Ring in the new year with some of our favorite live music from 2007. We’ll have a set from New Orleans’ trumpet player Kermit Ruffins, joined by an all-star Crescent City band featuring vocalist Thais Clark. Lafayette, Louisiana’s Pine Leaf Boys bring rock and roll energy to their own version of traditional Cajun music. Step into a holiday soiree of reels, jigs and waltzes by French fiddlers in Westbrook, Maine. And pull up a seat for a club set from singer and banjo player Don Vappie and the Creole Jazz Serenaders. It’s a festive set of live music that will keep you swinging well into 2008.

Come meet us at the club as we jump into two distinct American musics: go-go and zydeco. From the Nation’s Capital, we’ll visit with the “Godfather of Go-Go,” funk and jazz guitarist Chuck Brown who’ll explain the finer points of jamming and showing the audience some love. Then, we’re back in Louisiana getting down to the Creole sounds of zydeco with the Creole cowboy Jeffrey Broussard, whose fiddle and accordion playing brings the music back its source. The son of the late accordion legend Delton Broussard, Jeffery knows the deep roots of d’vrais zarico (real zydeco), but also the appeal of tradition in a modern sound.