miguel’s basement. Then Josh agreed to join us on bass and we moved to Swamp Daddy’s basement. We had myself, Miguel, Swamp Daddy, Erik, 2-Beer and Josh for a good run, including the release of our album Big House (now available on vinyl from Ninguid Records!) and were able to mainly move out of people’s basements. Swamp Daddy then got tired of being famous and left, and Nick Baur came on board with his trumpet and saved the horn section. Erik got tired of riding around in a dirty van and sleeping on dirty floors and left soon after and we added John Grothe on sax. 2-Beer just got tired and left, as well, so we added Jim Orso on drums. We were myself, Miguel, Josh, Nick, John and Jim for the release of our most recent album, Rearranging the Liquid Monkey.

That’s when I blacked out, so Josh and Miguel will have to take it from there…..

MIGUEL: Around the summer of 1995, Nick left to play with MU-330. I think SCB just got too big for him and he couldn’t handle all the pressure. Flying back-and-forth to Europe every weekend, relentless hounding from the press, high pressure interviews in Spotlight Magazine, etc… it just took its toll. At that point it was just the five of us (Matt, Josh, Jim, John Grothe and myself). At the end of the summer of 1995, Matt moved to Colorado for graduate school, Josh moved to California & then I was left with the van. 

True story: this is before cell phones and email. I did all of our booking by phone.  Even with the best long distance plan, our phone bill from that summer tour was $600 and I had to sell the van to pay the phone bill. Luckily, Mr. Patterson didn’t care too much about how the van looked and paid the $600 and I paid Southwestern Bell. I’m not sure who came out ahead. Shortly thereafter, I moved out of St. Louis to Omaha and then Virginia Beach. From 1996-1999 the five of us got together sporadically to play a handful of shows, re-mix, re-master and release Rearranging the Liquid Monkey.  Nick joined us when he could. 

There was no real talk of playing any more shows. We aren’t really sure what happened with John Grothe, but Jim followed in 2-Beer’s footsteps and moved to New York to become a jazz drummer.  Josh had moved back to St. Louis in the late ‘90s and in 2000, I eventually moved back, as well. By this time Nick had left MU-330 and was playing with some local St. Louis bands. Josh and I reconnected with Nick but there were no plans to play again. 

Paul Stark of KDHX’s Ska’s the Limit got wind that Josh and I were back and invited SCB to come down to KDHX and play live on the air to help with their Fall 2001 Pledge Drive. Nick, Josh and I were all in but we told Paul that both our drummers were in New York and we needed someone to play drums. I guess KDHX was scraping the bottom of the barrel as Paul really wanted us to play. He said he knew a drummer that was a big fan of ours and would do it. So he introduced us to John Halloran. John told us as a kid he used to go see us play at Bastilles and he would love to play with us as he knew all our stuff and had all our albums. We were flattered yet at the same time we were very worried as we thought something must be wrong with him to make him spend time learning Cajun Band tunes for Ska’s The Limit (Saturday nights from 8-10 pm.) 

True story: the four of us agreed to get together to rehearse a few songs but the only night that would work ended up being September 11, 2001. This was the first time we met John and it was very surreal as we really didn’t feel like practicing. We maybe played one or two songs and then just sat around talking the rest of the time. Oh, we had moved to Nick’s basement now. We were able to piece together about four-five songs and it didn’t sound that bad.  Paul was excited to have us back and after we played on the air, he asked us to play at a bar where he was part-owner called Frederick’s. 

John let us know his brother, Charlie, was a trombone player and would be happy to play with us. This was the start of SCB 2000s. We would play shows mainly in St. Louis, as well as  a few regional gigs.  After a few years of playing with just the five of us. Mike Powers joined us on tenor sax as Charlie was preparing to head off to New Orleans after he graduated college. By this time, both Josh and I were married with kids and it was just too hard to keep playing. 

We eventually stopped in 2008 and figured that was it. Josh, Matt, Swamp Daddy, Nick, John Halloran and I reunited in the summer of 2011 after the unfortunate passing of Erik Rogers to play a benefit in his honor. Then, 11 years later, Tim Snow came calling. In terms of eras, this is how I refer to SCB: (there is some overlap with the dates, but more or less, this is who was playing with us)

1989-1991: 4 Track years (Matt, Swamp, Miguel)

1991-1995: Big House era (Matt, Swamp, Erik, 2-Beer, Josh, Miguel)

1995: Liquid Monkey (Matt, Josh, Nick Baur, John Grothe, Jim Orso, Miguel)

1996-2001: Not sure what we called this era of SCB…

2001-2008: SCB 2000 (Josh, Nick, John Halloran, Charlie Halloran, Mike Powers, Miguel)

2023: Ninguid Records (whomever can make the gig)

What were some high-water shows for the group? Any gigs stand out in the group's lore as Mt. Rushmore type shows, the absolute best of the best?

Matt: I would have to say that our most recent show at Blueberry Hill this past June has to top the list. It was an amazing reunion of so many band members and an incredible turn-out and vibe that night. Besides that, we had some great shows in Champaign-Urbana, and every gig we did at the Red Sea holds a special place in my heart.

Miguel: Blueberry Hill this summer was pretty amazing. I really thought we had played our last show in 2011. To get together the way we did, with so many family and friends there, our kids on stage with us, a packed house, all the different band members playing together and a vinyl record… it was quite an event. We actually played okay, too. The rehearsals and the hype leading up to the show were so much fun to be a part of. We put a lot of time and energy into pulling this off and it went very well. Going back in time, I would have to say shows we played at the Metro in Chicago were very memorable, as they always had large crowds and just fun energy from both the crowd and other bands we played with there.  

For folks who never experienced the very particular vibes of The Red Sea, can you talk about playing that room? What did it feel like on that stage, in that room, especially when you had a nice, packed house?

Matt: What is a ‘packed house’?  Please explain….  

Miguel: The Red Sea always supported us. The owner, Tesfaye, really liked us, or at least he told us he did. Only in U. City could an Ethiopian restaurant turn into a music venue at night. Shows usually started around 9 pm and so there was always some overlap between the dinner crowd and the music crowd. We are pretty old and never got to play downstairs, so we only played the stage upstairs in the bar area next to the dining room. This was in the early ‘90s and 30 people in the bar made it look packed.  A few times we had over 100 people in there. It was so hot and sweaty. I’m sure some fire codes were broken. We had a very weird crowd: usually we had some ska fans dressed up to skank, lots of frat guys and sorority gals (as we played the Wash U Greek parties a few times), Beatle Bob, and somehow we had a big following among the late 20s early 30s young professionals working corporate jobs. And then just our friends who were bored and would want to come hang out. We had such an eclectic crowd. But somehow we related to everyone and loved talking to all of them and just getting to know them.

What other St. Louis clubs of lore did y'all really appreciate playing? Did your fanbase like/love one room more than others?

Matt: What is a “fanbase?”  Please clarify….

Miguel: The main two areas played were the Loop and the Landing. In the Loop we played the  Red Sea, (Old) Cicero’s & Blueberry Hill the most. On the landing, we played Kennedy’s, Bernard’s Pub and Mississippi Nights. Certainly any time we had a chance to play Mississippi Nights, we jumped on it. We never headlined but opening for other bands was always cool as that was THE ROOM to play back then. I don’t think we fit the profile of the bands that often played Kennedy’s but Kevin Kennedy was always willing to book us for some reason. 

I think  Cicero’s stands out to me. Mainly, because they were probably the 1st club to start us with a guarantee and we always got a pizza. The crowds were usually lively and we got some great live recordings from there. Often people would just walk in off the street or be having dinner upstairs and just decide to come down to the show. 

One time we got called to play a last minute show there as they had a cancellation..   It was Monday or Tuesday night so it was pretty dead and there was no social media / email / websites, etc., back then so… no way to promote the show. We started playing there and three girls were hanging out at the bar. Midway through the set we busted out the garment bag and got all dressed up. (Probably) Erik and Matt were wearing  these huge Ernie & Bert (from Sesame Street) masks. I guess that was the cue for the girls to get up from the bar as the next thing you know they were just dancing and coming up on stage and taking off the masks and wearing them while dancing on stage. It turns out it was the band Babes in Toyland and they had a night off from touring and used to play Cicero’s when they were first starting out. After the show the singer kept  trying to buy the masks from us. That was very typical of something that might happen to us at that club.

I'm living in New Orleans these days and Charlie Halloran, at a gig, told me he was heading to STL the next day for an SCB show. Can you unwind the story of how that show came together? And how you were able to pull together rehearsals, etc.? This gig also featured a sort of a melded lineup of new/old players, yes?

Matt: Our show at BB Hill this past summer is Josh’s fault, so he’ll need to explain himself.

We did have a great line-up of older and newer players, a couple of whom I'd never met (Charlie and Mike Powers), which was really cool for me.  And even though he slept through half of our set, it was great having 2-Beer back on the skins with us.

Miguel: Josh had reconnected with Tim Snow of Ninguid Records. In the summer of 2022 Josh told Matt and I of Tim’s desire to release Big Hose on vinyl. We agreed and as the production of the album began, Tim was always extremely thorough in keeping us current on what was going on at that moment, updates to the timeline, etc. As the four of us continued to talk (text) Josh suggested playing a show to promote the album sales. This was February of 2023 and we all agreed and reached out to the other guys and they all were excited to be a part of it, as well. 

Matt, Josh and I came up with a list of about 30 songs we would play. The three of us then narrowed that list down to 24 songs and sent those out to everyone. I guess a new thing for bands now is to find rehearsal spaces outside of one’s basement. We booked some time at Utopia Studios. Those of us in St.  Louis were able to meet up a few times prior to everyone coming in town. The week everyone showed up we had four days of five-plus hours each day of rehearsals. We then put together the set list for the show. 

2-Beer and John Halloran both took turns playing drums and percussion.  Josh played bass and carried most of the vocals. Matt played trombone, keyboards and sang lead on a few songs. Nick played trumpet, Mike played tenor sax, Charlie played trombone, my son, Alex played lead guitar and I played rhythm guitar, as well. At one point during the set, we were also joined on stage by: Matt’s son’s Aidan on tenor sax and Jack on trumpet, Nick’s daughter. Clara on Clarinet, Mike’s son, Shane on baritone sax, Josh’s daughter, Molly on vocals and the late Erik Rogers’ daughter, Evie on tenor sax. Tim Snow got up and sang the fan favorite, “Buttsteak!”

And to the same end, how did Tim Snow of Ninguid get involved in SCB's recent burst of activity? What's his support been like?

Matt: Tim Snow of Ninguid Records is singularly responsible for SCB’s recent burst of activity. His interest, input, and support of SCB goes above and beyond what any sane person should reasonably expect, defies all logic, and I don't think can be explained by our current understanding of the known universe. Needless to say, we are having him thoroughly evaluated. 

Miguel: Josh and I met Tim when he was in law school. He told us he would like to  start a record label.  We were both very supportive and encouraged him to do so.  So fast forward 20 years after Tim was nominated to fill a Supreme Court vacancy but didn’t get a simple majority of votes from the Senate, he decided to leave law altogether and start a ska label. The first band he signed was Orangetree because Jason is Tim’s landscaper. As the story goes, Tim had a notebook with the names of all the bands he likes and wanted to sign. SCB was towards the back of the notebook but luckily for us, Tim’s daughter, Violet, was looking for paper to color on and just happened to rip out all the pages between us and Orangetree to use for coloring. So Tim thought we were next on the list.  

What's next for the band, if not jinxing anything? Shows, possible recording or re-releases, or just a thought that things could develop if they develop organically? What's your guess?

Matt: Jinx pickle. We are working on putting together a few more shows, so look out!  And I’m finishing up a song that I've been writing about Miguel in French, so that’s something.

Miguel: We are hopeful to have some new songs out in time to play the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. If Tim can’t get us on that show, perhaps something else then.

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