In the middle of the afternoon, Wednesday, it’s quiet at the all-white café in the large glass building of Radio-Canada. At their table, there’s no poster with their band name, The Hay Babies, looming over them, but it’s just like that. They are impossible coolVivianne Roy, Katrine Noël, and Julie Aubé: radiant, colorful, funny, rock’n’roll. Teleported, one might say. Fictional, almost. If we hadn’t known them for a dozen years as an amazing trio of Acadian women from New Brunswick, more than liberated, frankly friendly, truly efficient and absolutely authentic, they could be The Carrie Nations, the group of young women invented by filmmaker Russ Meyer and screenwriter (and future film critic) Roger Ebert for their 1970 psychotronic film, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Yes, cool to that degree.
“With the costumes that Julie made us for the stage,” says Katrine with a smile, lifting the fabrics protruding from a bag, “we really feel like that. Full attitude. Full pleasure. Full guitar music the way we like it. » It is more and more obvious and joyfully desired: as Hay Babies, they occupy a fabulous playground, where they wear the multicolored confections of their Julie Aubé who is at the same time a magical designer/seamstress, where their music is increasingly effective and engaging, a re-cooked substrate of the best kind of roots-rock jam since the golden age of the genre (1965-1975, well before their birth). Tintamarre, their fifth album, is the most fervent demonstration of this. The Hay Babies, a bit like the Bangles in the 1980s, are great fans of yesteryear and fantastic creators of songs that smell new.
In praise of Jerry Reed
“We do a lot of musical research,” summarizes Julie, sparking general enthusiasm around the table. The names are flying around: obvious ones like Lynyrd Skynyrd, but also, says Julie, the “great Jerry Reed, the most crazy guitarist who existed in the world, this is our great discovery.” The list is long. “We revisited old rock’n’roll, not just the hits », underlines Viviane. “We fill ourselves with good music, so when it comes out, it brings it all back together, just good stuff. » This is more and more their way of doing things. They dig, unearth, appropriate, merge, perfect, play, play and play again, until they integrate everything in their own way. The new album contains a self-introduction song that says it perfectly: “We’re the Hay Babies, a great bag of surprises / Like the bag of receipts that we drop at the tax office / Not very mixed up, but we arranges it properly / There’s no budget for decorations / that’s why we disguise ourselves.
May this theme song arrive now, rather than at Folio EP from 12 years ago, gives the measure of what has been accomplished, of what had to be proven the hard way, show after show. “Three girls who decided to plug themselves, who became a band electric, who play live in the studio, who are worthy of respect, it was not automatic, let’s say”, summarizes Vivianne, proud as in the song Let’s be proud, which starts the album. “I think we find that we are made a step worse band which gives a step worse show », she adds, handling the euphemism with a triumphant smile.
It’s like a club with a “jukebox” where all the tunes are good, even the “B-sides”… especially the “B-sides”!
From the stillborn album to the post-pandemic, the vivacious trio
This is saying something, five years after the deadly combination of circumstances which put the pandemic right in the path of the extraordinary Mailboxthe fourth concept album born from the discovery of a packet of letters from an adventurous Acadian woman who arrived in Montreal in the 1960s. From one day to the next, a stillborn record. “We did the promotion, the reviews were really good, I reread them during confinement to console myself,” says Katrine. “But we weren’t discouraged,” continues Vivianne. No, the album didn’t have the life it should have had, but we didn’t sit on our bad luck. We ended up doing the showand we drove it for a long time. We were strong. »
Tintamarrethis beautiful sound of the “rebellious” Hay Babies, as it rhymes with the chorus ofWe are the Hay Babies, resounds all the more so because they have survived bad luck, the dead silence. “The new album is really made to be played in show from edge to edge, notes Julie. There is a feeling of we’re backeven if we never disappeared. » Vivianne says: “It’s a tank album that we drive straight into the club! » Laughing like an earthquake, the giant windows of Radio-Canada wobble. Julie adds: “It’s like a club with a jukebox where all the tunes would be good, even the B-sides…especially the B-sides ! »
“We’re not listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd all day long,” Katrine adds. We don’t live in that era, we feed on it, we disguise ourselves for fun. It’s just inspiring. » Bathing in roots-rock refreshes, invigorates, strengthens. The vigorous bass-guitar intro in Between the dog and the wolf (a song from party intense), the sound twangy In Last but not least (beautiful portrait of late arrivals in families, “the branch which serves to join”), the groove psychedelic with baritone guitar modified into sitar in MirrorTHE riff rock Mosquito (a song about villains that we would gladly crush) everything comes from a thousand other songs because that’s how the genetic baggage is enriched. And this is how the group becomes more and more densely unique. They sing it at the top of their lungs, like the most irresistible of invitations: “We’re the Hay Babies, and we don’t sing covers.”