June 22nd

Yesterday was Music Day. There were groups of musicians all over Paris and people everywhere that made a little more traffic in the city. We walked all day to enjoy the energy and ended up in a very popular little bar called "Les Pères Populaires". They set up a little stage in the street and the band that was supposed to play never came. To keep the thirty people there happy two employees of the bar went on stage and then they gave us the guitar... In short, Math and I took the opportunity, ended up playing for Music day, and we had a wonderful evening...

And then... June 30th...

Last week we managed to cross France in 2 days!! Everything started with a tour at Décibulles in Neuve-Église en Alsace. (after being lost 20 times and checked by policemen, we made it to the site only one hour before going on stage) to leave the next day for Tullins and the next next day to Pas-de-Calais.

The bad news is that instead of visiting the places that we were playing we reserved our time at rest stops, and instead of enjoying every outdoor site we were trying to catch up on some sleep...

The good news is that the 3 shows went really well and that we are off until our next show on July 4th in Cergy. The band is dispersed all over France to be tourists... Congratulations!!!

So see you soon!!

Pascale

We just finished our sound check for the midnight show in Mans tonight. It is 5:15PM and it just stopped raining to our delight. Since most festival shows are outside we are more and more interested by temperature!! In fact, now that the sun is back we have time to look at the racecars on the track. Here is what most of our days look like: lots of road and waiting to play an hour and a half of show. What is good about that is we get to use our imagination to kill time. Besides talking about temperature with the entire festival crew (because we’re not the only ones concerned by temperature) Philippe (not Morissette but the gentleman who drives us around France) worked on a backdrop that we’ll put on stage tonight. Right now, from near and far all jokes are about little Karl’s wiener dog (named “saucisson-sur-pattes”). Which isn’t really that funny, but we’ll have a very nice wiener dog on stage with us tonight and that makes us really happy!!

(I hope that you can follow me even if I use parentheses a lot…)

Last week I had the chance to discover 2 excellent bands on the same festivals as us. Ebony Bones and tryö (I’m a bit late I know…). We’re very lucky to share a stage with good bands. We also saw people Body surfing on ‘’smilin’’’ and a team of 5 firemen came to help me when I hit my foot running around like an idiot without looking… The French are taking really good care of us!!

So that’s it! Fingers crossed to have some courage to go in the mud tonight and we’ll keep you posted…

Pascale

… P.S: we get a lot of emails about the music for our songs… A songbook has been released in France and we are trying to make it happen in Canada… and ideally free on our website soon… In fact, we read all emails and we appreciate your comments!! Thanks for giving us news about you too J

May 11^th

We arrived in Morin Heights last week. We’re lost in the forest without internet so we have to play music… haha… Getting into Frères Grand recording studio is like being home. I jump on the piano (and believe me it’s not because I’m good at all) and I start to play ‘‘La Lambada’’ while the others are trying to follow my rhythm on the accordion, double bass, African Harp, claves and others! I don’t think we’ll keep this for the album but damn we had fun! Aside from jamming we found some time to work on ‘‘If I Miss My Shot’’. Even if it’s already on YouTube we’re trying to find a new way to make it sound better than what people recorded with their cell phones (or laptop depending on the country…) So that’s where we are for now. It’s a bit sad that we only have couple days in the studio left, but we enjoy ourselves thinking about spending the summer in Europe playing festivals…

Also we’ll play live at Musique Plus on May 21^st. So for those who would be interested I think it’s open for everyone to come and there are some spots left… For those who can’t take the plane to come to Montreal keep in mind that we’ll be in town very soon and we can’t wait!!

See you soon!

Pascale

April 23^rd 2009

We just came home 2 days ago. I think I can speak for everyone if I say it looks like we never left. The past two months went so fast. Our first France-Belgium tour is over already and our 27 days away went so well we didn’t even notice that time passed by. We were given warm welcomes in every venue we played at. A lot of them we “sold out” and for those that weren’t they made up for in energy!! I saw people drawing boat anchors on their arms. (haha) We received a lot of gifts from people who came to the concerts. We finished our big tour at “festival de Jazz Carthage” in Tunisia. We didn’t really know what to expect there since our album is not released in Africa yet.  We really appreciated that not only was the venue almost full but that people knew the songs! Which made us realize downloading music from the internet isn’t all bad… haha …

At the beginning of the tour Mathieu bought a little classic guitar with the idea of putting stickers on it from the cities we visited. He made it with the help from people in each of the cities so thanks to everyone for your cooperation!!

As for the ‘Tour Bus’ living we had more fear than we really should have. We were scared to have 10 people living in that little space for two months without any privacy. And I’m not even talking about lovers who came during the tour… Finally I think that everyone was heart broken to say goodbye to Manfred our bus driver. Aside from a few different opinions around the poker table, I would say that the European tour was like summer camp without the strange meals.

So for the next 10 days we’ll take it easy with our families and friends before going back to Morin Heights to officially start recording our second album… yeah!!!!!!!! Well, we only have 2 weeks but there is a beginning for everything…. We’ll keep you posted!!!!

Thanks to everyone for supporting us in our adventures!!

See you

Pascale

P.S. We’ll make the Olympia of Paris on November 2^nd… crazy huh?!