Award-winning Louisiana filmmaker Pat Mire ("Dirty Rice," "Against the Tide") explores the history of the Cajun, Blues, Zydeco and Swamp Pop music of South Louisiana in a brand new documentary called Forever My Love: Music from the Bayou. This co-production with Louisiana Public Broadcasting will premiere on the six-station LPB network on Saturday, December 8 at 7PM and repeats Sunday, December 9 at 8:30PM. It will air on WLAE-TV32 in New Orleans.
One of the featured musicians is Gerry McGee, who has played with Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand and just finished a world tour with famed 60s instrumental group the Ventures ("Walk Don't Run," "Hawaii 5-O"). Gerry is the son of the late Dennis McGee, who has been called the father of contemporary Cajun music. In this hour documentary, Gerry and Pat roam the countryside in a 1976 Cadillac convertible, stopping along the way to play with many of Dennis' former students including Cajun legends Michael Doucet of Beausoleil, Zachary Richard, Steve Riley, famed slide guitarist Sonny Landreth, D.L. Menard, Al Berrard and too many others to name.
"We look at this film as sort of a Cajun Buena Vista Social Club," Mire said. "The thread that holds it all together is Dennis McGee."
It was also a labor of love for the musicians involved in the show because it allowed them to showcase the music they love.
"We don't do typical music," Doucet said. "We play music of who we are."

Gerry McGee
Gerry McGee was born in Eunice, Louisiana in 1937. His father, Dennis McGee, was a famous Cajun fiddler. His father, who inspired Gerry, lived to the ripe old age of 96 ... playing right up until he died. Gerry started his musical career at the age of 14. When Gerry was growing up in Louisiana, they all spoke Cajun French and anybody who was outside of Louisiana, Gerry said were Americans.
Gerry plays lead guitar, bass, accordion, banjo and harmonica, and does vocal work also. After playing with a number of successful regional bands, Gerry went to California at the urging of Shreveport native and future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer James Burton, who later enjoyed great fame playing with Elvis and Rick Nelson.
Gerry recorded with The Hollywood Argyles of the song "Alley Oop." In the 60's Gerry recorded and actually produced many records and albums together with famous recording artists, such as Jerry Lee Lewis. He is the guitarist for the theme, "Great Balls Of Fire." He has recorded with Sandy Nelson, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, John Mayall, The Monkees, Delaney & Bonnie, Rita Coolidge, Booker T And the MG's, Nancy Sinatra, Kris Kristofferson, Patti Paige and Emmy Lou Harris.
Gerry has many solo albums to his credit. Gerry joined The Ventures in 1968 and travels to Japan every summer to play concerts with The Ventures. Ultimately, it's McGee's clean guitar work that sustains their records.

Michael Doucet
For over 20 years and 21 recording projects, Michael Doucet and BeauSoleil have been following the same winning recipe. Take three traditional ingredients -- soulful Cajun French lyrics, hot fiddle licks, and irresistible accordion -- then add savory elements from the well-stocked pantry of decades of bayou musical influences. A pinch of Caribbean rhythm, a dash of New Orleans jazz, a dollop of Old World ballads, a hefty measure of blues, and maybe even a hint of surf music, bayou-style. Served up hot by six seasoned musicians, you have the music of BeauSoleil, who Rolling Stone praised as "the best damn dance band you'll ever hear."
At the helm is Michael Doucet, founder, fiddler extraordinaire, songwriter, and lead vocalist. As a high school senior in 1969, his love for Acadian culture lead to in-depth study of this traditional music across the kitchen tables of the rapidly vanishing older generation of musicians who had shaped and defined it.
"I couldn't be doing what I'm doing if I hadn't learned a hundred songs by Dennis McGee," Doucet explains. "The more songs you play by these artists-Dennis, Dewey Balfa, Canray Fontenot, Amédé Ardoin, and all the other greats, the more you learn. First, you understand their musical theories, then you can create music that fits within the tradition.
As Doucet once explained early in his career, "If I was going to play Cajun music, I wanted to play it right. And if I was going to change Cajun music, I had to be sure of the directions."
Audiences around the world seem to agree with Doucet's road map. The band has been honored with seven GRAMMY nominations and one GRAMMY Award. In 1997, their Rhino album L'Amour Ou La Folie (Love Or Folly) earned the GRAMMY for Best Traditional Folk Album. In January 2000, CAJUNIZATION, released in 1999, gave the band its seventh nomination with the nod for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
CAJUNIZATION rockets Cajun music into the 21st century with an eclectic mix of Doucet's finest songs yet, performed with ferocious virtuosity by the group A Prairie Home Companion's Garrison Keillor calls "the best Cajun band in the world." Doucet feels CAJUNIZATION really captures BeauSoleil at its best, and expands its exploration of Cajun music's roots.

Pat Mire is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Mire's cultural documentaries have been broadcast nationally on PBS, the Discovery Channel, and TNN's American Skyline and have won the highest awards in the most prestigious national and international competition including the Margaret Mead Film Festival, Worldfest Houston, and the American Anthropological Film Festival's coveted "Award of Excellence." Mire and his films have been the subject of numerous articles and reviews in major magazines, newspapers, and journals. Carl Lindahl, film reviewer for the Journal of American Folklore called Pat Mire "an important artistic force at work in French Louisiana whose camera work and editing are excellent." Lindahl's review compared Mire to legendary documentary filmmaker Les Blank. "The second-generation films reviewed here find Blank responding to a call for a more focused and academically-guided cultural exploration and mark the debut of Pat Mire, a filmmaker dedicated to intensive, holistic presentation of specific aspects of his cultural heritage. Pat Mire relies heavily on his own experience as a Cajun to study specific cultural practices that become platforms for rich and complex explorations of family and community culture. Mire's close-focus technique proves extremely fruitful, revealing as much about the broader structures of Cajun life and values as about the specific practices he highlights."
Recognized for his creative filmmaking skills, Pat Mire was the only Louisiana filmmaker to receive a 1991 regional fellowship from the Southeast Media Fellowship Program that included fourteen states. In December of 1993, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities honored Mire with a Special Humanities Award for his film work which has made a major contribution to the humanities in Louisiana. He was also the recipient of a 1994 fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts which had not given a fellowship to a filmmaker in six years. In 1995, Mire was called a "Louisiana Success Story" at the Governors Arts Awards. On May 17, 1997, the Acadiana Arts Council honored Mire with the "Distinguished Artist Award," which is given to an artist who's work has achieved national recognition.

Other Sites of Interest-
Swapping Stories http://www.lpb.org/programs/swappingstories/
Against the Tide http://www.zacharyrichard.com/equipe.html

For more information, contact Bob Neese of LPB at 1-800-272-8161
or Pat Mire at 504-894-1687.