Most had one thing in common: the job. Their professional life was organized between media libraries and libraries. This is how the first page of the group opens. Without Gutenberg, very clever who can say what would have happened. From there, fate, love and encounters take care of scattering each other to the four corners of the country to leave us with the three protagonists who make up The Deweys: Stéphane Andrieu, Hervé Ferquel, and William Saint-Jevin, and recently Fred Dumas, on percussion. But something is missing. The preface!
Since the little boost of fate, Stéphane and Hervé, both singers and guitarists, talk more often with William, the harmonica player, and it’s a revelation. The years of concerts-pubs had not been enough to split the armor. They discover that they have a major common influence: Madrugada.
This “haunted and feverish” Norwegian rock band that follows in the footsteps of the Velvet Underground, Nick Cave, to Leonard Cohen, is what they musically aspire to. The Deweys becomes the title of a chapter that has only just begun…
Very quickly Stéphane, Hervé and William combine voices, guitars and harmonica, to revisit rock, folk, alder pop standards of a tight formation that wants to be minimalist. The result strips the originals, to give them a totally unexpected vocal and sound color, carried by silences! Because their thing is the sound. The one that brings back to the time of Orville Gibson, Christian Frederick Martin, or Léo Fender, who once lit up the world with the sound of their guitars. Without them, Elvis, Dylan or Hendrix would not have had the same careers. You understood at the same time, than The Deweys are oriented towards the United States. They wander somewhere between the Bayou of the Mississippi and the great plains of Colorado, with all that entails of light on one side and shade on the other. This is how the three musicians will qualify their music as: Western Gothic. He had no idea at that moment that a sound engineer, when recording a demo, was going to propel them into an acoustic world that they hadn’t even imagined…
– Credit: Patrice Martins of Barros Small
The Deweys in Concert:
- March 26: concert at the Showroom Gallery Cema in Bordères sur l’Echez (65)
- May 29: opening act for H Burns at the Théâtre St Louis (Pau)
- June 12: Very Good Trip Festival (Bellocq)
- July 27: The Fishery of Aurit
The Album:
Find “Silence as friend” at the Leclerc Le Parvis cultural space and at the Cave du Palais in Pau (64), and at the Silver Wolf music store in Lons (64)