At first glance, the figure is not very round, in the radius of celebrations. « 35th Anniversary Album Tour On the way to the fires », a short month before the 50th anniversary of the most famous Pink Floyd (yes, The Dark Side of the Moon, we’ll talk about it again), it’s less essential on the list of must-haves and events. Paul Piché agrees more than willingly. “It’s not even my idea. It was Nicolas Houle, from the Palais Moncalm in Quebec City, during the pandemic, who sought to save the furniture with shows themes. Virtual. He had suggestions. “You, Paul, could redo On the way to the fires…” Oh? OK. We did it, with no one in the small room. It ended there. Once out of the pandemic, we finally ended up finishing the shows of the anniversary tour 40 spring, and afterwards, I was no longer in retrospective mode at all. I had a couple new songs on the go, I was looking elsewhere. And then… “
And then, it happened that the broadcasters, remote spectators of the virtual evening, demanded a sequel. At their home. Crazy likewise, it turned out that it was pretty good, this show. The rather intimate formula, with Paul and his faithful Rick Haworth, Pierre Hébert and Mario Légaré plunging back into the rather epic adventure of recording and re-recording a disc that started very badly before triumphing, turned into a bivouac more than pleasant, the “fires” feeding a rolling fire of anecdotes. “It’s quite a story. We had “scrapped” a first version of the album, I had mortgaged my house to continue, I almost gave up…” A show around the album and its trade secrets could be imagined very well “in person , in front of real people, to live as an experience in gang “. The anniversary figure was added, a pretext more than anything else.
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What’s more, if it was absolutely necessary to justify the case, a single immersion in the album would suffice. Try to see, there is a good chance that you own one of the 300,000 copies sold (in 33 rpm, on CD or in 4-track cassette, golden age of the durable object and unimaginable sales figures Today). Disturbing relevance. I callthe opening song, turns out to be a call for environmental awareness: “The water that trickles after the rain / Doesn’t taste the same / Don’t listen to what I say / I don’t am just a wolf. A sandcastle says the fragility of the French fact in America: “The secret of words / Slips through my fingers / Sand and water at the same time / Like a faded image / From a forgotten world”.
Any birthday. On the way to the fires was talking about in 1988 who’s burning now. It is about expiration. Deadline on the horizon. “Hope too, I think. Talking about the environment in the 1980s, you were preaching in a vacuum. The awareness is now really greater, the urgency too. It happened in stages. The first big shock, for me, is the film by Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie The boreal error [1999, produit par l’Association coopérative de productions audiovisuelles, avec l’ONF]. There, we saw the damage. The activists, after that, were a lot more heard. After that, with Dominic Champagne and his Pacte, it continued…”
After the second referendum, we thought it was over, but once again, Canada is starting its war against Quebec again, and the awareness of what we are is regaining its liveliness. Everything is threatened, secularism, French, resources, strongly enough for it to end up relaunching the movement [indépendantiste]. Unlike 1995, we will no longer have to convince the old.
Paul Piché does not despair of anything. “After the second referendum, we thought it was over, but once again, Canada is starting its war against Quebec again, and the awareness of what we are is regaining its liveliness. Everything is threatened, secularism, French, resources, strongly enough for it to end up relaunching the movement [indépendantiste]. Unlike 1995, we will no longer have to convince the old. »
Celebrate to better create
In the anniversary show 40 springthe strong and memorable songs of On the way to the fires blended into the repertoire. The greatest hits compilation One and the otherreleased in 1996, contains no less than eight titles out of the nine Fires. AT I call And A sandcastle are added On my skin, Because I love you, I bequeath to the sea, Odd, time to love, hate. only missing The school of three buttons. ” Now that’s funny. It’s the first song we released: it was number one everywhere in Quebec, a big hit, except in Montreal. In the radios of the metropolis, zero. After that, Because I love you was refused. Everywhere. She came back strong after the others, especially A sandcastlepropelled the entire album, and also because Tracy Chapman had released Fast Car and that it made those kinds of breakup songs more plausible for radio. »
There is at least one new song in the show. “My last album of new material dates back to 2009. No joke, I’m due. Nice bivouac or not, there is a construction site in plan. “They wanted to book me 40 shows… I said no. Ten, no more. In the end, there are 18. Do not be in bad faith: we tested it, and it’s really pleasant to live. »