By T. Scott Boatright
While most Lincoln Parish residents have spent the summer trying to survive a smothering heat wave, Ruston native Mat Dauzat has spent the summer thriving worldwide in a whirlwind of musical life.
Dauzat, son of Sam and Jo Ann Dauzat, has spent years touring with longtime partner Heather St. Marie, the other half of Americana troubadours two-piece band simply known as Dauzat St. Marie.
But since late spring, Dauzat has been touring as lead guitarist for Grammy-award winning singer Seal, traveling across the U.S. and overseas.
And to top things off, Dauzat is also the guitarist on the new video by singer Rick Springfield released earlier this month.
“It’s definitely been a whirlwind,” Dauzat said. “I’m about to go back out on the road with Seal, and then Heather’s going to come meet us. I’ll wrap up with Seal on (Sept.) 22 and then Heather and I fly to Ireland the next day to do shows in Ireland there that week.
“Then we’ll come back to the States to do a Dauzat St. Marie music video and to prepare for our tour of the southern U.S., which we’re working on a Ruston date for in October,” Dauzat said.
Those shows in Ireland will be Dauzat St. Marie’s first ever shows outside of the U.S.
“That’s going to be something we’ve never done, so that’s really exciting for us,” Dauzat said. “We’re waiting to confirm all the dates but it looks like we’re going to have about five shows in Ireland.”
Dauzat St. Marie were planning on doing Folk Alliance International showcases in Nashville earlier this spring when an unexpected call sent Dauzat into doing his recent balancing act with Seal.
“We were literally booking flights to Nashville when Seal called me up on a Facetime call and offered me the job, so we canceled all of those showcases because I needed time to prepare for the Seal shows. It was a lot of work.
“And a week and a half later we were doing two shows in the Middle East, one in Saudi Arabia and another in the United Arab Emirate. Then I jumped on a plane and flew to London to work with Seal’s producer, Trevor Horn, who was musical director for the tour and plays bass in the band.”
Horn had long ago made a name for himself as a member of the band The Buggles (“Video Killed The Radio Star”) and Yes, and Dauzat’s trip to London was to learn Buggles songs because Seal’s manager had asked Horn to reform a version of that band to open for Seal.
“We’re called The Buggles, but it’s more like The Trevor Horn Experience because we play some Buggles songs, two or three Yes songs, an Art of Noise song and the instrumental “Two Tribes” done by Frankie Goes to Hollywood because Trevor produced that, too.
“So we go out and open the show as The Buggles and then go back in for a wardrobe change and come back out as Seal’s band.”
Wardrobe change was also part of Dauzat’s role in Rick Springfield’s new song video, “Automatic,” released earlier this month.
Ever since his days in the Ruston-based 1990s rock band Audiovibe, Dauzat has been known for wearing dark colors, but in the new Springfield video he sports a bright yellow suit along with what has become his trademark with Dauzat St. Marie — a fedora.
“Dauzat St. Marie has opened for Rick and we know him, and he called and asked if I would come do the video for the new recording he had coming out,” Dauzat said. “I landed in Los Angeles, hurried up and learned the song and we had an early call to film the next day, so I was all kind of jet-lagged because I had been over in Europe for three weeks or so.
“But we got it done and it came out great. It looks great.”
Dauzat admits the yellow Haz-Mat looking suit he wore for the video wasn’t his idea.
“That was what was chosen for me,” Dauzat said with a chuckle. “Rick sent me a photo of him wearing a bright yellow suit and told me, ‘This is you, but definitely wear the hat, too.’ So that’s how that happened.”
Dauzat said his love of varied styles of music came from the record collections of his older brothers he listened to growing up.
“My brothers were 10 and 11 years older and I listened to their records,” Dauzat said. “Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Boston — I listened to the good stuff. Old classic rock. I think Boston was one of my biggest influences I would say just because of all of those great guitar riffs and vocal harmonies. But also definitely Seal and especially his song ‘Crazy.’
“When that song first came out, I definitely gravitated right to it immediately. I tried to get early Hydrovibe (Dauzat and St. Marie’s band while students at Louisiana Tech) to cover it, but the guys in the band back then were too cool for school to do it. I also tried to get another hard rock band in Las Vegas I was in to do it, but it just didn’t work out, so I was fortunate enough to end up just going directly to the source.I guess I had the last laugh on that.”
He said that early love of music he and Heather St. Marie both had before meeting as students at Tech helped form the foundation of the music Dauzat St. Marie performs.
“I guess what’s cool about Dauzat St. Marie is we can kind of explore different facets of our musical roots. And bluegrass, oddly enough, is always kind of in there, too. I think that’s just because of our love for harmonies, which like I said, probably originally came from my love of the band Boston.
“How did we get all of those roots? I don’t know, because I definitely didn’t grow up listening to bluegrass at all. But we both love it.”
Just as Dauzat loves the music whirlwind of the life he’s living.
“In an ideal world we’d probably do three tours a year across the South, because it’s never enough time to spend back there ,” Dauzat said. “We always try to set up shows around north Louisiana and get a little taste of home, but never the full experience, because we stay busy. Next week I’m headed to Sicily, Belgium, Uzbekistan, Turkey, and then we’ll go to Manchester (England), and Heather’s going to meet us there.
“So she’ll cruise around with us while we’re home-based in Manchester, because we’re doing all those places in England like Wolverhampton and Liverpool and other places that are short drives away. Then we’ll go down to London, and then hop over to Paris before going back to London where Seal and I are going to do a private acoustic show before Heather and I head to Ireland to do the Dauzat St. Marie thing.”
While Dauzat said he and St. Marie feel the need — the pressure he called it — to continue putting out releases, he admits the state of the industry calls for that to be more sporadic single releases than what were known as albums 10 – 20 years ago.
“These days, I don’t know that there’s any advantage to putting out collections of works as opposed to singles,” Dauzat said. “Right now it just feels like going with more frequent single releases is the smarter thing to do.
“Live shows are the only real way to make money in music these days. That’s where it’s at. Maybe that will eventually get figured out. But I won’t be the guy figuring it out. We have our live show, and I think that’s a commodity that can’t be replaced. That’s who we are. We’ll just continue to roll with it — living in the whirlwind because that’s what we love doing.”
