Blake (morning) and Kelli (afternoon) will teach style, technique and some classic Cajun tunes on the fiddle.
Instructor Bio
Grandson of well-known accordion builder Larry Miller, Blake Miller has been surrounded by Cajun music and culture his entire life. Hailing from the small town of Iota, Louisiana, Blake is a fluent French speaker and songwriter. He acquired a degree in Francophone studies from The University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He was a founding member of the popular young Cajun band, The Pine Leaf Boys, and became a member of the premiere Louisiana roots band The Red Stick Ramblers. He has also served stints in just about every other Cajun/Creole band of note including Balfa Toujours, Les Malfecteurs and Cedric Watson and Bijou Creole. He now plays accordion and fiddle with The Revelers who were nominated for a GRAMMY in 2016.
Kelli Jones moves so effortlessly between genres, traditions, and musical concepts that it’s clear she was born with an insatiable artistic curiosity. As a teenager, she emerged from a deeply musical Appalachian family to become an amazingly apt singer, guitarist, and dancer in old-time music. Moving to Southwest Louisiana, she quickly learned Cajun French and began writing preternaturally gifted original songs in dual languages with progressive Cajun bands like GRAMMY-nominated Feufollet, T’Monde, and as a duo with Joel Savoy. Both of these jumping off points, what she casually refers to as “obsessions,” have fueled the music on her debut solo record, Queen of the In Between, recently released on June 18, 2021, but she also seamlessly references so much more, everything from classic country to psychedelic rock to contemporary indie roots singer-songwriters. Jones is a fearless bandleader, weaving together an opus that sounds remarkably cohesive. She’s roaming the halls of 20th century Americana synthesizing a century’s worth of music with ease. It’s not simply a meld of seemingly disparate influences; every one of her projects dazzle in their ability to speak to the universality of human emotion.