Louie Fontaine and Lord Bishop Rocks
Imagine if O.B. karaoke host Jose Sinatra was from Denmark and fronted a Nordic version of Tom Petty’s Heartbeakers and that’s pretty much Louie Fontaine and the Starlight Searchers. Danish-born and now a son of New Orleans, Fontaine has the chops of a true blues and folk traditionalist with the stage flair of Bruce Springsteen, thanks to growing up on a steady diet of American music television to complement his collection of rare ’50s and ’60s blues, country, and rockabilly singles. He’s maintained a solo career even while hitching his wagon for several years to Louisiana R&B legend Rockie Charles, aka the President of Soul, with whom he toured as well as played on and produced Charles’s final two albums before he died in 2010. Charles wrote one of the tracks on Fontaine’s new album, The Sun Ain’t Black, a mostly serious take on Americana blues rock, with a touch of his trademark cabaret roadshow exaggerations that cheekily transform chords into riffs and choruses into anthems. The bill includes Lord Bishop Rocks.