Marcella and Her Lovers

If modern Memphis music is any one thing — and it isn’t, but play along — it’s not a sound. It’s not blues or soul or garage rock or rap. But it might be a perspective on the past.

Austin and Nashville (even in its classier “Americana” form) imply a sound. New Orleans’ more cross-cultural gumbo has a specific flavor. Memphis implies an attitude. True to its musical crossroads/melting-pot heritage, the city continues to both lure and develop musicians who are grounded in tradition but who interlace various roots strands in ornery or idiosyncratic ways. Resistance to commonality is itself a common denominator.

One of the latest and most interesting embodiments of this civic spirit is an accordion-playing 23-year-old Louisianan of Creole ancestry and zydeco upbringing who loves singing Brian Eno and Outkast songs. Meet Marcella Simien, though chances are you already have.

Simien, who graduated from Memphis College of Art in May, has become a familiar figure on the local music scene, typically playing multiple times a week at various venues in various forms. She can regularly be found at the piano at Mollie Fontaine Lounge or with her three-or-four-piece backing band, Marcella & Her Lovers, at Bar DKDC. Last week, she played a Memphis Music Showcase concert Thursday at Lafayette’s Music Room as part of the Indie Memphis Film Festival, then played DKDC on Friday night and the 2014 finale of the Memphis Rock-n-Romp on Saturday afternoon.

That kind of performance schedule is not unusual.

“For me, it was just getting heard and wanting to make this my primary source of income,” Simien says. “It’s becoming my profession, and for me to do that here, I have to play often. I have to find the regular gigs and stay in people’s faces.”

But after more than a year of steady local gigging, Simien is now embarking on the next step.

“I’ve been here five years, but I wasn’t able to focus on music. But now that I’ve had a year out of school, we were able to get (together) something concrete.”

That’s The Bronze Age, a debut EP recorded with noted producer Scott Bomar at his South Main-based Electraphonic Recording studio, which Simien will make available starting with a Friday record-release show at DKDC.



After that, “the goal is to travel and tour and do this on a larger scale as much as possible, regionally and nationally,” Simien says. “We’re getting a tour together for the spring.”

It’s a familiar story, but one Simien is pursuing with more grounding than most. She’s the only child of noted zydeco musician Terrance Simien (Marcella sang on her dad’s Grammy-winning 2013 album Dockside Sessions). With her mother, Cynthia, as her dad’s booking agent and business manager, Simien grew up watching her parents navigate the music business.

This afforded some interesting experiences: Marcella played piano with Fats Domino before grade school, discovered her father drinking and singing in the kitchen with Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo as an adolescent and had dinner with Bob Dylan as a young teen.

But because her father was a success but not quite a star and her parents typically worked the business independently, it provided a realistic model for what a music career might mean.

“My dad’s been playing zydeco music the past 30 years. He was pretty much at the beginning of his career when I was born,” Simien says. “So I got to see him grow as an artist and got to experience (a life in music) through him. My mom’s been helping a lot with our booking. She’s been a wealth of knowledge, and we’re so lucky to have them to help us and guide us through this thing.”

“On the one hand, we all dream of playing huge gigs and going on national television,” says Rory Mills Sullivan, Marcella’s drummer, partner and co-writer, who’d previously played with local indie bands such as Augustine and El Dorado & the Ruckus. “But being around Terrance and Cynthia, you realize there’s also the part where you get up at 5 in the morning and go to the local news station and hang out and play in towns you’ve never heard of before and you can make a living that’s not cleaning floors or waiting tables. You’re doing music, but in a such a way that maybe you don’t dream of as a kid.”

Simien’s musical upbringing is also part of what brought her to Memphis. While Memphis College of Art gave her the best scholarship offer of the schools where she applied, she was also already familiar with the city.

“My mom and I used to make trips here a lot. She was on the Recording Academy board, and she would take me with her. I would miss school and see the city. It was great.”

“She associated Memphis with skipping school,” Sullivan says, laughing.

It was on those trips, as a kid, that Simien first made connections with the Memphis music scene, including Bomar, whom she remembers as the cool guy on the Grammy board. And it was in Memphis, later, that Simien began to find her way musically.



As a teen in Lafayette, she played around some with musicians who would coalesce into the successful indie band Givers, but she never got into the local zydeco/Cajun scene.

“I wasn’t ready for the accordion then. I didn’t start playing (it) until I got here,” Simien says. “Dad gave me one and taught me two songs at my first place on Tucker. When I was homesick, it was my connection.”

Simien’s first local performances featured just her and the accordion, doing unexpected covers (blues/jazz great Nina Simone, punk band the Buzzcocks) between rock bands at MCA-oriented house parties.

From there, she began making bedroom recordings under the moniker Fille Catatonique, collaborated with rapper Cities Aviv on his debut album, Digital Lows, spent a spell in the oddball alt-folk ensemble The Warble and began assembling her own bands, culminating late last year with the current incarnation of Marcella & Her Lovers: Sullivan on drums, Dirk Kitterlin on bass, Dave Cousar on guitar and, most recently, Art Edmaiston on sax.

The Bronze Age is a five-song EP featuring four originals and one cover, the 1961 regional Louisiana soul gem “My Heart’s on Fire,” from a group called Little Bob & the Lollipops.

But Simien’s increasingly confident live show, up to this point, has relied mostly on covers, where she’s an unusually unpredictable and compelling interpreter whose faves range from soul (Otis Redding’s “These Arms of Mine”) to reggae (Toots & the Maytals’ “Pressure Drop”) to punk (the Clash’s “Guns of Brixton”) to art rock (Eno’s “Baby’s on Fire”) to not-quite-hip-hop (Outkast’s sung “Pink and Blue,” which she transforms).

“My dad did that a lot. He would take cover songs and make them his own,” Simien says. “There’s so much great material already out there, and as an artist you can relate. I’ll hear a Nina Simone or Etta James song and think, I could have (bleeping) wrote this, I feel so close to it. When you develop that relationship with a song, it allows you to take it somewhere else.”

Asked to name her favorite albums, whether she performs music from them or not, she rattles off titles like Simone’s Nina Sings the Blues, Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, the Clash’s Sandinista! and Al Green’s I’m Still in Love With You.

Happily, that voracious good taste hasn’t been an obstacle to audience-building, as Simien has proved adaptable to so many different settings and sharing bills with so many different kinds of bands.

“The great thing about being in a band like Marcella’s is that people want to hear it,” says Sullivan. “The phone will ring and people will ask you to come out and play on a Wednesday night. Memphis has really been interested in hearing her.”

Simien is not the first transplant to find her voice here, or to see her individuality embraced by a community. But those developments have made the Louisiana kid a Memphian now, even post-graduation.

“I feel really, really lucky, because it’s such a hard business and such a hard profession to succeed in,” says Simien. “That’s why I’m sticking around, because people have really welcomed me. I feel like I have a place here.”

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Marcella & Her Lovers

The Bronze Age album release party
10:30 p.m. Friday. $5
Bar DKDC, 964 S. Cooper - The Commercial Appeal

Memphis Flyer
Record Review
November 13, 2014

Marcella & Her Lovers
The Bronze Age
Swamp Soul Music

There is perhaps no current Memphis musician with more buzz surrounding him or her than Marcella René Simien. The past couple of years have seen Simien evolve from a largely unknown Louisiana transplant/art student playing house shows to a very much in-demand solo act and bandleader about town. Last week, Simien and her band, dubbed Marcella & Her Lovers, unveiled a long-awaited debut EP titled The Bronze Age. And to my ears, anyway, it absolutely delivers. Expertly recorded by local producer/engineer/musician Scott Bomar at his Electraphonic studio, the EP shows Simien and her band — which features Simien's drummer/writing partner Rory Mills Sullivan, guitarist Dave Cousar, bassist Dirk Kitterlin, keyboardist Jonathan Schallert, and the horn section of Victor Sawyer and Randy Ballard — indulging a myriad of influences, including Memphis soul and R&B, zydeco, post-punk, and pop, to great effect. What's more, Simien herself is a tremendous singer and an engaging performer, which clearly comes across on the recording. Honestly, there really are no duds here, but two stand-out tracks would be the up-tempo groover "Branch Strewn Sky" and the spacey march "We Rewind." — J.D. Reager - The Memphis Flyer

How does the daughter of zydeco guru Terrance Simien make her own mark on the world? There’s nothing wrong with going to art college in Memphis after growing up in Lafayette, Louisiana, and jumping into the thick musical vibration of Bluff City. Marcella Simien heard it all as a youngster, no doubt, and once she double-downed with the Memphis sound, she found a totally striking new attack on Southern soul.

Even better, she found a handful of players in Memphis that knew exactly the sonics to put with her style. It makes for one of the best new soul records of recent years, and even if the release is only a five-song EP, there is such an overwhelming surge of emotional realness it doesn’t matter. Then, just to show they know their way around history, Marcella & Her Lovers zero in on Billy Bland’s classic “My Heart’s on Fire.” The heavens are smiling on them all. - Bill Bentley

Lists: Pfffff. Throwing shade at lists: Equal amounts pffff. In the age of YouTube and Spotify, you don't need to know what anyone else thinks. Everyone online is saying the same thing anyway. Check the Flyer music listings and look the stuff up like a grown-up. But this is Memphis. There's a lot to be excited about.

As for live music, Big Ass Truck's reunion was the highlight of the year. Just kidding; we stunk. The best live band in town is Marcella & Her Lovers. It takes courage to sing like Marcella René Simien. The emotional flood gates open up with every note. Her rhythm section can split hairs and topple buildings with equal panache. And guitarist Dave Cousar is sublime. His atmospheric, harmonic style lends an otherworldliness to her earthy vocal. This is one magically idiosyncratic band. -Joe Boone, Music Editor - Memphis Flyer

When Marcella René Simien first moved to Memphis to go to Memphis College of Art (MCA) and join the local music scene, she had a bit of a leg-up on her contemporaries making noise in basements at house parties. Trained on piano, mandolin, guitar, and drums and well-schooled by her Grammy Award-winning father, Terrance Simien, Marcella quickly left the house-show scene and began playing at clubs like Bar DKDC, the Beauty Shop, and the Mollie Fontaine Lounge. Since then, it's almost impossible to have a week go by without Marcella Simien appearing somewhere in town. She's at the Hi-Tone on Monday. We sat down with Marcella to find out more about what drives this immensely talented Louisiana native, how she's made music her career, and what it was like to sing a song on a Grammy-winning album.

Flyer: You've been around music your whole life, and other members of your family have had success in the music industry. When did you decide to start playing music?

Marcella René Simien: I started playing music when I was really young. My dad has had a pretty successful music career for the past 30 years. He's traveled the world playing music ever since I was young. My mom was his manager and his booking agent, so we were pretty much all in it together. I started playing piano when I was 7, then moved on to guitar and mandolin, and then I started playing drums when I was 15.

Were you able to travel with your dad while he was on the road performing?

Not as much of the international traveling that I would have liked to do. My parents thought about home-schooling at me at one point, but my mom and I decided to stay at home base, which was Louisiana at the time.

When did you move to Memphis?

In August of 2009, I received a good scholarship to Memphis College of Art and just kind of fell into the music scene that was happening.

Can you give me a rundown of some of the groups you were playing with when you first moved here?

The first performance was just me and an accordion, in March of 2010, and we would do parties at MCA houses. We also played DIY spaces like the Dairy. I teamed up with [local rapper Cities Aviv] Gavin and sang two songs on his first release, Digital Lows. After that, I played a lot with Tout Le Mon, which was more of a loose cover band that played places like the P&H. Since then, it's just been me solo playing the piano at Mollie Fontaine or with my band Marcella and Her Lovers.

At what point did playing locally become the way you make a living? How hard was that to achieve?

It's rough, because it was only until last year that I felt comfortable asking what I felt was fair for a performance. And some places turned me down. I had to negotiate a little bit. But I learned a lot from my parents when it comes to dealing with people in the music industry. There's a lot that goes into performing, but thankfully there are venues here that understand all that and they want to pay their entertainment well. In a city that has so much talent and so many great bands, sometimes people don't want to pay for it. It's been a slow, progressive thing for me, but I'm almost able to make a living doing this and waiting tables on the side.

Karen Carrier [owner of the Beauty Shop, Bar DKDC, and Mollie Fontaine]has played a huge part in my success locally. She makes it possible for me to play weekly shows and sincerely supports what I do. I love her like family. Making a living in music is the ultimate goal for me, and Karen is an artist so she understands that and encourages me in every way.

How many times a week do you normally perform?

About three times a week on average. Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's four.

As a singer-songwriter, how do you balance the number of covers you do as opposed to original songs?

Right now, my set is almost all covers, and that's not something I like to admit, because I have so many originals I'd love to work into the set. Doing covers hasn't been a terrible thing, because it allows me to make the songs my own. I like being able to do my own arrangements of some of my favorites. We cover Otis Redding, Outkast, the Animals, Dr. John, Etta James, Lil Bob and the Lollipops, and it's one of the most flattering, and comical, things to have an audience member come up after a gig and ask if I wrote one of the covers we did that night. It's really just cool that any audience member is into what we do. If I can reach one or two people out of an audience and know that they had a good time and got to escape their daily life for an hour at our show, then that's enough for me.

Your father won a Grammy last year for an album that you appear on. Can you tell me more about that?

Well, to clarify, I was on one song on my dad's latest album, Dockside Sessions, and it won a Grammy for Best Regional Roots Record. The producer, George Receli, had a song that he wrote for his granddaughter. He wanted it translated into French, and he was going to have my dad sing it. In the middle of recording it, my dad was just not in the mood to go through all the translating, so he had my grandfather translate it into Creole French. I sang the melody of how it should go to George, and he decided I should sing it. So I just have one track on the album, and I got credit as a composer and as the singer on the song.

What else do you have planned for the rest of the year?

We're going into the studio soon to record with Scott Bomar at Electrophonic, and we are going to be cutting a single there. I'd really like to get out of town now that I'm done with college. Up until then, I was trying to balance school and start my career, but now that I'm finished with school I'd like to do some regional tours and take my music out of town. - The Memphis Flyer-Chris Shaw

"Simien is in the core of Memphis tradition...combining different roots influences in idiosyncratic and unexpected ways...[She is] one of the most interesting artists to emerge on the Memphis scene in years.” -Chris Herrington, GoMemphis, The Memphis Commercial Appeal - GoMemphis Commercial Appeal-Chris Herrington

"Marcella's one-woman performances are mesmerising – she writhes, shimmies and stomps her way through traditional Creole songs, her own songs and slowed-down, tarted-up covers of rock'n'roll songs (if you ever get the chance to hear her play "The Way I Walk" by the Cramps, you'll know what I mean)."

There are few people in Memphis as mesmerizing as Marcella Simien. She sort of reminds me of a Creole snake charmer, only with an accordion instead of a flute. She's playing DKDC on June 8 with her band, the Lovers. The venue is tiny, so if you're planning to go, get there a little early. - Holly Whitfield

People who do more important things than write about music often say that Memphis needs to recruit and retain smart, creative young people. Memphis’ music scene has managed to do just that without the help of think tanks, consultants, or newfangly urban gurus. Memphis, through its musical past and present, is a magnet for tourism and for creative, independent musicians who appreciate the atmosphere of gritty creativity that characterizes this place. Here are two among many young folks working as musicians and electing to stay in Memphis.


Marcella Rene Simien is a native of Lafayette, Louisiana. Her mother introduced her to Memphis when she was growing up in Lafayette and New Orleans. Her father, Terrence Simien, is a Grammy-winning zydeco musician. Marcella moved to Memphis to attend Memphis College of Art, from which she graduated in May. She plans to stay in Memphis.

“Louisiana tends to be a world in itself,” Simien says. “I like to think of it as a separate country from America. The Francophone culture is the greatest contrast to Memphis. The great thing about both places is that there is a bunch of cross-cultural stuff going on. They’re both melting pots for creativity. There’s something about each city’s birth. It was meant for people to come to these places and build communities. It’s difficult to describe, but it’s incredible that over the years … we’ve been able to maintain these artistic communities. Unlike other cities in the South, Memphis and New Orleans feel more colorful. There’s more racial diversity, food, music, all the different cultural aspects of people. There aren’t any other places like this in the country. New York has it, but it’s not the same. We’ve maintained this great Southern grit and soul. Truth. It feels raw and it feels real. It’s more authentic down here. I’m proud of it. I’m proud to be a part of it.” - Memphis Magazine

There's a special family reunion happening in Memphis this week. Multi-Grammy-winning Zydeco Experience performer Terrance Simien is bringing his accordion to Bar DKDC to sit in with his daughter and her band, Marcella and Her Lovers. It's not nearly as awkward as it sounds.

"He'll just be playing with us, and we'll do a few more songs than usual," Marcella says, tamping down any notion that her dad might be appearing with his full Zydeco band. The younger Simien moved to Memphis and established herself as a gutsy and idiosyncratic solo performer before putting together the band Marcella and Her Lovers a year ago. A recently released EP, The Bronze Age, shows off the legacy performer's uncommonly expressive voice and songwriting, though the best cut is arguably a reworking of Little Bop & the Lollipops' 1961 single "My Heart's on Fire."

"I only got comfortable with my singing voice when I was 16 or 17, and that's when I started writing my own songs," Simien says, describing what it was like growing up in a musical family. "And friends would say I should be on The Voice or American Idol, and I'd think maybe I could, to see how far I could get. But that wasn't my plan. I didn't see my dad do it like that. I didn't see other musicians I admired doing it that way.

"I saw my parents [have a career in music], and it was more of a real thing than a dream," Simien says. "I mean, it was always a dream, but they made me realize, if you take these steps you can do it. You need to know what you deserve as an artist. You need to place value on your work and your artistry." - The Memphis Flyer

When Marcella Simien reminisces about growing up in Acadiana, it’s almost poetry — a sort of free verse, South Louisiana haiku. The daughter of Terrance Simien, she is firmly rooted in the area’s musical legacy. With a life-long leaning toward music, she could have easily fell right in line and — to borrow a cliché — tried to fill his enormous, Grammywinning shoes, which have travelled the world and have shared the stage with big ticket artists such as Paul Simon, Robert Palmer, Stevie Wonder, Los Lobos and the Dave Matthews Band. However, she’s got too much of her mom Cynthia, who is also Terrance’s manager/business partner, in her for that. After all, it was her mother who ventured South from Ohio and, in some ways, is an even bigger influence on her (and her dad). Not only did Marcella strike out to Nashville after graduating from Comeaux High School in 2006 — earning her degree at the Memphis College of Art in December of 2013 — she counts Nina Simone, Nico, A Tribe Called Quest, Chrissie Hynde, Peter Tosh, Brian Eno and Fela Kuti as key influences outside of her father and his extended musical family.

Her music, as a result, is an eclectic blend of genres and sounds devoid of restrictions that would have been placed on her had she stayed to become the next queen of zydeco. It is reflected on her EP, The Bronze Age, and further in her live shows, which she will bring to The Park at the Horse Farm on June 10, her first gig in Lafayette on her own and not as a guest of her father’s. (Instead, he will appear as a special guest to back her up.)

The Bronze Age is no argument for his crown. Instead it’s a celebration of who Marcella is. The closest she comes to the sounds of her home is a cover of Lil’ Bob & The Lollipop’s “My Heart’s on Fire,” which has a scaled-down Supremes sound, and “Ethel,” on which Terrance makes an appearance. Though Creole music is populated with tales of woe, “Ethel” is nowhere near a zydeco track as it features him playing the slowest accordion licks he’s likely ever squeezed while Marcella’s piano paints the background strokes as she sadly waxes poetic. In a near spoken-word style, she delivers poetry again with lines like “... those fangs turned to sugar cane at the mere mention of her name.”

The rest of the album is relatively free of South Louisiana. Other cuts display a soul meets reggae and post-punk vibe with an occasional indie rock feel (she was a fan of local indie rock before heading east). The album’s starter, “Put that Bronze,” establishes a low key reggae or even mellowed rocksteady feel. On “Branch Strewn Sky” it adds post-punk punch and irreverence as she barks at herself, “Don’t be stupid.” “We Rewind” incorporates her more modern indie rock influences coupled with a lounge quality.

Overall, it is a warm album that feels like hanging out on a weeknight — relaxed, subdued but still a good time. The pace works well with her voice — a multidimensional instrument that comes off as smoky, a touch sweet but not saccharinely pretty. Instead, Marcella’s voice is strong, yet conveys instant intimacy and possesses a much-older-thanher-age quality.

The IND: Growing up with a famous musicians as a father and a mother who was involved in the business end of things, was there ever any doubt you would be a musician?

Marcella Simien: Personally, ever since I was a young, I always knew I wanted to be on stage in some way. Watching dad, and being on stage in his or my mom’s arms — these are some of my earliest and dearest memories. But even coming up like I did, surrounded with music, it still took me a minute to find my place. I tried guitar, piano, mandolin, drums and never seemed to find one that I was passionate about. My parents saw me pick up instruments here and there, dabbling, not really taking music seriously. But they stuck with me as I found my way, always encouraging me, always pushing me.

When did you first realize you wanted to pursue music professionally?

I recognized this was something I was meant to do at a very early age. It just made sense, I felt it more than anything else. I was drawn to it. The dream became more and more real the more work I did and got in Memphis. But there was no “a-ha!” moment. It was more like a slow dawning, a gradual realization, like, “Oh … I can’t go into work that day because I have a gig that night.” I worked at other jobs until I found I didn’t have the time for them I once had.

Why did you move away for school?

Why not? I think on one level I was really interested by the idea of starting a new chapter of my life in a new place, far away from the opinions and preconceptions of my sweet Louisiana, free from pantry politics and gossip. I mean, for me there’s hardly ever a good reason to not try something new, especially if this “something new” was an invitation to study at a college deep in the pocket of funky, vibe-heavy Midtown Memphis, surrounded on all sides by Stax [Records] soul, barbecue shops, record stores and the best musicians anybody’s ever heard, ever. Wanna make a go of it? Why not? So that’s what I did. And soon thereafter two key things happened: I taught myself to play accordion, and I got ink of Louisiana on my wrist.

I missed my family so much that I was motivated to learn and to interact with the culture — the instruments and ideas, which makes Louisiana so special. But I was doing it, coming up artistically in this way, now surrounded by the history of Memphis, that tremendous blues culture, all front porch easy and open arms, that’s still such a huge part of everyday life in Memphis. So I found my identity artistically by building on the foundation of my Louisiana heritage, a rocking, searing house made of grinding Memphis soul. Would I have been as motivated to do this had I not left? Would I have even known where to start? Would I have ever found my voice or picked up an accordion? Hard to say, but I tend to doubt it.

The idea that leaving home means a betrayal of that home doesn’t work because a large part of why I left was/is that I wanted to share the culture, history and beauty of Louisiana’s heritage with as many people, and in as many places, as possible. Memphis, this music city, has allowed me the opportunity to survive and make a living out of my art.

Your dad has a pretty open approach to zydeco, playing with Paul Simon, incorporating outside flavors in his zydeco, etc. How did that influence your sound?

He taught me the value of having an open heart. There was never any condemnation of other art forms or artists. He approached it all as a student, knowing without ever saying it that it’s only after this, after learning this kind of humility and open heartedness, that one learns to open their ears, and to really listen to and learn from all the different artists and cultures out there.

So in that respect, he was a tremendous influence. Never, not once, did I wonder if it was “okay” to play Velvet Underground or Brian Eno songs on the accordion. I make what I make, sing what I sing, as honestly and with as much feeling as I can and let the rest work itself out.

You talk a lot about your dad (obviously) but I saw your influences include Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, which your mom once told me about her affinity for and how they are from towns near each other in Ohio. How much did your mom influence you musically?

As much music as my dad listened to, my mom’s taste influenced me even further — artists like Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, sure, but even further and unusual (bands) like Zap Mama, Sade, Talking Heads, Roxy Music — stuff that may not have always been on my dad’s radar. In that way, she influenced us both.

The EP is an eclectic mix of songs. What is the rest of your set like?

The rest of my set is pretty eclectic. The press in Memphis has been especially keen on this, the diversity of our sets. There’s something there for everyone, from the Baby Boomers all the way to the punks I met when I started doing house shows in 2010 in Memphis at punk shows; they’re the mainstays of the present day Goner Records roster, bands like NOTS, Ex- Cult and Manatees all made up my first Memphis audiences. Guitar Wolf even was at one of those shows of mine.

At that time, I used to cover Buzzcocks, Nina Simone, Odetta, all on my own, with only an accordion and my voice, draping the often angular and uncompromising sounds of those artists with the sounds of the Creole culture of where I come from.

Now that school is finished, your first release is wrapped, where to next?

Everywhere. Nuts and bolts wise, we’re in the process of putting together our first couple of tours. Creatively, we’re in the process of smashing all the ideas and tropes and artistic crutches we’ve come to rely a little too much upon, always trying new ideas, new sounds, never getting too comfy in/with any one style or one way of going about making things. Some artists use their recordings as the gold standard of what their material sounds, or should sound, like. But it’s the exact opposite for us. We’re always tinkering with the songs, always ending them differently, tweaking the beat here, pushing vocal there.


When Marcella Simien reminisces about growing up in Acadiana, it’s almost poetry — a sort of free verse, South Louisiana haiku. The daughter of Terrance Simien, she is firmly rooted in the area’s musical legacy. With a life-long leaning toward music, she could have easily fell right in line and — to borrow a cliché — tried to fill his enormous, Grammywinning shoes, which have travelled the world and have shared the stage with big ticket artists such as Paul Simon, Robert Palmer, Stevie Wonder, Los Lobos and the Dave Matthews Band. However, she’s got too much of her mom Cynthia, who is also Terrance’s manager/business partner, in her for that. After all, it was her mother who ventured South from Ohio and, in some ways, is an even bigger influence on her (and her dad). Not only did Marcella strike out to Nashville after graduating from Comeaux High School in 2006 — earning her degree at the Memphis College of Art in December of 2013 — she counts Nina Simone, Nico, A Tribe Called Quest, Chrissie Hynde, Peter Tosh, Brian Eno and Fela Kuti as key influences outside of her father and his extended musical family.

Her music, as a result, is an eclectic blend of genres and sounds devoid of restrictions that would have been placed on her had she stayed to become the next queen of zydeco. It is reflected on her EP, The Bronze Age, and further in her live shows, which she will bring to The Park at the Horse Farm on June 10, her first gig in Lafayette on her own and not as a guest of her father’s. (Instead, he will appear as a special guest to back her up.)

The Bronze Age is no argument for his crown. Instead it’s a celebration of who Marcella is. The closest she comes to the sounds of her home is a cover of Lil’ Bob & The Lollipop’s “My Heart’s on Fire,” which has a scaled-down Supremes sound, and “Ethel,” on which Terrance makes an appearance. Though Creole music is populated with tales of woe, “Ethel” is nowhere near a zydeco track as it features him playing the slowest accordion licks he’s likely ever squeezed while Marcella’s piano paints the background strokes as she sadly waxes poetic. In a near spoken-word style, she delivers poetry again with lines like “... those fangs turned to sugar cane at the mere mention of her name.”

The rest of the album is relatively free of South Louisiana. Other cuts display a soul meets reggae and post-punk vibe with an occasional indie rock feel (she was a fan of local indie rock before heading east). The album’s starter, “Put that Bronze,” establishes a low key reggae or even mellowed rocksteady feel. On “Branch Strewn Sky” it adds post-punk punch and irreverence as she barks at herself, “Don’t be stupid.” “We Rewind” incorporates her more modern indie rock influences coupled with a lounge quality.

Overall, it is a warm album that feels like hanging out on a weeknight — relaxed, subdued but still a good time. The pace works well with her voice — a multidimensional instrument that comes off as smoky, a touch sweet but not saccharinely pretty. Instead, Marcella’s voice is strong, yet conveys instant intimacy and possesses a much-older-thanher-age quality.

The IND: Growing up with a famous musicians as a father and a mother who was involved in the business end of things, was there ever any doubt you would be a musician?

Marcella Simien: Personally, ever since I was a young, I always knew I wanted to be on stage in some way. Watching dad, and being on stage in his or my mom’s arms — these are some of my earliest and dearest memories. But even coming up like I did, surrounded with music, it still took me a minute to find my place. I tried guitar, piano, mandolin, drums and never seemed to find one that I was passionate about. My parents saw me pick up instruments here and there, dabbling, not really taking music seriously. But they stuck with me as I found my way, always encouraging me, always pushing me.

When did you first realize you wanted to pursue music professionally?

I recognized this was something I was meant to do at a very early age. It just made sense, I felt it more than anything else. I was drawn to it. The dream became more and more real the more work I did and got in Memphis. But there was no “a-ha!” moment. It was more like a slow dawning, a gradual realization, like, “Oh … I can’t go into work that day because I have a gig that night.” I worked at other jobs until I found I didn’t have the time for them I once had.

Why did you move away for school?

Why not? I think on one level I was really interested by the idea of starting a new chapter of my life in a new place, far away from the opinions and preconceptions of my sweet Louisiana, free from pantry politics and gossip. I mean, for me there’s hardly ever a good reason to not try something new, especially if this “something new” was an invitation to study at a college deep in the pocket of funky, vibe-heavy Midtown Memphis, surrounded on all sides by Stax [Records] soul, barbecue shops, record stores and the best musicians anybody’s ever heard, ever. Wanna make a go of it? Why not? So that’s what I did. And soon thereafter two key things happened: I taught myself to play accordion, and I got ink of Louisiana on my wrist.

I missed my family so much that I was motivated to learn and to interact with the culture — the instruments and ideas, which makes Louisiana so special. But I was doing it, coming up artistically in this way, now surrounded by the history of Memphis, that tremendous blues culture, all front porch easy and open arms, that’s still such a huge part of everyday life in Memphis. So I found my identity artistically by building on the foundation of my Louisiana heritage, a rocking, searing house made of grinding Memphis soul. Would I have been as motivated to do this had I not left? Would I have even known where to start? Would I have ever found my voice or picked up an accordion? Hard to say, but I tend to doubt it.

The idea that leaving home means a betrayal of that home doesn’t work because a large part of why I left was/is that I wanted to share the culture, history and beauty of Louisiana’s heritage with as many people, and in as many places, as possible. Memphis, this music city, has allowed me the opportunity to survive and make a living out of my art.

Your dad has a pretty open approach to zydeco, playing with Paul Simon, incorporating outside flavors in his zydeco, etc. How did that influence your sound?

He taught me the value of having an open heart. There was never any condemnation of other art forms or artists. He approached it all as a student, knowing without ever saying it that it’s only after this, after learning this kind of humility and open heartedness, that one learns to open their ears, and to really listen to and learn from all the different artists and cultures out there.

So in that respect, he was a tremendous influence. Never, not once, did I wonder if it was “okay” to play Velvet Underground or Brian Eno songs on the accordion. I make what I make, sing what I sing, as honestly and with as much feeling as I can and let the rest work itself out.

You talk a lot about your dad (obviously) but I saw your influences include Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, which your mom once told me about her affinity for and how they are from towns near each other in Ohio. How much did your mom influence you musically?

As much music as my dad listened to, my mom’s taste influenced me even further — artists like Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, sure, but even further and unusual (bands) like Zap Mama, Sade, Talking Heads, Roxy Music — stuff that may not have always been on my dad’s radar. In that way, she influenced us both.

The EP is an eclectic mix of songs. What is the rest of your set like?

The rest of my set is pretty eclectic. The press in Memphis has been especially keen on this, the diversity of our sets. There’s something there for everyone, from the Baby Boomers all the way to the punks I met when I started doing house shows in 2010 in Memphis at punk shows; they’re the mainstays of the present day Goner Records roster, bands like NOTS, Ex- Cult and Manatees all made up my first Memphis audiences. Guitar Wolf even was at one of those shows of mine.

At that time, I used to cover Buzzcocks, Nina Simone, Odetta, all on my own, with only an accordion and my voice, draping the often angular and uncompromising sounds of those artists with the sounds of the Creole culture of where I come from.

Now that school is finished, your first release is wrapped, where to next?

Everywhere. Nuts and bolts wise, we’re in the process of putting together our first couple of tours. Creatively, we’re in the process of smashing all the ideas and tropes and artistic crutches we’ve come to rely a little too much upon, always trying new ideas, new sounds, never getting too comfy in/with any one style or one way of going about making things. Some artists use their recordings as the gold standard of what their material sounds, or should sound, like. But it’s the exact opposite for us. We’re always tinkering with the songs, always ending them differently, tweaking the beat here, pushing vocal there.

Having gone away and come back again, what do you look forward to when you come back to town?

I look forward to sharing all I’ve learned with everyone who’s watched me come up; I look forward to showing everybody what the present day music of Memphis sounds like. I look forward to showing that Memphis is not just a museum town bent on enshrining the music of its past, but instead that there is music being made there that’s every bit as essential as the stuff everybody everywhere around the world knows about. Love seeing my aunts, uncles and friends. And of course my papaw. I’d love it if he could come out and see us.

What are some of your fondest memories of music in Lafayette?

Music was an everyday thing in our household, whether it had to do with the creative or business side of things — it was and is our life. I liked best listening to music with my dad in the studio. That was our thing. I’d bring him new things I discovered, and he’d show me songs or artists I’d never heard of. I love spending time with my family. My dad had to be gone for work a lot of the time during my childhood, so any time we can catch up on that time means the world to me. - The Independent

Best newcomer ? Marcella Simien: The 22-year-old Simien has emerged over the past year as one of the most exciting talents in the city. The daughter of zydeco star Terrance Simien, the Lafayette, La., native began performing with her father when she was a child, and she has played regularly around here through her four years at Memphis College of Art. But with gigs this year at Mollie Fontaine Lounge and Cooper-Young's Bar DKDC, she has at last come into her own as an artist and performer. -Mark Jordan, GOMemphis - Commercial Appeal