This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen Magazine #100 (June/July 2002). the magazine is available on newsstands and by subscription.

They're French Canadian, but they're not from Québec. They're all named Arsenault, but they're not a family band. They include a fiddler, a dancer, an Elvis impersonator, and the world's foremost player of the cake rack, and when the mood strikes them, they dress their audience members in funny hats and then whack them over the head with sticks.

The band is Barachois, an Acadian folk act from Canada's smallest province, Prince Edward Island, and it's been steadily building a reputation as one of the best, and certainly one of the funniest, bands in Franco-American music. It's toured all over Canada and the United States, visited such prominent European festivals as Celtic Connections and Tønder, and still managed to maintain its reputation in its own region. Still, in a 2001 interview in Philadelphia, the members described themselves as "kitchen veterans" and their act as "just a house party."

Barachois is made up of Albert Arsenault, Hélène Arsenault-Bergeron, Louise Arsenault, and Chuck Arsenault, four people with extensive experience in music, dance, and theater. Their individual talents and experiences add up to an impressive package. Albert, who is the son of renowned PEI fiddler Eddy Arsenault, began to play the fiddle at age 12 and the drums at age 14. He soon learned to step-dance, sing, and act, as well. He has played in several other bands, toured Canada as a children's entertainer, and acted in national theater productions and television commercials. Onstage he is the band's main spokesman, an impressive singer and multi-instrumentalist, and a loose-limbed bundle of comic energy. Hélène Arsenault-Bergeron, Albert's sister, got her start as a dancer and accompanist for her father's fiddling. She has toured Canada as a singer, dancer, and actress, and in addition to guitar, piano, and pump organ, she plays the fiddle. Her dancing and choreography centers and directs the group's onstage antics. Louise Arsenault, the band's main fiddler, has been playing ever since she began to sneak her father's instrument out of its case at the age of seven. Her fiddling is at the core of most of the band's arrangements, and she plays harmonica and dances, as well. Moreover, her tapping feet are Barachois' heartbeat, creating the steady galloping rhythm so familiar in Acadian music. Chuck Arsenault grew up in an Anglophone community and only recently began seeking out his Acadian roots. Before that, he was a musician with the PEI Symphony, which makes Barachois one of the few folk bands to feature French horn and sousaphone. Chuck has also worked as an actor and a stand-up comic, and can do more acrobatics with his eyebrows than most people can do with their entire bodies.

Although they're all Arsenaults, only Hélène and Albert are related. The Acadian population of Eastern Canada is small and consists of relatively few families. In the smaller provinces like PEI, there are even fewer families represented. The result is that there aren't that many Acadian surnames on the Island, and Arsenault is one of the commonest.

In 1995, Albert and Hélène were performing in a dinner theater with Louise, a close childhood friend. Chuck was another of the performers, essentially a total stranger whom they'd recruited based on his reputation for music, comedy, and acting. The dinner-theater act was made up of songs, skits, and music, and involved the four in close collaboration. "We had a great energy together, the four of us," Hélène remembered, "and we were at a point in our lives where we wanted to do music full time. So that's how Barachois started." Within a year, she explained, they built up a repertoire, a base of contacts, and a working strategy that allowed them to take their show on the road.

And what a show it was. With four performers of such varied talents, the band was able to create a unique experience for its audiences. Every Barachois concert is a mixture of equal parts traditional music, stand-up comedy, and mime. The music is mainly composed of old French ballads and folk songs collected in Eastern Canada, plus high-octane fiddle tunes, both from the tradition and from Louise's fertile mind. The mime includes acting out the songs, plus Chuck's impressions of Mick Jagger, Glen Campbell, Elvis Presley, and Barry Gibb. The stand-up comedy includes all sorts of antics: There's a shaggy-dog story about how the lobsters accompanied their Acadian friends to Louisiana, losing so much weight through the effort that they became crawfish; there's Albert's silly-walk striding into the audience in search of volunteers to be subjected to various indignities; and there are a number of running gags about Chuck.

Their most famous parlor trick and practical joke involves picking five people out of the audience. Four of them are given differently sized buckets, to be worn on their heads like fezzes, but with elastic chin-straps to hold them in place. The fifth is given a hard hat with a cymbal mounted on top. While the band performs a spirited song, Albert plays the unwitting audience members like a drum kit. This number has become their most popular. "People hire us, and they say, 'You're gonna do the hat thing, aren't you?' " Albert said.

"There was actually a period of about a month or so when we didn't do it in the shows," Chuck added. "And always, people said 'You didn't do the drums! You didn't do the drums!' "