Baie-Saint-Paul | The shooting star Karl Tremblay in the blue sky of Festif!

(Baie-Saint-Paul) It appeared late in the morning, in the phones of Festif! subscribers: “A shooting star passed over Baie-Saint-Paul. Join us in front of the MRC at 12:30 p.m.” What everyone would soon understand: the Baie-Saint-Paul festival had prepared a tribute to Karl Tremblay. A modest tribute in its deployment, but not in all the heart that was put into it.

“We’re going to the Cowboys!” It’s been too long since we heard this phrase, which many were saying in the streets of Baie-Saint-Paul on Saturday, believing they had correctly decoded the message sent by Festif! through its mobile application, which allows the event to warn festival-goers that a surprise show is about to begin.

It wasn’t exactly a Cowboys Fringants show, of course, but a tribute to Karl Tremblay, imagined by Clément Turgeon Thériault, the general and artistic director of the event who, breaking with his discreet habits, made it a point of honour to speak.

“I wanted to present this one,” he said on the tiny stage set up in front of the Caisse Pop, explaining that he had brought together friends of the Cowboys family and the Festif! family, artists from all generations, “because the Cowboys have left their mark on several generations.” And they left their mark on Festif!, those who were at the first edition of the event that is celebrating its 15th anniversary this weekend^e anniversary and which has often been described as the greatest of small festivals.

The first to be invited to the microphone? Sweet cowboy Alex Burger and Frannie Holder, the female voice of the original version of merchant navythe song that this duo of the day had obviously chosen.

Before he strums the first chord, Burger recalled playing a Cowboys song in a high school show, “but we got lost and had to stop in the middle,” an experience he’s probably not alone in.

Frannie, best known for her work in Random Recipe and Dear Criminals, two bands whose sound has absolutely nothing in common with that of the Cowboys, has confided that her participation in merchant navy is among the most “absurd and magnificent” entries on his resume.

“I never thought I’d have to do it in a show without him,” she said before singing it with Burger, and also a lot with the audience, which had grown very quickly, even though they had only been warned at the last minute.

Bébert’s shack

If Frannie Holder had never thought she would have to sing merchant navy Without Karl Tremblay, no one on this planet would have imagined one day hearing the venerable Yves Lambert make his own “one of the strangest songs” (his words) from the dashing catalogue, Hector’s Shack.

But this is indeed the moment, as jubilant as it is improbable, that we are about to experience: the historic voice of La Bottine souriree biting into the Cowboys’ drinking song par excellence, with its immemorial truculence, as well as one of those with the most verses.

With the welcome help of the crowd, who each time shouted the “Yes, sir” of the chorus, Monsieur Bébért revealed through a voluntary (if imperfect) performance what this nonsensical hymn to drinking and friendship owes to Quebec folklore (that is to say, a lot). No, we never thought we would hear this monument of Quebec music pronounce the words “Miss January who showed us her ass.” It took the Cowboys Fringants, it took Karl Tremblay.

As long as there are these songs

Present in Charlevoix to accompany their friend Marie-Annick Lépine later in the day, Mara Tremblay and Catherine Durand (Hauterive) then offered two vibrant interpretations, first of one of the rare pieces in the Cowboys’ repertoire written by Karl Tremblay, Royal Puba text perfectly suited to the powerful and cracked voice of Mara, to whom all the songs containing the word “dawn” already belong a little.

It was broad daylight, but Mara, miraculously, made the auroras dance in the blue sky of Baie-Saint-Paul, outlined behind her by the Quebec flag, hanging from the tourist information office.

Then not a single eye would remain dry for On my shoulderwhich Catherine and Mara sang as much among themselves as with us.

It is to Émile Bilodeau, one of the main heirs of the Cowboys Fringants, that would fall the privilege of concluding this short tribute that will live long in our memory. He had chosen As long as we have love And Shooting Starsit was taken up in chorus by the small, emotional human tide that had gathered in rue Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

“Karl is alive in us every time we sing Cowboys songs,” said Émile, and if he is telling the truth, Karl Tremblay was there, in the vocal cords of hundreds of Quebecers of all ages, Saturday, in Baie-Saint-Paul.

Enough to believe that as long as we have love, fresh water and clean air, a roof and four walls, and the choruses of the Cowboys, there will indeed be joy in our hearts and in our backyards.