Frenchie's Blues Destroyers

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About Frenchie’s Blues Destroyers

“On a Sunday morning in July 2001, a 20-year-old Kevin “Frenchie” Sciou was sleeping on the couch in the living room of an Arizona home when he was awakened by Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter singing “Storms Never Last.” Not on record, in the flesh, just a few feet away, with Jessi on the grand piano!

The parents of Frenchie’s then-frontman Shooter Jennings were gently stirring awake a house full of late-night partiers, and then Jessi made breakfast for their guests. “It was surreal,” recalls Frenchie, who describes posing for a photo while sitting on Buddy Holly’s 1958 Ariel Cyclone motorcycle – a gift to Waylon from the Crickets on his 40th birthday. “Just two months earlier, I had been in L.A. with a backpack and $200, answering ads for ‘guitar player wanted.’”

After a late-night jam session in L.A., Frenchie was approached by Shooter’s drummer Lex Lipsitz, a native of Waco, Texas. Their hard-rock band Stargunn needed a guitarist just like him, Lex told him, so Frenchie went down to their rehearsal space at the corner of Hollywood and Vine to audition on the spot. “After about 15 minutes, Shooter asked me where I lived and I told him it was at a youth hostel a few blocks away. He said, ‘Nah, you’re living with us at the band house from now on’ and they took me down to get my stuff.”

Things were happening fast for the hot-shot south paw guitarist from Nimes, France, who had funded his move to the States by selling his Gibson Les Paul guitar. But you can’t really play the blues until you’ve paid some dues, and for Frenchie that tab was not small. He’s slogged ahead through a rough-and-tumble 20 years, from jamming with blues legend Lucky Peterson at a French festival as a 17-year-old high school dropout, to playing for hire as he found his place and formed his own band, to now: the sophomore release on Friday, March 13 of “Praise” from his Frenchie’s Blues Destroyers duo with brother Pete Coatney on drums.

“I’ve always been a guitar player for hire, this was my trade,” says Frenchie, who earned his nom de plume from Texas singer/songwriter Jack Ingram. “So to sing the songs I wrote is a big thrill. But in the beginning I was a little hesitant.” It was Brother Pete, his mate in Ingram’s touring band, who encouraged Frenchie’s move to front and center.