Posted at 9:00 a.m.
Virginie B was working in the studio during the recording sessions for her recent album INSULAwhen keyboardist Daniel Thouin drew his attention to the similarities between his piece Alpine and Diane Tell’s repertoire. “You have to go back and listen to his album Between us “, he suggests. It was the start of a love affair between the 29-year-old songwriter and the iconic singer’s discography.
Her childhood had certainly been rocked by the successes of the creator of Gilberto and of If I was a man – “it often played at my mother’s hairdressing salon” – but the young woman had never been so bewitched by the elegance of her melodies and the omnipotence of her perfectly syncopated rhythms.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Virginie B with record store coffee 180g
I didn’t have the ear of a musician to appreciate it as I appreciate it today, but what a voice, what control! She can go so high. And the groove ! My God ! She wasn’t afraid of groove. I had been looking for a Quebec equivalent to this kind of music for a long time.
Virginie B, about Diane Tell
That kind of music? With its triptych of long games made up ofBetween us (1979), Sharply (1980) and chimeras (1982), Diane Tell offered a French-speaking response to a certain type of Californian soft rock, a hybrid of soulful flexibility and jazz smoothness, as practiced by Steely Dan or the Doobie Brothers, which today is commonly called yacht rock ( or recreational rock).
Flattered
Obviously flattered that her youngest daughters discovered her, Diane Tell, 62, believes that this new surge of enthusiasm for her work is largely due to the rehabilitation of these fluffy sounds. “If I can diminish the effect on my ego, I have to say that there is a little resurgence of affection for the style of music that I was doing when I started. And I think a good part of this movement comes from the fact that the production, the arrangements of these albums were very rich. It sounded over the top. »
The “sound maniac” that is Diane Tell could hardly be better surrounded than on these three discs, where composite groups, made up of Quebecers and Americans, shine. On Between us, the venerable jazzman Michel Donato takes care of the low frequencies while Sid McGinnis (later of Paul Shaffer’s CBS Orchestra) holds the guitar. Alain Caron from Uzeb is on bass on Sharply and on drums, none other than Willy Hall, drummer of the Theme from Shaft by Isaac Hayes. On chimeras ? Paul Brochu, Caron’s colleague in Uzeb, keeps the rhythm, while the horns have been boxed at the legendary Power Station studio in New York, by an all-star cell of high-calibre musicians.
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PHOTO PIERRE MCCANN, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Diane Tell in March 1982, when her album was released chimeras
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PHOTO DAVID BOILY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Diane Tell at Cabaret Music Hall in 2005
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In Quebec, we were coming out of the heyday of Beau Dommage and Harmonium, we were still very into folk rock, very politicized. And me, I was not politicized at all. The text came second. The important thing was to grooveto make music that sounded, with exceptional musicians.
Diane Tell
If there is nothing politicized about her repertoire, in the classic sense of the term, the arrival of Diane Tell on the Quebec scene nevertheless sent the signal that a woman could do anything: write her texts, compose her music, sing (divinely ), while closely supervising all other aspects of the development of his albums.
“I did it on purpose with my first four discs to write lyrics and music because I really wanted to impose the idea of being a full-fledged singer-songwriter, which didn’t really exist at the time”, recalls that who in 1980 became the first woman to win the Félix for Microgroove of the Year/Author-Composer-Performer (ancestor of the Félix for Author or Composer of the Year).
“I really admire how she speaks, according to her position as a woman, of her desire to be free, to emancipate herself,” said songwriter Meggie Lennon, 38, another of her admirers.
She particularly points to the song that closes Between us, The breath of freedoman ode to emancipation that has much in common with its own song Gardentaken from his dreamlike album Sounds From Your Lips (2021). “What inspires me about her, what I admire, is that she is in full control of her art. »
Like Nadia
On stage, Ariane Roy, 25, who is also one of Diane Tell’s heirs, regularly takes up Often a very long time. “My god! This song is amazing! “says the one who released her first album, medium pleasure, last February. “There is something a little candid in the text that touches me so much. And the groove ! the groove reminds me dreams by Fleetwood Mac. »
In addition to having both studied jazz, Ariane and Diane also have in common a flair for melodies as refined as they are catchy.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Ariane Roy in October 2020
His songs sound easy to sing until you try to sing them yourself. It’s an art, that: to manage to create a song which does not appear complex, which is at the same time rich and fluid. It’s even more impressive than something super complicated, flashy.
Ariane Roy, about Diane Tell
“It’s like Nadia Comaneci on the beam: it has to look easy, but it’s not, illustrates Diane Tell. What happens when it’s too simple is that it sticks in the head, but after a while the listener gets bored. We tire less easily of melodies that are not complicated, but rather fresh, because they are less likely to sound like something else. »
Diane Tell begins the shows of her current tour by revisiting the inaugural pieces (Cinema bars and The wrong number) of his first two records, but recorded his most recent album, Haikuwith Fred Fortin, proof that she knows how to honor her past while looking forward.
“Diane, for me, is the willow of Quebec music, says Virginie B. In the sense that it is a stable, rooted force that lasts over time. Its branches go everywhere. »