Tab Benoit

One thing about Louisiana-born guitarist Tab Benoit that most people don’t know is that he’s a dedicated activist for his native state’s environment; back in 2005, he and some fellow musicians got together to make a disc warning of the danger a hurricane might bring if the levees broke — well before Katrina’s onslaught. “We were trying to tell people what was going to happen,” he says over the phone. “It wasn’t like it was a mystery to us, but I think it was a mystery to the rest of the country, and so I wanted to make sure that people understood it.”

Benoit takes his cause extremely seriously. “What killed the coast of Louisiana was not global warming, but man-made problems,” he says. “We diverted the river away from the Delta where it’s built, and as a result the Delta is dying because it’s losing its feeding tube.”

Onstage, however, it’s about the music — Benoit hasn’t been to Houston in, he says, “quite a while,” and is looking forward to this return. “It’s gonna be my trio [guitar, bass and drums] — we are just going to turn it on and throw it out. There is no plan. You can’t play the same show to a stadium full of people that you play for 20 people in the corner of a smoky bar.”