There’s something blissfully familiar about the dull, steady groove that launches watch you, the first title of Julie Aubé’s new album. It’s very Creedence Clearwater Revival, between Susie Q, Down On The Bayou and I Heard It Through The Gravevine. “To be clear, it’s crystal clear that there’s CCR, Clearwater in there,” she opines happily. Subtext: good way to start, huh! For that, yes. “It doesn’t bother me that it gets along. It’s in me. Since I came into the world, it’s played in the house and in the car. But these riffs, which go through the Rolling Stones or CCR, they come from forty songs with a blues riff, it’s the raw material to create. CCR’s psychedelic Susie Q, in fact, is a San Francisco-style extension of Dale Hawkins’ rockabilly Susie Q, and the riff was originally played by James Burton, future guitarist for Ricky Nelson, Elvis and Emmylou Harris. Everything is connected.
“I’m alright with that. I admit it, no problem, it’s part of the process. It is simply a matter of picking up the thread, and sewing something else. “Me, I patch, I recut, I use it to express myself, for my own business. ” Literally. She is the one who creates her stage clothes and those of her musical sisters Hay Babies, inspired by catalogs from the late 1960s and period patterns. For the Mailbox album tour, Katrine Nöel, Vivianne Roy and Julie had a whole wardrobe of her creations in triplicate. On her Facebook and Instagram pages, she is the one who poses, for lack of a model for her small boutique-house. “It’s just fun. My family have always encouraged me. To do “anything,” she writes in the acknowledgments of the Contentment booklet.
belonging and freedom
Julie Aubé grew up in Memramcook, New Brunswick. Southeast of Moncton, to locate quickly. “My father is really a crazy man. I don’t know anyone that spontaneous. He was never afraid to take risks. When I was young, I thought he was just crazy, he came to our house with three motocross bikes, for me and my sisters who had never done any. No problem, he taught us how. Another time, we were at a family picnic, we were playing Frisbee, my dad said, “Drop your Frisbee, we’re going to South Carolina!” And we left! I realized later that it was his mode of survival. That’s how he made his daily problems, his job, bearable. So for me, it’s normal to go on tour, to make costumes, I have ties, but I always feel free. »
In the song Second hand, we understand that the feeling of belonging, the desire for continuity, the need to create, also allow us to live a rock’n’roll life, with and without the Hay Babies. “I shed a tear / For those who are blamed / Like the beautiful blankets / quilt / That try to hold themselves together / by pins” Whether Julie Aubé is in front of her sewing machine or in front of a big happy crowd at the last Francos de Montréal (under more than pouring rain), the intention is always the same. Hold the pieces of laundry together, weave links between people.
Feel good in your clothes
It’s the whole idea of Satisfaction. The word is the answer to a big question: are we capable of contentment, in this world never contained? Can we be well in our head and in our clothes, wherever we are? Alone with her own musicians or with the other two Hay Babies? “I think it could be. That’s what it symbolizes, the colorful clothes I make. It’s happiness that I carry every day. That’s what I want to convey in the guitar strummings that I love to play so much that I put a lot of layers on it. There are indeed a lot of vigorous strummings through Contentment. “Even in sad songs, I want the music to feel good, to roll non-stop like a CCR song. »