Twelve years later Controlled designation of originLa Bottine Souriante returns with Dominoes!, a fresh record which testifies to the renewed energy of the monumental trad group. Interview two days before the group’s return to Montreal, which launches its tour Friday at Club Soda in Montreal.
The morning of our interview in a café in Plateau Mont-Royal, Olivier Salazar and David Boulanger still had the sound of their first rehearsal ringing in their ears.
“It’s complicated in wafer! », admits Olivier Salazar with a laugh when we ask what it’s like to rehearse when our group has eleven musicians and three stage technicians from all over southern Quebec. His colleague Boulanger adds.
It’s a job, let’s say. You have to oil the gear properly, but when it rolls, it’s fine. Yesterday, in the last hour, it was really fun.
David Boulanger
On stage, the group promises to play at least half of the excellent songs from Dominoes!. “We have seen for years what works well, we try to keep these songs in our show,” David Boulanger tells us. But this time, we gave a different order of importance to certain classics. We broke up blocks of songs that we had been playing together for years. »
We therefore intend to replace certain older songs with new pieces which are in the same spirit. Another new feature is that the show will be the same from one evening to the next. “People will come back to see us like we go back to the cinema to watch a good film,” David Boulanger likes to compare.
Newbies
It will also be an opportunity to see on stage the latest iteration of La Bottine, which has continued to evolve over its 47-year history. Sheriff Robert Bob Ellis, on bass trombone, and saxophonist and arranger Jean Fréchette, both of whom arrived in the early 1990s, are now the guardians of the almost fifty-year-old tradition.
However, it is David Boulanger who took the destiny of the group in hand, but he is supported by a creative core which includes, among others, bassist Mathieu Gagné and pianist Olivier Salazar, who joined the Lanaudière group only two years ago. . “I had been waiting for four years for the guys to call me back, I had lost hope,” Olivier Salazar, who is the youngest of the group at 28, tells us with a laugh. I will always remember my first show with La Bottine; it was in 2017 in Petit Rocher for Acadian Day. I was still at university at the time and I remember that it was the best show I had done in my life, the most dynamic, the most physical, it was really a party! »
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Olivier Salazar and David Boulanger were not born when La Bottine Souriante launched their first album in 1976. They are now at the heart of the creative core of the group founded by Yves Lambert, André Marchand and Mario Forest.
Reconnect
We promise the same energy this Friday at Club Soda. ” There is something [dans notre musique] which affects everyone who wants to get on board, supports David Boulanger. The repertoire, the energy, the dancing side, with a modern touch in the sound structures and arrangements. »
Dominoes! is intended to be an exercise where tradition and modernity blend wonderfully. Some parts like Pretty Quebecers And La Wagine are faithful to the traditional repertoire, others like The ball at Jos Brûlé’s Or To forget are hats off to the great Tex Lecor and Gilles Vigneault, while others are bravura pieces that testify to the diverse influences that fuel the members of the group.
Extract from Ball at Jos Brûlé
It’s in Paris, a superb almost rock response song that begins with Éric Beaudry’s Irish bouzouki melody filtered through a distortion pedal, is certainly one of the most astonishing examples. “Eric is not the same guy he was 20 years ago,” tells us his colleague Boulanger, who also joined the group at the turn of the millennium. He started to like other kinds of sounds, he now includes them in the group. Like all of us, his personality shapes that of the band, it’s natural, what happens. »
We need to reconnect with our world. But who is that, exactly? We have fans well beyond Quebec, so I told myself that we should go talk with friends from elsewhere to make songs with them.
David Boulanger
In addition to the popular percussionist Mélissa Lavergne who adds some exotic touches to the recipe, the disc also includes compositions by the Italian Riccardo Tesi (Santiago) and the Irish Sharon Shannon (Benji’s Rollicks), two talented accordionists, as well as the Swede Erik Rydvall (Little Emil), great performer of the nyckelharpa, a medieval instrument related to the hurdy-gurdy which is played with a bow. “We chose songs that suited our sound better, with which we had more affinity in terms of styles,” explains David Boulanger.
By the way, is it difficult to continue to innovate when you have to defend the heritage of such a legendary group? “We sometimes feel responsible for taking something that exists and having a duty to perpetuate it,” recognizes the 40-year-old fiddler. But we make music today and we defend that too, in addition to making songs that people still want to hear. But you know, we ourselves had a blast listening to these songs, going to see them in shows; today, we make them on the internship. We are both fans and members of the group! »
What could be better for La Bottine, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2026. Because yes, David Boulanger is already working on this. We’ll talk to you about it again.
Trad
Dominoes!
The smiling boot
STUDIO B-12