The artist Jean-Robert Drouillard sculpts his career as a singer-songwriter as a dilettante, otherwise busy making wood, plaster or aluminum sing.
Posted yesterday at 12:00 p.m.
Whether he creates under his real name as a visual artist or under the musical alias Juste Robert, the intention remains the same, that of illuminating his clan: friendly, family, wildlife.
“In my mind, I see this disc as a series of short stories, autofiction. »
This “disc” is Your theory on lightthird long album, which follows an EP released on March 13, 2020, the same day that Quebec declared a state of health emergency.
Our lives were about to change, but his? He is embarrassed to say it, embarrassed by the privilege. “My wife is a ceramist-potter, I am a sculptor: we can well be confined for two months, dares the singer from Quebec on the phone. We continue calmly, in sweetness and beauty, to produce our business and be in a good mood. »
His 10 new pieces with a high folk content are thus devoid of nostalgia, anxiety-provoking reflections or, another popular spring, injunctions to dance to thwart the gloom.
Most of the texts were written during the pandemic, but it seems to have had the opposite effect on me, as if I were starting to look in a calm, gentle way, to put my finger on the beauty of simple things.
Just Robert
In front of these “simple things”, one often has the impression that Juste Robert paints songs, paintings sometimes hyperrealistic, with many details (The Sparrow), sometimes impressionistic, with their reflections of light. “There’s your wife in her white shirt / and the sun the sun through the window / traces geometric shapes / on the bedroom floor / light years right there. »
At Juste, creation is almost always a matter of the pack, of the family. It is moreover his dear Hélène who bequeathed to him his “theory on light”, which became the title track: “You open the curtains to bring in the sun. »
Between two amorous stanzas, the singer discusses the attack on the great mosque of Quebec. “There was a shooting in Sainte-Foy / a madman in a mosque shot / I kept it to myself / we didn’t talk about it / hate you don’t understand that. »
Juste Robert assures that he had not thought that the release of the disc would coincide with the fifth anniversary of the drama, “which deeply marked” the heart of Quebec, and his.
“Sometimes there are songs that come into the world without it being forced, without knowing where they come from. When I introduced her to people, some were like, “Oh shit, are you really going there? Are you really going to call that person crazy?” I went back to the start, start, start, basics, thinking, ‘I don’t care. Anyway, there is hardly anyone who listens to this, from Juste Robert.” ” Well well well…
Just engaged
In writing, Jean-Robert Drouillard was notably supported by his son’s girlfriend – “a 24, 25-year-old girl who studied creative writing at Concordia” on The gray of the fairies – as well as by the musician-poet Stéphane Robitaille, who signed The letter and spill some ink on The Sparrow, The dog and Under the sound of helicoptersmarriage story against the backdrop of police repression.
“I lived for 20 years 150 feet from a place in Quebec called Îlot Fleurie,” says Juste Robert. I have always remained inhabited by the Summit of the Americas, which was very violent. In the 25 other songs that I recorded before, there were no traces of committed poetry. »
This song had been silly in my business for a while. It’s like my little committed side that comes out, which wants to talk about fascism. I am not Richard Desjardins, but I wanted to assume that side.
Just Robert, about Under the sound of helicopters
On the production side, the singer from the Saint-Sauveur district teamed up with his almost neighbor Benoît Villeneuve, alias Shampouing, notably guitarist of Tire le coyote. In 2019, the musician had put his paw on a few pieces of My favorite mammalsecond album of Juste Robert adopted by critics.
After nearly a year of “remote pre-production”, the album was recorded last September in Shampouing’s studio in Kinnear’s Mills, “in the middle of the valleys” in the backcountry of Chaudière-Appalaches.
Folk, therefore, but also some more electric flights, as on The silence and the slowness Where The dog. “On a stage, noise, rock, I love that, but my real personality, what comes out of me, when I listen to my heart, it’s soft, it’s slow,” notes Drouillard.
Musically, he reconnected with the EP team your constellation : Frédérick Desroches (piano and keyboards), Yves Marquis (bass) and Kenton Mail (drums and percussion). The trumpeter Benoit Paradis and the “old boyfriend” guitarist Claude Fradette have joined here. By way of velvet, the voices of Émilie Clepper and Ariane Roy were also solicited.
Speaking of voice, Jean-Robert Drouillard labored to subdue his accent which, curiously enough, remained only in his singing. Why would you want to suppress this colour, a pairing of Franco-Ontarian and Gaspé palettes? “It annoyed me,” he said simply. I tried to be more mature in my voice and in my pronunciation to make sure every word made it. It annoys me to be constantly told that people don’t understand everything I sing. »
And what he sings deserves to be understood. Beyond the clan, beyond the family. “Despite my age [52 ans] and the fact that it’s a third disc, Juste Robert, is still considered an emerging music project”, he resigns himself.
Emerging like sunlight slowly escaping from the curtains. Who wants to hear it and bathe in it.
Launch at the Grand Théâtre de Québec postponed to May 29, 2022 at 8 p.m.
folk rock
Your theory on light
Just Robert
The tribe