A familiar voice of Quebecers fades away. Cowboys Fringants singer Karl Tremblay died Wednesday at the age of 47. He announced in the summer of 2022 that he was battling prostate cancer, which forced the group to cancel several of their commitments in recent months.
It was the same day, in a publication on social networks, that the Quebec music group made the official announcement.
The public was able to say goodbye to the singer during the Cowboys Fringants concert presented as part of the last Quebec Summer Festival. A spectacle which proved particularly emotional, while Karl Tremblay appeared physically diminished. In a moment filled with emotion that will go down in history, the crowd sang the song On my shoulderwhich had visibly affected the singer.
In 25 years, the Cowboys have become a real social phenomenon in Quebec. And Karl Tremblay had a lot to do with it with his charisma and contagious energy on stage. Each of their shows brought together hordes of fans who know the lyrics of the songs by heart.
No group in the history of music in Quebec has enjoyed such success over such a long period. The Cowboys Fringants are, by far, the most listened to Quebec artists on streaming platforms in the province. A real feat for a group that has always skillfully avoided playing the industry game, preferring to give interviews to the written press and local media rather than on television.
In 2004, the group preferred to go bowling on TQS on Saturday evenings, rather than participate in the very popular show Fury on Radio-Canada. The Cowboys Fringants never appeared at Everybody talks about it, despite repeated invitations. The general public ultimately knows very little about the private lives of the members of the group, who have opted for discretion. The fact remains that Quebecers were attached to Karl Tremblay.
Confidential beginnings
It all started in the mid-1990s in the locker room of a junior hockey team in Repentigny. Karl Tremblay met Jean-François Pauzé there, who would become the guitarist and main songwriter of the group. They will be joined by drummer Dominique Lebeau (who left the group in 2007), bassist Jérôme Dupras and violinist Marie-Annick Lépine, who will become Karl Tremblay’s partner and the mother of his two young children.
The idea of playing on the radio and filling arenas doesn’t even cross their minds at first. The first songs of Cowboys Fringants are essentially humorous and parody the country style, hence the name of the group.
The Cowboys’ first cassette, 12 Great Songs, was released in 1998 in 500 copies, which the members of the group mainly shared with their loved ones on the North Shore. The project is mainly intended to be artisanal, but one thing leads to another and the quintet is making waves in the Montreal bar scene because of the energy that is already emanating from the shows.
We would have to wait until the year 2000 to hear a first real opus: Motel Capri, a self-produced album that remains faithful to the group’s origins with its offbeat lyrics and western sounds. A core of unconditional fans is already starting to form around the Cowboys. It was at the request of insistent viewers that Musique Plus ended up playing the very low-budget music video for the piece on the air. Marcel Galarneau. From this period, we will also remember the titles Native Quebecer And Hector’s Shackwhich remains one of the favorite songs of singers in bars throughout Quebec.
Surprise success
But it’s especially with the album Union break, in 2002, that the career of the Cowboys Fringants exploded. It was also at this time that Karl Tremblay gave up his work in a video store to concentrate exclusively on music.
This album marks a real turning point for the group. Exit country. The melodies are closer to folk and rock, but the violin is always put forward, which gives the Quebec touch so characteristic of the Cowboys Fringants sound. On this opus, the texts of Jean-François Pauzé are also more engaged, more political, as on the pieces The demonstration And At half-mastwhich will become the anthem of a disillusioned post-referendum generation.
The radio stations are initially reluctant to play the songs of Karl Tremblay and his acolytes, but they will eventually bend to popular will. The Ballad Autumn song will become the group’s first hit, reaching the top of the charts, not in the fall, but in the summer of 2002. Success will follow My boyfriend Rémianother ballad which this time tackles head-on the delicate subject of suicide.
In 2004, the Cowboys Fringants will release the album The Great Masswhich contains a string of number ones, like The Queen, Ti-Cul and above all the nostalgic Shooting Starswhich earned the group their first Félix for popular song of the following year.
From this album will also be taken the extract Nothing, an apocalyptic song against the backdrop of the climate crisis. The Cowboys Fringants’ commitment to the environment has marked their career, having set up a foundation for the protection of the territory in 2006.
Two years later, the album The Expedition seals a more adult turn with a softer sound, as on the pieces The Catherine, As long as we have love or Oak and reed.
Much more than shooting stars
Despite the passing years, interest in the Cowboys Fringants has never waned, quite the contrary. They have won the Félix for group of the year four times, even in 2011, when they specifically asked their fans not to vote for them since they had not released anything in the last year. From album to album, always the same proven recipe: square compositions and texts directly inspired by everyday life.
The French will also fall under the spell of this very Quebecois simplicity. The Cowboys Fringants are the only local group to be able to fill venues on both sides of the Atlantic.
After several Bell Centers and more than a million albums sold in the French-speaking world, Les Cowboys Fringants did it again in 2019 by releasing a piece which will become one of their biggest career successes: America criesvoted song of the year at the ADISQ Gala the following year.
In interview at Duty in 2021, when their latest album is released, The nights of Repentigny, Karl Tremblay summarized the reasons which explained, according to him, the exceptional longevity of the group as follows: “If we are close to the real world, it is perhaps because we are from the real world! If you start playing a game, one, it runs out of steam, and two, asking for more and asking for more, it ends up being exhausting for the people around you. »