Richard Seguin | From screams to whispers

In Links places, Richard Séguin walks between the country of childhood and the inhabited territory. An intimate and enveloping new album, by a singer-songwriter who believes in the power of the word “hope”.

Josee Lapointe
The Press

Richard Séguin is discreet between each album, but he writes none the less. Five years after his musical project devoted to Henry David Thoreau, here he is again with a work matured for a long time, in which his music takes on new colors.

“At 70, what’s new is that you do things without expectation,” says Richard Séguin, who for two years wrote and composed in his little cabin built in the forest in Saint-Venant-de-Paquette. , where he lives. He took the time, “without deadline to “forge” each of the ten songs on the album.

“Basically, I’m a craftsman,” says the singer, who then hastens to show us photos of said cabin and the view it offers him of the Appalachians, “his” mountains. “My girlfriend is very happy since I’m going to work there, there’s less fuss in the house! »

Richard Séguin is in a good mood. He is preparing to hit the road again in mid-September with a big tour of 80 shows in one year. “I’m doing vocals, I’ve started guitar exercises again… The stage is not the place where you release your toxins, I want to be in good shape! And he is happy to collaborate with musicians who take him to new avenues.

“They are all young people in their forties. They tell me that their parents made them listen america day when they were 9 years old… That makes for good anecdotes! »

He is laughing. But working with artists from other generations is part of the fun of having a long career — something around 50 years in his case.

The album was born with three texts written for him by the poet Hélène Dorion, whose lucid vision of the world he likes. ” It’s already midnight / In the forest of the world / What have we betrayed / For the storm to roar », he recites to us. “She sums it all up. »

His longtime accomplice Marc Chabot also wrote him a song, Since, a more serious text than he had expected, born after a discussion on the loved ones carried away “by the grim reaper”. The singer also adapted a text by Hugo Latulippe, inspired by his documentary I lift myself upwhich he performs a capella at the end of the album.

It was inspired by the “unforeseen” of these new texts, and after meeting the arranger Mathieu Vanasse, that Richard Séguin let strings and keyboards take their place alongside the guitars. “It gives colors that I had never had. »

Result: he felt in this “new signature” a form of appeasement that we hear in his way of singing, softer, closer, more intimate. “I tended to push the note a lot, in this one I lowered the register. »

We even have the impression sometimes that he is whispering, as in A little poetrywhich opens the album.

Through all this sweetness, it is not surprising that we find there the family and the benevolent shadow of his parents. In The garage, he tenderly evokes his father’s lair, filled with objects “that speak like words”. Then in Close to the aspens, for the first time, he devotes a very moving song to his mother. The one who brought “culture” into the house and who wrote down all sorts of quotes in a little notebook.

Today, it is he who engraves in the wood of his cabin the bits of text that have marked him. “Ah, that’s his DNA, that’s for sure,” says Richard Séguin, smiling gently, for whom visiting the past is not a nostalgic gesture. He sees the exercise more as a “chronicle”.

“I find it very difficult to look back, I prefer to look forward. But that does not detract from the fact that the country of birth and childhood is still alive, and that the impressions received at that time are decisive. »

Hope

This bubble of interiority that he has woven around the album spreads even in his more committed lyrics. For example, in Forest pathswho denounces clear-cutting, Richard Séguin is carried by the same exasperation as at the time of Protest Song. But the way has changed.

“The way to approach it is less frontal, but also felt. Sometimes whispering can have a greater impact than shouting. »

the one who sang What do we leave them 15 years ago is more concerned than ever by the climate crisis and the treatment we reserve for the planet. But if he is lucid, he refuses fatalism.

In the show, which promises to be more acoustic than the previous ones, words will also be put forward. He will of course navigate between recent and old songs and intends to highlight the 30th anniversary of the album. At the gates of the morningwhich meant a lot to the public.

“I don’t remember who said that, but a song is like an emotional landmark in our lives. It’s always amazing to know the path they take. »

He hopes the news will resonate with people too. And even if “we are lagging far behind”, he remains hopeful for the future of the world and has confidence in the rising generations.

“At the moment, the current is flowing more with the women, as with Mothers at the front. I don’t know how the next generations will perceive us… I wonder, sometimes, are we dancing on the Titanic? ? »

This does not prevent him from continuing to make songs.

” Yes. I will do as long as my health permits. A song… me, it makes me feel good. When Hugo lends me his words: We will feed the fire of our villages… Where we live happy days… These territories are our temple… It really picks me up. »

A sudden emotion constricts his throat and he stops talking. He is reminded that precisely when he sings these words, he is useful. He closes his bag, gets up quietly and looks at us, his eyes shining.

” We will try. »

The Scrapbook Links places releases Friday, September 9.

folk-rock

Links places

Richard Seguin

Spectra