World Guitar Festival | Richard Séguin and his finders of light

(Rouyn-Noranda) “The songs are strong,” Richard Séguin told us during a short interview, Friday afternoon, on the shores of Lake Osisko, in Rouyn-Noranda. “It’s fragile, but it can be strong. » When evening came, he would spend his entire show showing it off, with the inspired support of three dazzling guitarists, capable of saying as much with their instruments as the singer with his words.

Richard Séguin had given up on festival shows for several years. But the invitation from the Festival of World Guitars in Abitibi-Témiscamingue was of a kind that cannot be refused: to bring together on stage some of the guitarists for whom he has the most admiration. The almost 650 tickets, put on sale in March, would sell out in five minutes, even forcing the presentation of an additional one.

“We’ve been invited for 20 years,” said Richard Séguin just after starting this opening show of the 20th on Friday evening.^e edition of the Festival of World Guitars in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. The Rouynorandians will quickly have forgiven him for the wait.

This is because the legendary singer had not only invited his favorite guitarists, but he would line up, for the first time in too long, success after success after success. Starting, as a curtain raiser, with Looking for your star. A song of the road and circumstance for the one who had swallowed ten and a half hours of asphalt, Wednesday, from his village of Saint-Venant-de-Paquette.

Coming to Rouyn-Noranda by plane? “Well there! », Exclaimed Séguin, amused by our absurd suggestion, during a brief afternoon meeting on the shores of Osisko Lake. With his eternal Marthe at the wheel, he will have used these kilometers to learn his presentation texts, written for this show created especially for the festival, and to remember the words of the many songs that he had not performed for a while.

“The country we visited is the country we remember,” he said, presenting And you walkand it’s also somewhat true of the country we traveled through.

Instinctively

At his side on Friday evening, three guitarists, and not the least: Simon Godin, his faithful musical director, Hugo Perreault, who accompanied him for a long time, but who found him on stage for the first time in almost a decade, and the Atikamekw musician Ivan Boivin Flamand, a born rock star, with his sunglasses screwed to his face and his beret, friend of the veteran singer since his last visit to Mani-Utenam.

“It feels good to be here,” says a visibly very happy Séguin, after a few songs. Which is not surprising. This here, that of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, is instinctively intimate to a man whose repertoire has always expressed what the vastness of the territory can most powerfully inspire.

The wandering angel obviously speaks of Jack Kerouac, but his resounding “On the road again” could also be that of those who left everything to come and settle in this country where the landscape does not always have the grace of that of the Appalachians, but it happens that a spruce tree calls you by your first name, if you give it enough patience.

And Under the chimneys ? “It’s certain that here, it has a different resonance,” observed Séguin in an interview, well aware, impossible to ignore, that the chimneys of the Horne Foundry stand not far away, just a few meters from the Center of the congresses on whose stage he was going to appear.

In memory of Réjean Bouchard

The guitar has always been a revolutionary tool, Séguin will remind us of this by dusting off To a Guthrie tune, his tribute to the named Woody, on the instrument on which the words “This machine kills fascists” were engraved. The guitar may not have literally killed many fascists, but it undeniably continues to open hearts, which is no small thing.

A solo is only a sterile demonstration of manual skill if it does not soften something in those who receive it. Simon Godin, Hugo Perreault and Ivan Boivin Flamand are in this sense followers of the philosophy of Réjean Bouchard, who died in July 2023 at the age of 67. It is he, one of the greatest guitarists in Quebec, who was the architect of the sound of the guitars of Séguin’s best-known albums, such as At the gates of the morning And Instinctively. Réjean Bouchard chose each note like one strings pearls into a necklace.

A lovely memory of seeing Séguin, during morning rehearsals, come down from the stage to look at the photos of his friend gone, projected on the screens bordering the stage, during the portion of the show celebrating his legacy.

Séguin seemed moved and we were just as moved during Up, a composition by Bouchard, played by Ivan Boivin Flamand with a fervor that closely resembled what one might simply call love or gratitude. He had just described it as “ [son] grandfather, a mentor.”

And there was light everywhere on Friday, starting with the eyes of a playful, chatty and generous Séguin, who gave us a gift, yes, but who first gave himself one.

“Who were you looking for, what were you looking for? »

At 72 years old, Richard Séguin also very probably offered Rouyn-Noranda, at the end of the curtain, the definitive version of The wandering angela heroic, epic, inhabited rereading, vast as a continent, worthy of the electrified version of Youngtown that Springsteen performs on stage with Nils Lofgren.

Dazzled, Séguin looked at keyboardist Jean-Sébastien Fournier and his drummer Alexis Martin with a look of pure disbelief on his face at the expressive agility of his guitarists.

“Who were you looking for, what were you looking for? » While Ivan Boivin Flamand and Simon Godin were producing fireworks from their instruments, no one was looking for anything anymore. We had the present moment. We had found the light, the light that only a guitar can bring forth.

Accommodation and travel costs for this report were paid by the festival, which had no say in the matter.

The World Guitar Festival continues until 1^er June.

Visit the festival website