Fred Fortin is on familiar ground at Club Soda. We still remember his incredible tour show Ultramarr in the fall of 2016, followed by the supplementary one the following spring on the occasion of the Francos. This time, however, it is with his Gros Mené leader cap that he returns to the boards of the room on boulevard Saint-Laurent. And it promises.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
“We’re going to screw up,” Fortin tells us, laughing, before explaining that he barely had time to rehearse the new show with his accomplices Olivier Langevin (guitar), Robbie Kuster (drums) and Tonio Morin-Vargas (percussion and keyboards).
In fact, this Friday’s show at Les Francos will be the third of the tour. peace and bonus, the quartet having begun its run-in with two shows in Mont-Louis and Rimouski at the beginning of June. “It’s really trippy, and it’s still pretty raw from start to finish, the crowd will see Robbie being hot as ever, assures us the Old Pike. But we couldn’t rehearse as we could, COVID got involved, I had a positive test in the spring. We are therefore not badly on the radar at the moment, I have the CPU quite leaning! »
Especially since Fortin has decided to take on the bass for most of the songs in the show, a temporary challenge for the multi-instrumentalist from Saint-Félicien. “It’s the first time that I play the songs on bass while singing, I had recorded the album in separate tracks”, he explains.
I said to myself, “Why am I doing this to myself?” But untying knots is something I like to do, so I worked hard. And I really like that, playing bass.
Fred Fortin
Never mind, Fortin and his band are old hands, they know tobacco. Especially since they played several Gros Mené songs in trio format last year, during a spontaneous tour that took them all over Quebec.
“It was like a separate bubble, because the pandemic was still there, it was to show our joy at finally being able to play again, Fortin told us. We were starting to play again, we didn’t want to redo what we had presented as a duo for the tour Microdose. So we allowed ourselves to dip into the two repertoires, but in the end, I always end up redoing a few Gros Mené tunes. »
” It’s the fun to dive back into it”
Playing Gros Mené, precisely, does that require another state of mind? “Even so, in a way, the emotional implication of the songs is different,” Fortin tells us. The subject is light, even further from me than in my solo tunes, it’s like psychedelic theater, I’m still trying to tame what’s going on!
“But it’s fun to dive back into it, just to play music and bring it where you want, he continues. There’s a youthful side to rocking, improvising, jamming. And we consider ourselves lucky to still make great teenage music, we still go crazy with our pedals and our amps, we have fun telling each other the same jokes for 25 years and still laughing at them. The tour, we call it the Radotour ! »
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The last tour of Gros Mené dates back to 2012 on the occasion of the release of the album Agnus Dei
Composing Gros Mené also requires stepping aside for Fred Fortin, although this is done without too much effort. “I often work in batches of tunes, and when I do one for Gros Mené, I do three or four. So it’s been a while since the album marinated, he explains. For Gros Mené, I start with drum beats. The harmonic content is also going to be different, it’s more like blues. »
My solo songs are more elaborate, built with more complex guitar chord sequences. But I know it can be close sometimes, there are tunes that could go one way or the other.
Fred Fortin
If the songs of the Fortin nebula have things in common, it is also because of the unclassifiable melodies of the 51-year-old singer. “I’m always going to have a beat in mind, but both solo and with Gros Mené, I do it on purpose to have things evolve over the song,” he confides to us. A bit like rappers do, I want to put dynamism and movement in the melody. I’m going to slang what, jabbering a bit, I come up with something that looks like a melody target. Then, the French language does not necessarily take me where I wanted, it leads to something else. »
Unexpected and somewhat chaotic developments that enrich his work, as we are likely to see this Friday evening at Club Soda. “As the tour progresses, there are accidents that we decide to appropriate, he admits. It will happen on Friday, there will be accidents, happy and unhappy. Happy, that’s for sure, unhappy, we strongly doubt it.
Gros Mené is at Club Soda this Friday at 8 p.m. as part of the Francos and on July 8 at the Théâtre de la Vieille Forge, in Petite-Vallée.