The Zydepunks began in 2003 when Eve Venema and Christian Kuffner met while street-performing in the French Quarter — the story, as the band tells it, involved a clown on a unicycle and a white rapper supposedly on the run from the FBI. The initial concept was simple: combine the Cajun and Zydeco music they loved with the punk rock they grew up on. The execution proved irresistible, and the band quickly expanded its influences to include Celtic ballads, Slavic dance music, Klezmer, and original compositions, delivered with furious energy in English, French, Spanish, Yiddish, Portuguese, and German.
They had been together barely a year when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, scattering the band across the country. Two months later, they were back on stage at Café Brazil on Frenchmen Street for Halloween — the National Guard standing outside and a full crowd of revelers inside. New songs born from the disaster followed, including “Song for Mike” and “Long Story Short,” dedicated to a fellow musician killed in the violence that followed.
