The 2022 edition of the Coup de coeur francophone festival, which opens this evening with concerts by Salomé Leclerc and Richard Séguin, will shake the city center on Saturday with a triple concrete poster at Club Soda: the veteran rockers of Groovy Aardvark and BARF, as well as the (more) young shoot Carotté, who will take the opportunity to launch their third career album, gluten glutton. We talk about it with its leader, Médé Langlois, composer, guitarist and farmer, who cultivates the links between punk and traditional music with the same care he takes with the corn he grows on his ancestral lands in Neuville, in the county of Portneuf.
“It was a very good harvest season, but difficult because of the weather, a bit special — the spring was difficult, we didn’t have a month of June, the heat and heavy rain —, but otherwise, the world was there, people are hungry for good fresh and local products,” rejoices Médé, a Langlois from the 11th generation of farmers, at the head of the Langlois et Fils Farm and its Economuseum. from the cannery (its homemade ketchup is famous!), which, after more than six months of work in the fields without taking any time off, is preparing to concoct a whole party punk-tra.
Punk and folklore, like thieves in the Carotté universe: “Between punk and trad, the tempos are very similar. No need to play much faster because in folklore, it’s quite fast, and the energy is there too, explains Médé. Afterwards, all that was missing was a small kick more to bring this up. In addition, in our songs, we will often find our tunes sung from the melodies of the violin. These tunes are etched in our brains, because we already listened to them as children — in any case, we listened to them at home. And we feel it, after the pandemic, people are thirsty to hear that. They want to do it party. It’s a bit like that, Carotte: a party like at home, the musicians sitting in a corner, we play and have fun. It comes to seek the world. »
third album
Médé and his companions played little this summer, except in a few festivals, including an evening with Groovy Aardvark’s friends, since his bassist and singer, the legendary Vincent Peake, produced Carotté’s three albums. The youngest is called gluten glutton and brews again the same good ingredients, the same themes — good food (A good poutine, Onion soup, Good luck to me), the beverage (At night we go out), smoking (SQDC), the pleasures of life, in short! — with earthy lyrics, sung by Éric Roberge.
A third album very precisely as delirious as the two previous ones. New tunes, same spirit. Innovate from one album to another? “No,” replies Mede categorically. No, no, no, it’s very important. Carotted, that’s it, like a good old spag sauce: when it’s good, you don’t change anything, and if you didn’t like the first two albums, you won’t like the third “, which counts nevertheless on a distinguished guest in the person of Denis Côté, the chief accordionist of the Canadian eveningthe televised rendezvous of traditional Quebec music formerly presented on Télé-Métropole.
Not only does Carotté pay tribute to its animator (from 1960 to 1983) Louis Bilodeau (on Louis Bilodeau Blues), but the group reinterpreted with Mr. Côté his musical signature from the popular television show, which became Carrot Evening. “We really like doing that, borrowing bits of local songs that we’ve listened to a lot, or that are sometimes less well known, changing the lyrics — which was done a lot in the past, the tunes traveled, but from a village to village, the text was different. »
“The musical terroir is as important as eating well,” adds Médé, an ardent defender of local products, who today deplores the fact that Quebec agriculture is hanging “by a thread” due to oppressive economic conditions. . “We realize today that agriculture has been left to itself for fifty years, but we don’t hear about it. People live from day to day and do not imagine that tomorrow it could disappear. If we stop growing our own products, one day it will cost a fortune to bring them here. This is the base, agriculture, and we have forgotten that. We have to support those here who feed us. »
gluten glutton, by Carotté, will be on sale November 4, on the Slam records label. The group will be in concert on November 5, at 8 p.m., at Club Soda, with Groovy Aardvark and BARF The Coup de coeur francophone festival runs until November 13.