PEOPLE OF ATLANTIC CANADA AND QUEBEC! There are but seven scant days until solarbird and I will be among you for two weeks of hanging out, meeting up with people, and general musical awesomeness!
We are looking very, very forward to meeting up with cow, with fellow Le Vent du Nord fan Susan, with framlingem hopefully (HEY EM ANSWER YOUR MAIL mmkay?), with lyonesse if she’s still in Montreal by the time we get there, with scrunchions, with Krista in St. John’s, with lethendy, and with anybody else we get a chance to talk to at Memoire et Racines, the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival, or the Great Big Sea show in Torbay!
Internets, I AM EXCITE! Almost as much for the chance to see Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer as I am Great Big Sea, really–because this’ll very likely be my only shot to see the Charbonniers, and did I mention the part where HOLY CRAP THOSE MEN CAN SING? And did I also mention the buying of French Canadian SF/F, and of tasty maple sugar products (I am informed that maple sugar ice cream is a thing that exists and THIS MUST BE SAMPLED IT IS REQUIRED), and of taking the Haunted Hike tour through downtown St. John’s (research opportunity WOO!), and of going to the Duke of Duckworth pub, renowned to me in song and story and Twitter updates?
Save us some bagels and Growers cider! We’ll be there next week!
Just snagged weekend passes for Dara and me to the Newfoundland & Labrador Folk Festival, the big festival that was our main reason for going to St. John’s to begin with–even if we’ll be skipping out on it on August 4th to scamper up to Torbay for Great Big Sea instead. :D We figured screw it, we’ll just get passes for the whole weekend anyway so we’ll be able to wander in and out at whim. Now I just need to see a full schedule for who’s playing when, since I have particular interest in seeing The Once and the Dardanelles.
Meanwhile, keeping a sharp eye on the Memoire et Racines site, waiting for tickets to be on sale for that too so I can snag passes for Dara and me for July 28th, the Day of Podorythmie! Priority interest will be with Galant Tu Perds Ton Temps and the Charbonniers, but really, my little fangirl heart is desperate to know if I get to see Le Vent du Nord twice in one year.
And speaking of Dara and me in Quebec, side note to either framlingem or scrunchions–if either of you might be interested in hosting a tiny house concert for Dara, let us know, hey? Dara’s got one for Toronto and one for Moncton, and if she could do one in Montreal, that’d make it a TOUR. ;D
And hell, for that matter, anybody following me in St. John’s, if YOU want to host Dara for a teeny house concert, we’ll have way more time to play with there than we will in Montreal! Talk to us if you want to host a Cascadian Supervillain with her Bouzouki of Mass Destruction!
HEL-LO, the Montreal portion of the Great Canadian Summer Adventure just got way, WAY more interesting!
I have had THIS brought to my attention–most recently by Monsieur de Grosbois-Garand, that fine gentleman who gave me the nifty flute lesson. I’d already discovered it poking around various band schedules to see if anything fascinating might crop up that could line up with my and Dara’s trip. But now, after seeing a promo pic go up on Le Vent du Nord’s Facebook page and then poking around on the actual site for the festival, I see that not only Le Vent will be involved, but ALSO the Charbonniers and Galant Tu Perd Ton Temps.
This, mes amis d’Internet, is extremely goddamn relevant to my interests, is what this is. :D
But augh the site for the festival appears to be considerably north of Montreal, at least 40 minutes’ drive and as long as 2 hours by transit. Transit seems right out as an option.
HEY framlingem and scrunchions! Don’t suppose either of you would be up for playing native guide and helping solarbird and me get to this thing, probably on the 28th as a target date? ‘Cause if I have a shot at seeing ANY of these bands live while we’re in Montreal, I am ALL. OVER. THAT. :D This might be my only shot at all to see the Charbonniers or the Galant girls!
Because YouTube loves me this weekend and wants me to have awesome things, I bring to you three brand new videos posted by YouTube user bordurat, who clearly has a lock on all the best Quebecois band videos, and two older ones from the same user’s posts.
Videos behind the fold! The three new ones are from Le Vent du Nord’s recent CD launch party in Montreal–so all the between-song stage talk is in French, too fast for me to follow, but the videos are long and have two songs each, so they are quite worth your time. The two older ones are Genticorum, who I feature here now since those boys are putting in a powerful bid to become my Official Second Favorite Quebecois Band (though I reserve final judgement until De Temps Antan gets out here in August)! Continue reading “Le Vent du Nord and Genticorum videos!”
How much do the gods of all music love me this month? This much: they have given unto me the shining present of the brand new Le Vent du Nord album, Tromper le Temps! Now, mind you, its official release date on CD is the 25th–but it’s shown up early on the iTunes and Amazon MP3 stores, and I could not resist the musical shininess. I will, however, also be buying the CD. Because this album? So awesome I am buying it twice! Now that I have it, though, I can present for you a review! And in honor of Le Vent du Nord’s native language, I now present to you the first paragraph of this review of this album, en français12!
Vous savez déjà, mes amis d’Internet, que j’ai une grande admiration3 pour Le Vent du Nord, le premier groupe à contester Great Big Sea pour mes affections! Il n’est donc pas surprenant que j’aime ce nouvel album. J’aime son esprit. J’aime ses souliers4. J’aime son énergie, son harmonie, et les histoires qui m’attendent dans les paroles. J’aime cet album tellement je vais l’acheter à deux reprises, sur iTunes et sur CD! Et je vous exhorte tous à l’acheter aussi, parce qu’il est beau et impressionnant!
(Okay, that’s about as much French as I can coherently manage in one blog post.5 The Too Long; Didn’t Read Because I Don’t Understand French version: buy this album, because it is a thing of beauty and the boys of Le Vent du Nord are awesome. Tell them I sent you!)
Full review, including song-by-song reactions, behind the fold! Continue reading “Tromper le Temps by Le Vent du Nord: A fangirly and footnoted album review!”
So, De Temps Antan, right? One of the cluster of fine Quebecois bands I’ve been a-swoon over this entire year, in no small part due to the excellent vocals and bouzouki of M. Éric Beaudry. These boys have a very handy PDF of lyrics posted on their site for their first album. There is not, however, an equivalent PDF for their second, current album, Les habits de papier!
Of the songs on this album, three have muscled their way onto my Francophone Favorites playlist: “La turlutte du rotoculteur”, “Pétipétan”, and “Grand amuseur de filles”. The first has no lyrics as it is a double firebomb of turlutte + bouzouki, fiddle, and harmonica action. <3 I found lyrics for the second, for which I am extremely grateful, given that the chorus is a machine-gun spray of syllables and I had to see them transcribed to begin to try to sing it!
You would know, however, that the one where M. Beaudry sings delicious lead, "Grand amuseur de filles", is the one I can't actually find any lyrics for at all! *^_^*;;
So, I told myself, here's a brilliant idea–let's see if I can listen hard to these lyrics and see if I can identify ANY WORDS IN THEM WHATSOEVER. And since I've gotten involved with other local fans of Quebecois music and we have our little Chanson et langue group going, we're seeing if we can transcribe the lyrics ourselves!
I played with this some today with the help of and , who reported to me that the third verse was basically talking about the singer trying to cheer up his sad, sick friend by hauling him off to a strip club, quote, “as you do”. Erin then informed me, and I quote, “I feel this entire song needs to be punctuated with eyebrow waggles, ‘as you do’, or ‘that’s what he said!'” (Which appears to be a very apt description of most of the songs that have gotten onto my aforementioned Francophone Favorites playlist. I keep getting all of the bounciest, stomping-est songs onto this list and then I find out what they mean and I’m all O RLY? >:D )
And I’m amusing myself mightily with the help of Dejah of the Chanson et langue group, who has way more French than I do, though she’s flailing almost as hard as I am on the latter verses of the song.
Here are a random sampling of phrases I was rather stunned I actually heard correctly, based on comparing with Dejah’s much better transcription of at least the initial verses:
Chanter la chanson de ma jolie maîtresse (sing the song of my pretty mistress)
Deux ou trois amants (two or three lovers) (see previous commentary re: O RLY? >:D )
Allons-y donc, allons aux cabaret! (let’s get to the cabaret!)
And I got several scattered other bits of phrases, like “faut la quitter” and “avec un jeune garçon”, and I haven’t yet confirmed but am pretty sure of having heard “je ne fais que pleurer” and “la fleur de la maisson”. Man, trying to transcribe words in a language you barely know is HARD and FUN and Dejah is right–doing this with music is way more entertaining than out of a textbook!
Dara and I started serious work on booking this last night, and discovered to our chagrin that the fares for cross-country Canada trains are prohibitively expensive! So our Trainventure is going to have significantly fewer trains than expected.
But that’s OKAY. Because this entire trip is going to brimming over with so much awesome that we may have to break some laws of physics to cram all of the awesome into two and a half weeks! Hey, I’ve got a supervillain for a spouse, if anybody can break laws of physics, it’ll be my beloved solarbird!
First up–Toronto, from roughly the 24th through the 26th of July! Agenda: enjoy the hospitality of cow, the very best bovine in the eastern provinces! Meet up with Susan, the most awesome Le Vent du Nord fan that ever awesomed, because we owe that woman a proper thanks for the wedding champagne! And there may even be a house concert featuring Dara at Chez Cow!
Next–Montreal, from roughly the 27th through the 30th of July! Agenda: meet framlingem and scrunchions! Convene the Independent Panel of Montreal Bagel Judges! Locate and raid the best possible music store to get me yet more Quebecois trad for my ever-growing collection, and bonus points if I can find anywhere that’ll sell me any album I’m missing with Éric Beaudry on it. :D Locate a bookstore and see if I’m brave enough to bring home some French SF/F! And, if at all possible, find and boing to any appropriate nearby source of podorythmie! (I note, O Internets, that there are TANTALIZINGLY OPEN HOLES in the tour schedules of Le Vent du Nord AND Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer AND De Temps Antan AND La Bottine Souriante and you had better believe that if ANY of them drop shows into this time frame, I am ALL OVER THEM.)
Next–Moncton, from July 30th through August 1st! Agenda: enjoy the company of brightbeak, and perhaps there will be another house concert! Pauline is flinging us a million awesome Moncton-area things we may be doing as well!
And last but not least–St. John’s, from August 1st through August 6th! Agenda: meet lethendy and any other local GBS fan crowd peeps! Absorb the general ambience and look for inspiration for Book 3 of the Kendis and Christopher books! Attend this which will, assuming that the booking of things goes well, is in extremely easy walking distance of this place where we want to stay!
And the crowning, shining glory of this entire Adventure: go to THIS because ZOMG GREAT BIG SEA IN NEWFOUNDLAND YES B’Y! Dara and I had previously been sure it would not be possible to top the magnificent awesomeness of our beloved B’ys at the Olympics in Vancouver. Our beloved B’ys on their home turf, with a Newfoundland crowd, is very likely the ONLY POSSIBLE WAY TO DO IT. You thought I got good altitude on La Danse Verticale for Le Vent? This concert’s Movement will not only be Vertical, it may well reach ORBIT.
Bookings of planes and trains and places to stay begins TONIGHT. Any of you in these places, Internets, who want to meet up with Dara and me–let us know! We look forward to seeing you all!
I have made some happy discoveries, and the first of them is this: I am not entirely hopeless learning things by ear. I kinda knew this already–I do, after all, I have a history of playing along with Great Big Sea, or Elvis, or now also Le Vent, and just picking out melody lines on whatever flute I’m playing. I’ve also found out in the last couple of sessions that I can also pick out a melody line on a tune if it’s a slow one.
For example, I haven’t looked at the sheet music for either “Foggy Dew” or “Arran Boat Song”, and yet I’ve managed to more or less stumble my way through both of those at recent sessions. They’re slow, and not terribly complex, and so hey, I was actually able to manage them!
Faster jigs and reels though are still beyond me. This may be a matter of just not having a big enough musical vocabulary yet to be able to reproduce what I’m hearing as soon as I hear it–or, rather, a big enough musical vocabulary to do it with my fingers on the flute. I can whistle along almost instantly, or even dum-da-deedle if I’m feeling like trying to be Quebecois-ish about it. But I haven’t made that connection in my brain yet between “I hear this” and “I can reproduce it on my instrument”.
The core skill’s got to be there, though. I can do it with slower tunes. In theory, surely therefore I can learn to do it with faster ones!
In the meantime, Éric Beaudry, in his capacity of “one of the lead singers of La Bottine Souriante”, has now joined Le Vent du Nord in flinging me songs that are demanding I play them NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW. In particular, “Au rang d’aimer” on the new La Bottine album has pretty much parked itself in front of me and looked cute and expectant and unwavering, like Cync’s dog Kosha used to do in Kentucky!
So I went OKAY FINE, since this IS a song of one of the Beaudrys we’re talking about here, and first actually picked out the melody line on my piccolo–see previous commentary re: I can TOTALLY do this “by ear” thing, if it’s a slow enough song, and “Au rang d’aimer” is! This let me figure out though that this thing is totally in D mixolydian. The tonic of the melody line is D, but C is natural rather than sharp.
Thanks to throwing the song through a chord app I have on my iPhone, I was also able to figure out that there’s an awful lot of F in these chords, another marker of it being in D mix. Note: the chord app is pretty nifty; it takes recorded tracks in your iTunes library and flings you what chords it thinks are being played in it. From the songs I’ve flung through it so far, it does a fair to middlin’ job. Which is actually very, very good for my purposes, because it leaves enough wiggle room for me to exercise my ear some and figure out where it screwed up, and what the chords I actually want in there are.
Related to this same song, one of the lines in it that totally makes me swoon is “Je serai toujours ton serviteur”, which means “I will always be your servant”. I appear to have just enough of an ear now that I can tell when I totally screw up the pronunciation of “serviteur”–I keep wanting to say “servateur”! And I can’t tell if this is because I am an Anglophone, or if I’m an Anglophone from Kentucky who is totally drawling her infant French.
Dara says it would be hysterical if, in my efforts to learn to sing Quebecois French lyrics, I wound up sounding Cajun.
Day 3 of my and Dara’s Grand Four-Day Weekend of Marriage and Music was Festival du Bois!
I wanted to go to this pretty much as soon as I found out that there was an entire festival of French Canadian and Acadian music going on the very same weekend we were coming up for Le Vent–and, of course, it made utter sense that the concert was being held in conjunction with the festival in question! We wound up only going on Saturday instead of both days, but nonetheless, the one day turned out to be quite fun indeed. Continue reading “Festival du Bois in Maillardville, BC, 3/3/2012”
solarbird