Posted at 8:00 a.m.
René Lussier has just turned 65. We wouldn’t give them to him. Aside from the graying beard, the guitarist extraordinaire still looks 29, just like in the days of language treasurehis most famous work.
Sixty-five is often retirement age. Not for him. Withdrawn in his Appalachian lands, René Lussier continues his insatiable exploration of sounds, rhythms and tones, multiplying crazy projects – which often go unnoticed, but what do you want, that’s how it is when you choose to devote your life to experimental music.
His most recent delirium will be presented on May 20 at the Victoriaville Current Music Festival (FIMAV), of which he was moreover one of the first guests in 1983. It is a show with eight musicians, baptized To the Green Devilas in this remote place where he has lived with his girlfriend since 2003, near Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur and far from everything else.
Au Diable Vert for me is where I live. I am an eccentric. I live in a row. It’s a cul-de-sac with a dirt road in Appalachia. It is a vast territory, which is still unknown. In my music, I think that’s what comes out.
Rene Lussier
This vaguely rural description could lead one to believe that our man is now into country. It is not so.
His new compositions always dig the furrow of avant-garde music, with syncopated grooves, doctored sounds, twisted and fuzzy guitars, breaks in rhythm, non-traditional accordion, tuba, double drums and occasional improvisations on unconventional structures from the free jazz or progressive rock.
Without forgetting humour, a fundamental aspect of the work of the most original of Quebec guitarists.
Lussier returns with his famous voice-guitar tracings, a ” gimmick (it is he who says it) which has somewhat become his signature since the success of the language treasure. He has fun with sounds, noises, blinks, sticks his tongue out and throws us titles as comic as Westernopod Where Murder Turkeys. Even if he is now eligible for a golden age card, the musician has clearly lost none of his playful and amazed side, so many qualities that allow him to constantly renew himself, within the framework quite “ lousse” of avant-garde music.
“I am a player. In the childish sense. I’m always on the move”, confirms the musician, his eyes shining behind his little nerd glasses.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE
René Lussier, photographed in 2007 for the release of his album The treasures of the language
Active since 1974…
This perhaps explains why his music does not age. Nor him, for that matter.
And yet. Despite this resolutely youthful side, René Lussier is far from being born yesterday.
During our two hours of conversation, the guitarist returns in sequence to his career which, casually, dates back to 1974.
He tells us about his first band, Arpèges (!), with which he was already making a living in bars. Then from the experience of Conventum, a rare avant-garde group from Quebec in the 1970s, whose two albums have, by the way, aged very well.
In the 1980s, contemporary music boomed in Quebec. The Current Music Festival was founded, as was the Ambiances Magnétiques record label, under which Lussier would record until the early 2000s, with his friends Jean Derome, Robert Marcel Lepage and Martin Tétrault.
It was a prosperous time for the guitarist, who toured all over the world and collaborated with several big international names in avant-garde music, including drummer Chris Cutler, cellist Tom Cora, crazy guitarist Eugene Chadbourne and above all the cult Fred Frith, with whom he will play episodically for 14 years, within the group Keep the Dog and the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet. According to him, the adventure did not end very well, even if Lussier admits having “learned a lot” from the English master of the experimental six-string.
The whirlwind seems to have calmed down for a few years. Entrenched in his land, Lussier found another rhythm, far from the usual circuits. He produces most of his albums on his own, with a regularity that commands admiration.
Every day I play. I get up early, I read my newspapers, I heat up my workshop and I get down to it. When I enter the room, I punch with my castanets.
Rene Lussier
As for many artists, the pandemic has not facilitated his work of collaborations and reduced his opportunities for live performances. He does not hide his “excitement” to transpose his octet on stage and hopes that this world premiere will not be the affair of a single evening. If necessary, he already has other projects up his sleeve, such as a “power trio” of free music, which he would like to lug around the halls, hoping that the post-COVID “traffic jam” in cultural spaces eventually resolve.
Hey guys, hi… Don’t wait for him to retire for real.
Rene Lussier. To the Green Devil. World premiere at the Colisée des Bois-Francs, Friday, May 20 at 10 p.m.