Wayne Toups

Wayne Toups was born 30 years ago in Lafayette, La., "the Capital of Cajun Country." As a full-blooded Cajun growing up in the small neighboring town of Crowley, he was surrounded virtually from birth by the region's distinctive accordion-dominated music.

In this Wayne's World, there's no heavy-metal dudes, no Led Zeppelin, no Queen, but about as much understandable English. This is the world of Wayne Toups and Zydecajun, who will have the local yokels grooving twice in front of the Miller Stage on Sunday night at the Ventura County Fair in Seaside Park. This sweaty guy in a tank top is worth missing reruns of "60 Minutes" and "Married With Children." Don't worry about taking notes because Toups usually sings in French.

Brit­ish roots mu­sic band Mum­ford & Sons took the top hon­or for its album "Ba­bel" at the 55th Grammy Awards ce­re­mony Sunday. The night mostly dis­trib­uted hon­ors broadly to an ar­ray of young­er gen­er­a­tion acts in­clud­ing New York in­die trio Fun., Aus­trali­an elec­tron­ic pop artist Gotye, rap­per-R&B sing­er Frank Ocean and Ak­ron, Ohio, rock group the Black Keys. See the complete list of 2013 Grammy winners and nominees below. #story-body-text h2 { font-weight: bold !

In this Wayne's World there's only one rule: Ya gotta dance. Well maybe people like Archie Bunker (a man chiefly noted for saying things such as "I hate fun. I'm a maniac.") won't dance. But others will. Wayne's World is all sweaty and populated with energetic people without socks. Wayne Toups & Zydecajun provide the rockin' soundtrack. As the name indicates, Toups' music is Cajun zydeco all the way from Louisiana.

In this Wayne's World there's only one rule: Ya gotta dance. Well maybe people like Archie Bunker (a man chiefly noted for saying things such as "I hate fun. I'm a maniac.") won't dance. But others will. Wayne's World is all sweaty and populated with energetic people without socks. Wayne Toups & Zydecajun provide the rockin' soundtrack. As the name indicates, Toups' music is Cajun zydeco all the way from Louisiana.

In this Wayne's World, there's no heavy-metal dudes, no Led Zeppelin, no Queen, but about as much understandable English. This is the world of Wayne Toups and Zydecajun, who will have the local yokels grooving twice in front of the Miller Stage on Sunday night at the Ventura County Fair in Seaside Park. This sweaty guy in a tank top is worth missing reruns of "60 Minutes" and "Married With Children." Don't worry about taking notes because Toups usually sings in French.

Tickets are on sale today for Def Leppard and Tripping Daisy at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Aug. 28. . . . Berlin, with singer Terri Nunn, plays July 19 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. . . . The Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana has added the Junior Wells Big Band (June 26) and Wayne Toups & Zydecajun (July 3).

In addition to the first Southern California performance by veteran Creole fiddler Canray Fontenot, the fifth annual Cajun & Zydeco Festival this weekend will feature contemporary Cajun group Michael Doucet & Beausoleil, zydeco's C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band, Cajun-rocker Wayne Toups & ZydeCajun and others. Promoter Franklin Zawacki said that accordionist Toups, who closes the daylong music, dance and food festival at 6 p.m.

While devouring a slice of strawberry pizza or maybe a juicy strawberry kabob, music fans of all genres--from rock, Latin jazz, country, blues and reggae--can enjoy a weekend of live entertainment at this weekend's Strawberry Festival in Oxnard. Following is a schedule of the event's musical acts, which will be performed on two stages: STRAWBERRY STAGE: Saturday 10 to 11 a.m.--Convertibles (50s-style rock) 1 to 4 p.m.--James Harman Band (blues) 4 to 6:30 p.m.

Wayne Toups was born 30 years ago in Lafayette, La., "the Capital of Cajun Country." As a full-blooded Cajun growing up in the small neighboring town of Crowley, he was surrounded virtually from birth by the region's distinctive accordion-dominated music.

Hard to believe that part of what we now think of as raw American country-roots music might have filtered down to us from France and Canada. But as the ample use of English subtitles make clear in "I Went to the Dance," an often-fascinating documentary on Louisiana's Cajun and zydeco music playing today through Thursday at the Nuart, the French-speaking are indeed responsible for one of our most raucous and not-so-indigenous strains of music.

On the cover of her signature album, "Tapestry," Carole King appeared as a serene Madonna for the soft-rock early '70s, dressed in denim and wool and surrounded by her knitting and her tabby cat. On stage Wednesday night at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, there were moments when a miniskirted, black-booted King resembled a Madonna of a different sort--or, to pick someone closer to her own age, perhaps a high-stepping Tina Turner.