Les Cowboys Fringants at the FEQ | Festive and emotional

(Québec) Monday evening at the Festival d’été de Québec will go down in history. By adding one more day to allow the Cowboys Fringants to resume the show canceled on Thursday due to bad weather, the FEQ organization allowed festival-goers to see an incomparable show, endowed with the emotional charge that we had been rarely given to live.

We felt it from the start, when Karl Tremblay let a few bars pass before starting to sing. Down here. The singer, who is battling prostate cancer, was clearly touched to the core of his being by the wave of love that swept over him as he entered in front of the approximately 90,000 spectators.

The emotion quickly gave way to celebration when Jérôme Dupras lent his bass to his colleague Jean-François Pauzé for the time to harangue the crowd in the introduction of The Queen. After passing behind the percussion, the bassist even pretended to play the riff of Thunderstruckfrom AC/DC – he was the band’s touring guitarist who played the notes composed by Angus Young. All the same housesfrom the most recent album The antipodeshas precisely made it possible to highlight the rich arrangements delivered by the 10 musicians on stage – a brass section, two guitarists and a drummer supported the Cowboys on the Plains.

While Jérôme Dupras took a crowd bath to go sing Ti-Ass with the public, however, we felt that Karl Tremblay did not have the same confidence behind the microphone. The singer sat down at the end of the song, the giant screens went out, and Jean-François Pauzé approached the microphone to announce that the singer was going to take a break. But he was interrupted by the principal concerned. “We will take the break later,” said Karl Tremblay. Bring me the chair, it’s good to sing sitting down, that song! This song was Crossing, interpreted with a rare emotion, more than we have ever heard in a show. Near us, in the crowd, many people couldn’t hold back their tears, the same for the journalist colleagues who barely concealed their reaction, especially when Karl Tremblay fervently supported one of the key passages of the song: “We are not afraid of NOTHING! »

He regained his composure on Nothingto better declare his love for the Festival d’été de Québec.

The show ended with As long as we have loveenhanced by a choir composed spontaneously by Jérôme Dupras, who had just taken a second walkabout on a Awikatchikaen particularly exciting – the bassist-crowd entertainer and incidentally doctor in geography had also taken the opportunity to do a drum solo just before!

The Fringants Cowboys concluded this exceptional evening with Shooting Starsmagnified by a constellation of cellphone lights stretching to the top of the hill, well away from the stage, before ending with a surprise, A little toura song the group had only performed once this year, at the Bell Center in January.

Superfrancofest 2023

Called on stage to sing merchant navy at the beginning of the first encore of the Cowboys Fringants, it was Sara Dufour who had the task of warming up the crowd at the curtain raiser, a mandate brilliantly achieved thanks to her almost punk country-rock which turns as fast as a two-engine time. She even took the liberty of integrating a few measures of Killing in the Name of Rage Against the Machine in his song Chic-Chocsa high-octane formula tailor-made for a stage – and a crowd – of this magnitude.

The one who starred in Watatatow launched a frankly felt appeal recalling that she was here on the Plains to attend the Cowboys Fringants show, 10 years ago: “My grandmother told me that when she thought of my career, she saw that like a wave that was coming,” confided the young singer-songwriter.

The one who followed on the big stage of course saw others, but Robert Charlebois seemed frankly delighted to be there. “We missed our shot on Thursday, but we won’t miss it in the evening, we promise,” he said after launching the show with The lack of self-confidence. We’re gonna heat it up for the Cowboys! »

Energetic and in voice like never before, the legendary 79-year-old singer, dressed all in white, delivered the same condensed version of his show Robert en CharleboisScope which he presented earlier this summer at the Francos – Louise Forestier was there too and her pleasure was simply contagious. However, the songs chosen by Charlebois were particularly appropriate in Quebec, because three of them had been premiered here in August 1974 as part of the memorable show I saw the wolf, the fox, the lion with Félix Leclerc and Gilles Vigneault – this is what launched the Superfrancofête, the first festival organized on the Plains of Abraham.

The very rock’n’roll Between two seals allowed us to see an inspired Charlebois playing bottleneck on his mic stand while My country she stood out so much she has not aged a bit despite her 50 years. As for Lindberghit is unsurprisingly the one that resonated the most with the public, the vast majority of whom were not in the world when the monumental piece was sung here for the first time.

It is however in Dolores that Charlebois first referenced the 1974 show with Leclerc and Vigneault, in his inimitable nomenclature of cars he owned. He allowed himself to invent a new one, inspired by the Amphicar, this amphibious car from the 1960s: “Why not a Legault 500 or an electric Fitzgibbon 3000? With amphibious vehicles to cross the river, wouldn’t we need a third link? OK, that’s good, we’re not going there! “, he launched, laughing.

A good player, Charlebois gave way to the Cowboys Fringants after a single encore; Here you are was politely greeted, even though the crowd didn’t really ask for her. Because everyone on the Plains had nothing but Karl Tremblay and his gang, who in turn created the event.