It’s the most beautiful picture of the year… and it’s only July.
It is the most moving proof of the love of an audience that helps an artist to continue living: Karl Tremblay, his face surrounded, seated on a chair, singing the song with his lips. on my shoulderwith the help of the crowd from the Festival d’été de Québec.
I am not one of the 90,000 spectators who were in Quebec, on the Plains, on Monday.
But the video clips circulating made me cry like a calf, and if I’m to believe the social media, I’m not the only one.
It says a lot about the power of emotion: even if we weren’t there, the resilience of Karl Tremblay, who is fighting cancer, was able to pierce the screen and touch our hearts.
THE HAPPINESS THAT CREAMS
It is all the same a funny reversal of the situation that today it is the public who says to Karl: “Put your head on my shoulder / So that my love grazes you / You who need it so much”. In the trajectory of the Cowboys Fringants, they are the ones who have helped us to live for years.
How many times have I listened on my shoulder, with the right words, to get through a difficult time? How many times have I found, looking around me, that the world, everywhere, was held together “with a pin”?
In Shooting Stars or in on my shoulder, The Cowboys have excelled in the art of telling us about the passage of time. This little anguish that seizes our hearts when we look in the rear view mirror and see ourselves yesterday as a teenager, the day before yesterday as a child watching Master keywho else could put it so well into words?
In Ti-ass, Basement Or autumn tune, The Cowboys tell us about life choices, the paths we take, the moments when we stumble on the path of our life. And how many times have I sang at the top of my lungs, with them, to lament that in Quebec “We take pleasure in mediocrity / Well satisfied with our routine”?
Better than anyone, The Cowboys know how to sing the search for happiness of a French-speaking people of America, lost between the illusions of their youth and the raw reality of adult life.
When the Cowboys last came to Montreal, I went to see them with my 15-year-old son.
While I’m more into Ferland/Cohen/Brel, my son is fueled by Playboi Carti/menace Santana/Lil Uzi Vert rap.
The only music we have in common is that of the Cowboys Fringants.
You cannot know the emotion I felt when, in a packed Bell Centre, my son and I sang together America is cryingthe lyrics of which we both knew by heart.
NOT ALL THE SAME SONGS
At one time, in Quebec, there was a “rivalry” between the tripeux of Beau Dommage and the fans of Harmonium. But in 2023, in Quebec, the group that knows how to bring together generations, right and left, people from the regions and those from urban areas, is Les Cowboys.
There are thousands of us to regret not having been there, in person, on Monday, to light our cellphones like a flame in the night to say “thank you” to the dashing Karl.