This one really hurts. The death of Karl Tremblay, the singer of Cowboys Fringants, at age 47, in the depths of November, when it gets dark so early, and the world discourages us. I was chatting with my lover while making supper when the news hit like a ton of bricks. My mind refused to believe it, I broke down while reading aloud the beautiful text by my colleague Alexandre Vigneault to my boyfriend.
I cried all evening listening to the tributes and again in the morning reading the newspapers, while all the radios were playing On my shoulder Or Shooting Stars. Surprised by my emotion. I wasn’t a fan of the Cowboys Fringants from the start, far from it. My Quebec group was Les Colocs. It would have seemed that at their beginnings, the Cowboys were aimed more at the generation that followed me, and anyway, I was a little allergic to committed songs, I only swore by Jean Leloup for the music from here . At half-mast was a piece that got on my nerves, but these days, seeing the waste of public funds, we want to shout it out of the windows: “If this is modern Quebec, well I put my flag at half mast and fuck all the buffoons who govern us…”
We could not miss the phenomenon, unique in the history of Quebec music. I think that if I integrated a few Cowboys songs into my repertoire, it was because of the employees at my local grocery store, the band fanatics who played their albums on repeat. I liked it a lot My boyfriend Rémitypical of the melancholy of the Cowboys Fringants who have for 25 years been able to put into words and music as much our discomfort as our festive side, as well as a little of our conscience and our identity.
But it’s never too late to succumb to what’s good. Many people caught Les Cowboys Fringants late with America criesa perfect song, the one that bridged the ages, because it aims right at the heart from the first listen, like When men live on love Or to see a friend cry. I must have listened to it 100 times, always with tears in my eyes, but the first time, it broke me in two, like the announcement of Karl Tremblay’s death. How does a tune CF were coming to pick me up at that point? A working-class song, where we see the collapse of America through the eyes of a trucker… A masterpiece, that’s why, which has come to confirm the durability and relevance of this group of rare solidity.
It’s that we feel deep within ourselves that in this Quebec of which Karl Tremblay sang about the disenchantment, “everything holds together with a pin”, and that we only have each other to hold on to it. . This was magnificently demonstrated during the recent Quebec Summer Festival, which forever marked the memories, even of those absent who saw these images of an immense crowd in solidarity with the singer and the group on the Plains of Abraham. “Together we are not afraid of ANYTHING,” he shouted, exhausted, and no one could remain unmoved by the beauty of the moment, and the vulnerability of this big guy.
Since this incomparable event, I think that the whole province understood the magic of the Cowboys Fringants and worried about Karl’s health. We collectively hoped he would pull through. The news of his death caused a shock as great as the death of Dédé Fortin or Serge Bouchard, of whom I can’t help but think of when I hear America cries. Karl was so young, and so on the side of life, that his passing breaks us. There will be a before and an after, it seems like we just lost the beat.
Beyond the music, Les Cowboys Fringants were literally in communion with the public, without ever being big-headed, remaining discreet, but available to their fans. HAS The Press, we received a flood of testimonies, each more moving than the last. Behind the shower of tributes from public figures, there are thousands of ordinary people, whom Les Cowboys Fringants have always celebrated in their songs. These everyday heroes who hold on despite the ordeals, among other things by listening to their albums like a balm on their wounds.
The love and voice of Karl Tremblay will forever remain somewhere deep in our hearts. And it is a little of this love that we return to his loved ones, in particular his partner Marie-Annick Lépine and their two daughters, as well as Jean-François Pauzé and Jérôme Dupras. That their immense mourning can be based on this common sorrow, Quebec as a whole offers its shoulder. But good God “winter is going to be tough this year”.