Planted in Béthanie, a small municipality some 90 minutes west of Montreal, the La Grosse Lanterne festival is reborn with a poster on a human scale and the mission of creating a “unique cultural experience in the forest”. The kind of stage that suits the songs of Myriam Gendron, singer-songwriter and transmission belt between our songwriting past and contemporary folk, between French-Canadian and Northeastern American traditions, where French and English lived together in these waves of cross-border migration. Released in October 2021, his second album, My delirium. songs of love, lost & found, was a critical success, on both sides of the border and the ocean. We come back to it with its author.
“I must have traveled 6,000 kilometers with my float this summer,” says Myriam Gendron, who has been taking her guitar and her voice on stage since the start of the summer season. “I don’t know if I would call it a tour, since the shows were scattered [dans le calendrier]. But I haven’t done much touring in my life — I have two young children, so I try not to be away too long. »
Last April, she opened for Godspeed You! Black Emperor on several dates in the United States (“it was my first real tour”), eight years after the release of his first album Not So Deep as a Well, in which she revisited the work of the American poet Dorothy Parker. This fall, other bits of tour are on the agenda, again in the United States, then in Europe, before returning to sing for the Montreal public on December 8, at La Tulipe.
Not So Deep as a WelI was also a critical success, “but niche”, recognizes Myriam. “When I finished working on my delirium, I felt that he might have greater potential. Because its sound palette is more complete, because there are songs in French too, which would appeal more to Quebec. Then there’s the fact that I go and find old songs. ” The title, my deliriumis a reference to a piece from a famous Quebec trad album, a repertoire which, knitted with that of American folk and original compositions, constitutes the essence of Gendron’s proposal.
Her approach has a literary dimension, we expected nothing less from the musician who studied literature at university and also works as a bookseller. It also aims to highlight the links between Quebec and American folk music.
“It’s funny, I was just having this discussion with a friend the day before yesterday, when I was giving a concert in New Hampshire. We said to ourselves that, deep down, we feel much closer to them, the people of Vermont, Massachusetts, the Northeast, than to those of Alberta, let’s say. I think there are plenty of passages — culturally, we are very close to New England. There are bridges between our two cultures. Our songs have traveled in a very natural way, following the movements of populations, and this is reflected in our traditional music. And it feels good to remember it, it feels good, at this time when we confine ourselves to our identities. I find it so much richer, exchanging and sharing, even if it’s cliché to say so. »
Sober, but emotionally powerful with its parsimonious, but studied guitar orchestrations, my delirium is a simply magnificent album — as is Not So Deep as a Well. With the difference that it was noticed, and the talent of its author celebrated, finally.
“I expected that my delirium become something bigger, but I didn’t expect that”, the praise in pitchfork, Slate, Releasein France, we pass. “It got bigger than I thought. It’s the fun, but hard to live too. Being exposed, the solicitation that comes with it, is not easy emotionally. And there’s the danger of losing sight of why I’m doing this: I make music because it makes me feel good, first and foremost. The media, performative aspect, I don’t think too much about it. But hey, that being said, I’m happy with it all, of course. »