Sauce Piquante Cajun-Creole Band (2025 program)

Sauce Piquante has been part of the SF Bay Area’s vibrant Louisiana French music scene since 1999, when accordionist Blair Kilpatrick started the band. Since that time, the group has performed in many venues, from festivals and clubs to libraries and farmers’ markets, in the Bay Area and beyond.

The group’s high-energy dance tunes and French vocals are rooted in two musical traditions: Cajun and old-time Creole, a precursor to zydeco. Sauce Piquante tries to capture the authentic sound of South Louisiana’s dance halls, house parties, and church dances. Along with Blair Kilpatrick on accordion and vocals, the band includes Steve Tabak on fiddle, Kathy Price on bass — and for this festival performance, multi-instrumentalist Mark Marcin (The Midnite Ramblers), who will be filling in for regular guitarist Jim Ruth.

Sauce Piquante was inspired by the late Danny Poullard, the Bay Area accordionist who suggested the group’s name. During more than three decades of  Louisiana travels and music camp attendance, band members  have been influenced by many gifted musicians, both Cajun and Creole. The band’s debut recording “Sauce Piquante Live” got a thumbs-up in a Dirty Linen magazine review. Kilpatrick is also the author of “Accordion Dreams” (U. Press Mississippi, 2009), which documents her musical journey.  She and her fiddler-husband Tabak were among the musicians profiled in “Zydeco Nation,” a public radio documentary about the Louisiana Creole migration to Northern California.