“Life is funny sometimes,” observes wisely Ricky Paquette, who spent the whole summer traveling the roads of Quebec with, in the loudspeakers of his car, Live at Lee’s, the live album of major Canadian band The Sheepdogs. Recipient group of four Juno awards which invited it, last August, to swell its ranks. “It’s as if, without knowing it, I was preparing for this. »
Posted yesterday at 12:00 p.m.
With his trucker cap, his long hair and his sunglasses (which he will remove quickly, because he is well brought up), Ricky Paquette would have everything it takes to appear in a sequel ofAlmost Famous by Cameron Crowe.
He was, if only from the strict point of view of looks, the ideal candidate to succeed Jimmy Bowskill, who recently chose to devote himself more to studio work, and who thereby freed up his position at the of the Sheepdogs, a group that rivals the Allman Brothers Band in terms of lush hairiness and passion for denim.
The thirty-year-old, one of the most agile and bewitching guitarists in Quebec, had the head of the job, but above all, let’s specify, the hands necessary to ensure a smooth transition between the previous and the current incarnation of the most southern rock of Saskatchewan groups. , which will visit some fifty Canadian cities (including Montreal, Thursday) and American cities by the end of January.
It does not lie: two rehearsals were enough for them to cement everything, before getting on the bus. “It was as if I reconnected with a gang of buddies that I hadn’t seen for a long time. »
guitar all the time
A party in the backyard of the Paquette house. A family friend strums his guitar, and it’s a revelation for 9-year-old Ricky. His parents quickly bought him the instrument, which he demanded the next day.
From that moment on, I thought of nothing but the guitar: in the morning I played the guitar, at lunchtime I played the guitar, after school I played the guitar, after supper, I played the guitar.
Ricky Paquette
He was 13 years old when the bluesman Paul DesLauriers invited him under the spotlights of the Rainbow Bistro in Ottawa for the time to improvise together around a few classics. In the following months, he signed a contract with the DesLauriers bassist’s record company, Preservation Music, and at the age of 14 (!) launched his first album, Early for the Show (2006).
PHOTO JEAN ROY, LA TRIBUNE
Ricky Paquette
This precocious and breathtaking virtuosity will allow him to heat the stage for several legends, including BB King, Buddy Guy, Johnny Winter and Billy Gibbons. “What I learned by meeting these greats is toto enjoy every moment, to take advantage of it for real”, confides the one who for ten years has been one of the faithful collaborators of Martin Deschamps and Angel Forrest. “There’s a mean gang of them who have enjoyed life in an extreme way and they don’t remember that much. »
Since the beginning of his trip with the Sheepdogs, he has kept a tour diary. “I realized that there were so many cases that I had already forgotten since the beginning of my career. ” Smirk. “Not because I was at the party. Just because life passes too quickly. »
play with his heart
First celebrated among the blues circuits, Ricky Paquette has never been anything other than a rocker, his ears having been trained by Ottawa’s CHOM-FM, CHEZ 106.1, which he listened to as a kid in the family garage, while his father, postman by trade, repaired Harleys.
Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Mellencamp, the Faces of Rod Stewart: the guy from Gatineau mixes southern rock, heartland rock and English country rock on Sparks (2021), his most recent magnanimous album in explosive solos, but on which above all reveals a songwriter knowing full well that a solo is worth nothing if the chorus that comes after does not also give the taste of straining his glass of beer to the sky.
But for now, the musician is putting his career on hold and pouring all his energy into giving Sheepdogs fans the trance they’ve been hoping for. He thinks every night before opening his amp to the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, whom he discovered as a child thanks to a VHS tape offered by his sister.
I used the tape until there was no picture, back and forth to learn each song, note by note. On stage, I try to remember the intensity of Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had something divine, who was 100% in the music.
Ricky Paquette
“That’s why I don’t like to repeat too much,” he concludes. Another smirk. “I like the excitement of not always knowing what’s coming. Yes, technique is useful, but I want to be the guitarist who plays with his heart. »
The Sheepdogs, September 22 at the MTelus, in Montreal, and September 23 at the Palais Montcalm, in Quebec