“If you don’t get up and shake your leg, you’re dead.”
Nathan Williams of Nathan and The Zydeco Cha Chas means that metaphorically because his version of zydeco kicks some righteous ass. He also happens to be one of the most fascinating characters I’ve interviewed in half a century. I felt like I was his new best friend from the get-go. And by the end of our conversation, I told him I couldn’t wait to shake his hand when he plays The Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga, New York on Friday (2/7/25). He said, “You’re not gonna shake my hand. I’m gonna give you a hug.” Then, he added, “Let me tell you one more thing. If you decide to run for any kind of office, you got my vote.”
His background is as outrageous as his music is enervating. He has nine brothers and sisters. His father died when he was seven years old. He married when he was 18 and his wife five years younger. Forty-six years later they are still married, and he has a repertoire of originals and cover versions of zydeco classics large enough that he could perform for six hours without repeating any of his original songs.
Nathan has performed with Buckwheat Zydeco and knew the founder of the zydeco style Clifton Chenier when he was still a child. “I used to work with Clifton when I was a little bitty boy. He played at the casino club and I couldn’t get in. They had an open window that had a fan in there. I watched him. The old lady used to run us out of the yard every time we went, but I’d still go back.
“Clifton Chenier was blues, and he was creative with everything he did (but) I never learned from anybody. God just gave me a gift. Everything I do I do from the heart, and that’s how Clifton was. He played the way he did. I play the same way, but first I play the way I feel.”
Nathan credits Buckwheat Zydeco with being like a father to him. “He guided my whole career. You know. That accordion I bought from him? I couldn’t learn it ’cause I didn’t like the sound. So, I went and bought one at a music store in Lafayette. It was an Italian accordion, a high-pitched sound. That’s the tone I like. And I started there. Before I started playing, Buckwheat lived right across the street in an apartment from my brother’s store when I was working there.”
He credits God for the success he’s had. He’s a 2023 Grammy nominee with an album for every year he’s performed at festivals around the world. “I put God first. I try not to hurt nobody and do the best I can. I’m not saying that’s gonna make you. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I never did drugs. I don’t do none of that, and I just try to be the best I can. I’m there to entertain. You can’t entertain if you don’t maintain.”
For more than three decades, Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas have toured widely, performing at venues as diverse as his brother’s convenience store in Lafayette, Louisiana to the Lincoln Center in New York and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. The Cha Chas performed at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Internationally, he has performed in Austria, Spain, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Turkey and Germany.
His band is made up of his brothers and cousins. “My motto is if you can get along with a stranger why can’t you get along with a family?”
Today, Nathan leads two lives. “I don’t just do music. I do hot shots in the oil field. I’ve been doing that for 18 years. I go all through Texas where the oil fields are. So, I got some soul. I call my company Cha Cha’s Hot Shot. Hot shot is like – you (haul equipment needed in oil fields). It’s transportation.
“The devil sent ya, but God gonna catch ya. Life is what you make of it. What people don’t understand about life is you got but one life, alright? You do one thing wrong, people don’t forgive you, but God is a forgiving God. If you don’t count it all as joy you have a problem, because people don’t understand that failure is not failure. Failure isn’t (the opposite of) success. If you don’t know something about something, how you gonna know anything about experience?”
