It’s because they started out strong, these 35e Francos! You had to see the crowd gathered on the Place des Festivals on Friday evening: from the foot of the stage to the sidewalk of Sainte-Catherine, we were dancing on our toes. It was beautiful to see, and to hear, first the great return of Marie-Annick Lépine, followed by the Quebec Redneck Bluegrass Project (QRBP), which demonstrated to tens of thousands of Montreal spectators that it is more than a regional phenomenon. Our journey as festival-goers, in joyous disorder.
This return promised to be emotional, after everything that “the girl” of the Cowboys Fringants has experienced in recent months. She took to the main stage at 7 p.m. to sing a good dozen songs with remarkable aplomb, supported by five remarkable musicians, starting with her “cosmic sisters” Mara Tremblay and Catherine Durand who, without Marie-Annick, form the Hauterive duo.
Benevolent shoulders on which Lépine rested: their vocal harmonies were as rich as they were saving, masking the bursts of emotion that Marie-Annick felt while singing “When the bustards, the bustards come back / The time arrives which lightens the sorrows / When the bustards, the bustards come back / How I long to tell you I love you. » (When the bustards returnfrom his album Between Beaurivage and Ange-Gardien2021).
The ballad then brought down a notch the excitement in which Lépine and his orchestra staged their beginning of the concert, very country-rock, the Mara and Marie-Annick sometimes playing the violin, the guitar or the mandolin, Catherine clutching his dry guitar. Two-thirds of the way through the concert, Marie-Annick addressed the crowd, suggesting that almost everywhere in Quebec this summer, people would sing the songs of the Cowboys Fringants. “It would be good if I did some too,” she added before intoning When I lookbrief but intense mandolin ritornello taken from Union Break (2002).
The rest of his program allowed fans to immerse themselves back into the world of the Cowboys. Marie-Annick Lépine sang, for the first time in Montreal, the beautiful Loulou vs Louloufrom the last album Royal Pub – and, surprise!, his friend Jean-François Pauzé appeared alongside him to give him the answer, to the loud applause of the audience.
Pauzé grabbed a guitar, once again accompanying his musical accomplice of the last thirty years for the festive and recapitulating Thank you well!but it was on a completely different tone that the concert ended, with the moving The White hairswritten for the daughters of Karl and Marie-Annick, then with the immortal Shooting Stars, which will undoubtedly remain in the musician’s repertoire until her retirement. “It’s really the fun to make the scene again! », exclaimed Lépine, all smiles, but with reddened eyes. His reunion with the public at the Quebec Summer Festival on July 14 promises to be just as moving.
Less than an hour later, the QRBP stormed the stage on which we had set up a bar… and a ski-doo! The size of the crowd had tripled by then, as if word had only spread party was going to take somewhere at the end of the Place des Festivals. Promise kept: there are only four of them, and above all without a drummer or percussionist, but their trad-folk-punk song formula, a sort of Mano Negra with an arrowed belt, is catching fire. At the foot of the stage, there was fury, a mosh pit which, seen from a distance, looked like quicksand, each grain of which responded to the group by singing the words of each of its songs.
Such communion took place in a crowded MTelus for the return of rock veterans from Lac, Galaxie. The orchestra played with the determination of one whose mission is to steal from QRBP the title of band of party of the evening. When we arrived around 9:30 p.m., Oliver Langevin was stretching out a guitar solo, the rest of the band (including drummer Pierre Girard, who had just spent an hour beating time with Marie-Annick Lépine) joining him in turn. role, just to start off with an armful of psychedelic rock groove. Enjoyable!
Let’s end this Francos ballad at the beginning: under a sun partially hidden by clouds, at 6 p.m., the Belgian Témé Tan released the new songs from his recent album When he is alone, published last November. And alone, he was, for the first portion of the show: with or without guitar, always accompanied by electronic sequences, in line with the sound style of his latest album.
With a smile and confidence, Témé Tan set the mood on the Parterre of the Quartier des spectacles, before being joined by saxophonist Félix Petit (FELP) and percussionist Steeven Chouinard (Le Couleur), who came to give more tone to his dancing songs. And as we wished, our friend Pierre Kwenders came to sing Pancake – in closing, he arranged to meet us at the same place, this Saturday at 8 p.m., for his own concert.