Marc Broussard brings his brand of Bayou soul to Beaver Creek

Marc Broussard never thought he could make a living performing music. Growing up, he was surrounded by musicians in the vibrant Lafayette, Louisiana music scene. His dad, Ted Broussard, was in the band The Boogie Kings and even earned his way into the Louisiana Hall of Fame.

“Frankly, had no idea that I’d be able to do it as a full-time job. None of the examples that I had around me, including my father, were full-time musicians,” Broussard said. “Every guy that my dad ever played with were all guys that had day jobs and played on the weekends to supplement the family income.”

At the tender age of 20 Broussard was playing music but didn’t think things would pan out the way they have today.

“Playing was going to be a side gig. That’s how I saw things going for myself, especially when my then-girlfriend and now wife got pregnant with our first child when I was 20 years old. I was pretty confident that I would be toxic to the major labels that I was courting at the time and that I was probably going to end up on an oil rig for two weeks out of every month and then playing shows for the other two weeks out of every month,” Broussard said.

Six months later Broussard found himself opening for Maroon 5 on the “Songs about Jane” tour in the early 2000s.

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“All of a sudden, I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I’m doing this for a living,'” he said.

Broussard never looked back and audiences around the word have that stroke of luck to thank for allowing him to take up music as a full-time gig. His first album, “Carencro,” was highly successful with hits like “Home” and this concert highlights the album that came out over 20 years ago.

“It’s been a minute since I’ve been back to Beaver Creek, but what people can expect to hear is of course songs from ‘Carencro’ and some songs from previous albums but there will also be a big focus on my latest album, ‘Time is a Thief,'” Broussard said.

Broussard is proud of this album because he feels it is authentically him.

“All of the lyric writing and melody writing was done by me with very few exceptions. So, in that regard, it’s creatively the most influence that I’ve ever had on a project of my own,” Broussard said.

Broussard worked with two-time Grammy Award winner Erik Krasno on “Time is a Thief.”

“Erik would send me an instrumental track that was really well done and virtually record-worthy and it was so inspiring that I would just sit in my home studio and knock out a lyric or two in a few hours and send him back a scratch vocal demo,” Broussard said.

“And every time, he was like, ‘Yeah, that’s great. Here’s the next one,’ and a week later, we had an entirely new album,” Broussard said. “That was the first time in my entire career where I participated in the process like that. Every other project prior to that was sitting in rooms with other songwriters for the six months leading up to a record. I’ve never written an album in seven days.”

“Time is a Thief” contains ten original songs that display Broussard’s signature Bayou soul sound that blends R&B, funk, classic soul and rock into his music. Listening to the entire album is easy with upbeat tunes like “Fire,” which he dedicates to Al Green. You’ll get a healthy dose of funky beats in “Mood” and “You Deserve More” is a melody of sweet adoration and appreciation. In the title track, Broussard tries to defy time but sings “in this life there’s no guarantee/you can’t cheat time/that is no lie” before he asks, “what are you gonna do with your time?”

Broussard said he is also excited to share songs from his latest charity album, “S.O.S. 5: Songs from the ’50s.” This is his fifth record in the album series that has donated to various nonprofits throughout the years. This album benefits Love of People, a nonprofit organization based in Broussard’s hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana. Broussard felt called to do music for charity, even when his career was still on the climb.

“I decided, and I don’t really know why, but I just told my managers, ‘I think we need to start making albums for charity and we give the money away.’ My manager was like, ‘Hey, man, look, we’re going independent, but you don’t have money. You’re freaking broke.’ I was like, ‘I know but just trust me. This is something that I really feel like we need to do.'”

Luckily for Broussard it worked like a charm. Not only were they able to raise tens of thousands of dollars for various charitable causes on each album but they were also able to put more music out than they were previously.

“And we were able to cover some of our favorite music ever,” said Broussard, who says that he loves to share different genres of music with his listeners. Two songs to note off of “S.O.S. 5: Songs from the ’50s” is “Smile” by Nat King Cole and “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” by Ray Charles. Broussard goes back and forth between trying to perform the songs in their original form or adding his own twist to it.

“There are times where I feel obliged to pay homage by singing the song exactly the way the originator sang them. And then when I hit snags, when I hit a difficulty, what I’ll do is typically go through every version I can find of that song that’s been done by as many different artists as possible and just start to kind of build on that inspiration and take it into territory that I feel more comfortable with,” Broussard said.

But as you’ll hear, any version Broussard sings is pure gold, so, you won’t want to miss a chance to see him live at the Vilar Performing Arts Center in Beaver Creek this Tuesday at 7 p.m. This concert is part of the Love for the Locals concert series at the Vilar Performing Arts Center, which are concert acts handpicked for the hometown crowd and ticket holders will get a free beer or wine at each show. For tickets and more information, go to VilarPAC.org.