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festival du bois

Quebecois Music

Festival du Bois 2016: Dara and I make noise!

This year was the third one that Dara and I have made it up to Festival du Bois in Coquitlam (previous visits having been in 2012 and 2014). We have grown rather fond of this cozy little festival and hopefully will get to start attending yearly rather than every other year!

Day 1: Saturday

This time around, we had a lovely lineup of acts I wanted to check out, two of which were familiar to me and one of which was not. My main point of interest was the power trio of Le bruit court dans la ville–who, of course, were the most excellent musicians who were my draw to Fiddle Tunes this past summer, Lisa Ornstein, André Marchand, and Normand Miron. But also quite noteworthy was Maz, who I’d already become aware of; I have both of their albums. I had not to date had a chance to see them live, though!

And last but not least was ReVeillons!, who came highly recommended by a few of the folks in our local session crowd. I wanted to check these guys out in no small part because they include Jean-François Berthiaume, who I’d already known about courtesy of his being the percussionist for Galant Tu Perds Ton Temps.

We did get to see all three of these acts, and I am pleased to report that they were all excellent. But as it turned out, this time around Dara and I actually got in some time getting to play ourselves!

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Quebecois Music

De Temps Antan at the Rogue in Vancouver BC, 3/2/2014

When you go to Canada for two consecutive weekends, Internets, you tend to get behind on posting stuff to your blog. Which means for you that I got delayed posting my writeup of the MOST excellent concert by De Temps Antan at the Rogue. But I’m home again, and posting again, so here you go!

Previously in our adventures with Festival du Bois 2014, yours truly got to chat with both Éric Beaudry AND André Brunet after the close of official festival events on Saturday night! And y’all may recall that SOMEBODY got a little creative with how he did his signature on the inside of my copy of Ce monde ici-bas!

So what happened? Full concert blow-by-blow behind the fold!

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Quebecois Music

Festival du Bois trip, Day 1: Saturday!

My belovedest Dara and I have done the trip up to Vancouver quite a few times at this point–but still, it’s a bit rough getting up at stupid-o’clock in the morning in time to get on an early bus, go all the way down to King Street Station, and get on a train to go all the way up to Vancouver. There was quite a bit of yawning involved.

But then, with Festival du Bois waiting on the other end, I was quite willing to spend my Saturday morning snoozing on a train!

As always, our friends Geri and Rob kindly put us up for the weekend at their place. This time around, we brought Rob a bottle of Scotch by way of a “thank you for letting us snooze here!” gift. (That, and I’m sure their dog was happy to have two extra pairs of hands to throw the ball down the stairs.) And, this time around, Geri elected to come to the festival shenanigans with us on Saturday!

My only regret? Realizing only after we were on our way north that I’d totally forgotten to bring Jean-Claude. AUGH. For the best, though, since the weather was wet and cold and let me tell you, Internets, there’s nothing quite as pungent as the smell of wet mammoth.

(Full deets and pics behind the fold!)

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Day of Signal Boosting! And also news!

So happy Boosting the Signal Premiere Day, y’all! If you haven’t seen ’em already, I’ve got the first two posts up, featuring Genevieve Griffin and Anna Kashina!

Quite excited to give these authors a shot at getting the word out about their work, and I hope y’all will consider giving them a look.

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And now, additional items to signal boost!

Michael F. Stewart is a fellow former Drollerie author, and he’s got a Kickstarter! He’s writing YA, with zombies. And as y’all know, zombies ARE relevant to my interests!

If they’re relevant to yours, go give him a look and maybe a pledge, mmkay? Do it for Canadian indie science fiction! Do it for Michael! Do it for ZOMBIES.

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My pal Dejah Leger, about whom I have enthused on this blog more than once, performs with her family under the name La Famille Leger! And they’ve just dropped a brand new shiny album! It’s called L’étoile du nord, and it’s chock full of tasty Acadian music. If you have any interest in French-Canadian trad, you should totally check this out. This is La Famille Leger’s first professionally engineered album, and I’ve listened to it now streaming off of Bandcamp, and whoa and damn it sounds good. I particularly commend to your attention tracks 8 and 12–especially track 12, which contains a tune I’m learning how to play since we’re doing it in session! Come for Dejah’s lovely singing and the wry vocals by her beau-père Louis, as well! Stay for the cracklin’ foot-stompin’ tunes!

The album lives right over here on Bandcamp. And if you can see the embedded player in this post, you can just click right on it! Check it out! And if you like what you hear, give it a buy, won’t you? All that’s stopping me from buying this RIGHT NOW is that I’m buying a physical CD directly from the Legers. But the rest of you out there in Internetland, throw ’em some dollars through Bandcamp and tell ’em I sent you!

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And speaking of awesome French-Canadian music, Dara and I are about to scamper up to Canada for round one of our March musical shenanigans! We’re hitting Festival du Bois, the Francophone music festival in B.C., at which quite a few of my favorite musicians will be performing! Not only the aforementioned La Famille Leger, but also the Yves Lambert trio! Real excited about seeing Monsieur Lambert, since he’s the singer whose lead vocals on La Bottine Souriante way back in 2000 got me hooked on Quebec music in the first place.

And! AND! There will also be Vishtèn! Y’all may recall that Dara and I got to see them in Newfoundland in 2012, and they were awesome, and I am very much looking forward to seeing them again!

Last but most assuredly not least, my boys of De Temps Antan, about whom I have failed to be able to shut up, almost as much as I’ve failed to stop gushing over Le Vent du Nord. ;D

Forecast for this weekend is perfectly ridiculous amounts of fun, and I’ll be roping several friends into attending the shenanigans with us! Best of all Dara and I get to meet up with userinfomaellenkleth and userinfosiestabear for the De Temps Antan show at St. James Hall–two years and a day after the delightful Le Vent du Nord show at the same venue! Which means that Sunday night will be our second anniversary of getting Canada-married, which means we’ll have not only badass music to enjoy, but an anniversary to celebrate as well! SO AWESOME. \0/

Music, Quebecois Music

Festival du Bois in Maillardville, BC, 3/3/2012

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.

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