Twelve years after Appellation d’origine contrôlée, La Bottine Souriante returns with Domino!, a fresh record which testifies to the renewed energy of the monumental trad group. Interview two days before the group’s return to Montreal, which launches its tour on Friday at Club Soda in Montreal.
The morning of our interview in a café in Plateau Mont-Royal, Olivier Salazar and David Boulanger still had the sound of their first rehearsal ringing in their ears.
“It’s complicated in wafer! », Olivier Salazar admits with a laugh when we ask what it’s like to rehearse when our group has eleven musicians and three stage technicians from all over southern Quebec. His colleague Boulanger adds.
On stage, the group promises to play at least half of Domino!’s excellent songs. “We have seen for years what works well, we try to keep these songs in our show,” David Boulanger tells us. But this time, we gave a different order of importance to certain classics. We broke up blocks of songs that we had been playing together for years. »
We therefore intend to replace certain older songs with new pieces which are in the same spirit. Another new feature is that the show will be the same from one evening to the next. “People will come back to see us like we go back to the cinema to watch a good film again,” David Boulanger likes to compare.
It will also be an opportunity to see on stage the latest iteration of La Bottine, which has continued to evolve over its 47-year history. Sheriff Robert Bob Ellis, on bass trombone, and saxophonist and arranger Jean Fréchette, both of whom arrived in the early 1990s, are now the guardians of the almost fifty-year-old tradition.
However, it is David Boulanger who took the destiny of the group in hand, but he is supported by a creative core which includes, among others, bassist Mathieu Gagné and pianist Olivier Salazar, who joined the Lanaudière group only two years ago . “I had been waiting for four years for the guys to call me back, I had lost hope,” Olivier Salazar, who is the youngest of the group at 28, tells us with a laugh. I will always remember my first show with La Bottine; it was in 2017 in Petit Rocher for Acadian Day. I was still at university at the time and I remember that it was the best show I had done in my life, the most dynamic, the most physical, it was really a party! »
We promise the same energy this Friday at Club Soda. “There is something [in our music] that touches everyone who wants to get on board,” says David Boulanger. The repertoire, the energy, the dancing side, with a modern touch in the sound structures and arrangements. »
Domino! is intended to be an exercise where tradition and modernity blend wonderfully. Some pieces like Les belles Québécoises and La Wagine are faithful to the traditional repertoire, others like Le bal chez Jos Brûlé or Pouroubli are hats off to the greats Tex Lecor and Gilles Vigneault, while others are pieces of bravery which testify to the diverse influences that fuel the members of the group.
C’est dans Paris, a superb, almost rock-responsive song that begins with the melody of Éric Beaudry’s Irish bouzouki filtered through a distortion pedal, is certainly one of the most astonishing examples. “Éric is not the same guy he was 20 years ago,” tells us his colleague Boulanger, who also joined the group at the turn of the millennium. He started to like other kinds of sounds, he now includes them in the group. Like all of us, his personality shapes that of the band, it’s natural, what happens. »
In addition to the popular percussionist Mélissa Lavergne who adds some exotic touches to the recipe, the disc also includes compositions by the Italian Riccardo Tesi (Santiago) and the Irish Sharon Shannon (Benji’s Rollicks), two talented accordionists, as well as the Swedish Erik Rydvall (Little Emil), great performer of the nyckelharpa, a medieval instrument related to the hurdy-gurdy which is played with a bow. “We chose songs that suited our sound better, with which we had more affinity in terms of styles,” explains David Boulanger.
By the way, is it difficult to continue innovating when you have to defend the legacy of such a legendary group? “We sometimes feel responsible for taking something that exists and having a duty to perpetuate it,” admits the 40-year-old fiddler. But we make music today and we defend that too, in addition to making songs that people still want to hear. But you know, we ourselves had a blast listening to these songs, going to see them in shows; today, we do them on the course. We are both fans and members of the band! »
What could be better for La Bottine, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2026. Because yes, David Boulanger is already working on this. We’ll talk to you about it again.
