Photo by Patryk Antoniewicz

Corneille: Free

Story by Claude Côté | Thursday June 1st, 2017

CorneilleCorneille has nothing on his plate lately. No album or tour on the agenda. Free as a bird. “Writing my autobiography (Là où le soleil disparaît, 2016) taught me another way of using words, and I find it harder to go back to the songwriting format. I need a break,” he says.

His last album, Entre nord et sud, was released in 2013. It’s a marvellous, 17-songs deep work written by Corneille, in collaboration with French rappers Youssoupha, Kerry James and Soprano. “I love hip-hop, but I don’t feel I’m good enough to make some,” says Corneille. “Collaborating with those guys was a great way to incorporate some into my music.”

Back in Québec since March, after the European tour of the Rat Pack-like act dubbed Forever Gentlemen, in which he shares the stage with Garou and Roch Voisine, Corneille looks back with a smile. “Getting dressed to the nines night after night came very naturally to me,” he says. “I admire crooners like everybody else, so it wasn’t something new for me. I sing that repertoire in the shower, and as lullabies for my kids!”

After the tour, the singer-songwriter reunited with his wife and kids, hunkered down, and threw his day planner out the window. Except for one thing: a show during the Francofolies de Montréal, on June 9, at Club Soda. “That show will be an chance for me to do only my hits in acoustic mode, seventy-five minutes of my best material,” says Corneille. “It’s going to be a celebration!”

Five musicians and two backing vocalists will accompany the suave, soulful voice of the elegant singer. “The Francofolies invite me every other year, and this year, it was even easier to say yes to the programmers’ proposition: put on a unique and exclusive show to celebrate the 15th anniversary of my first album, Parce qu’on vient de loin, released in 2002.”

His first album, it’s worth remembering, was double-platinum in France and propelled this Rwandan-born Canadian to the upper echelons of stardom. His double-live album, from 2005, was certified triple-platinum. Stupendous figures.

Let’s take a quick look back. Corneille has released six albums and, as is well known, has an enviable career in Europe. The recordings have been peppered with various collaborations, notably Génération Goldman in 2012 (Quand tu danses) and GG2 (Bonne idée). He’s also done humanitarian work (Africa Live in 2005) and soul-pop (the Eurovision 2006, in front of a jury presided over by Charles Aznavour). As a result of all this visibility, he was signed to the legendary American label Motown in 2007, a fantastic break that, sadly, didn’t pan out.

Then, in 2014, he sat alongside Garou as a judge on La Voix (the French version of The Voice), in France. “I loved it,” says Corneille. “People might think that such a well-oiled machine means you lose the essence of things, but I saw it differently. France and Québec aren’t that different. I have two parallel careers, but I made it very clear early on, for both territories, that I would only do music that I’m interested in. I don’t separate my audiences. I do, however, get the impression there are more options in France when it comes to financial means, and the number of opportunities.”

And what’s Corneille’s take on the road traveled during those 15 far-from-boring years?

“I get bored really easily and I’m in a trade where it’s safer to have a certain artistic consistency in one’s choices, following a line that doesn’t confuse people and the media,” he says. “That’s why I don’t feel like re-visiting what I’ve done in the past. I think my six albums are quite different from one another. Otherwise I would feel like I can’t breathe. I’ve had albums that did very well, and others really not so well [his two English albums, notably, The Birth of Cornelius in 2007, and Sans titre in 2009]. As time goes by, I feel like I want to try everything even more! I dream of doing an Afrobeat album with African musicians. But I think my next one will be a covers album.”

Boots and Hearts fest launches band into stratosphere

Story by Melody Lau | Tuesday June 6th, 2017

James Barker describes this past year as “an absolute blur.” His James Barker Band has enjoyed the type of meteoric rise that’s not unlike a fairy tale, one that dates back to a fateful performance at the 2015 Boots and Hearts Music Festival.

After years of attending the annual country music event, Barker and his bandmates entered the Emerging Artist Showcase and won with their sunny melodies and catchy, sing-along choruses. “The moment we were announced as the winners, it was a rush of emotions like we’ve never felt,” Barker recalls. The winning prize included an opening slot for Thomas Rhett on the main stage of the festival, a single with Universal Music Canada and a trip to Nashville – all seminal events that helped create a launching pad for The James Barker Band.

The following year, the band signed to Universal, and returned to Boots and Hearts for a homecoming of sorts. Since then, they’ve released three Top 10 country singles, “Lawn Chair Lazy,” “Just Sayin’,” and “Chills.” Those songs were co-written by Nashville songwriters Gavin Slate and Travis Wood – collaborators who were, in fact, another valuable result of their festival win. As Barker explains, “I met Travis Wood when we performed together at the Emerging Artist showcase; I reached out to him after the competition to see if he’d be interested in writing, and he invited me to write with Gavin Slate. That’s really where it all began.”

Things won’t be slowing down for The James Barker Band in 2017, as they’ve just released their debut EP, Game On. Future plans? Barker says, “We’ve always prided ourselves on being busybodies, and trying to play as many shows, and meet as many fans, as possible. So we just keep counting our blessings and hope it never stops!”

RALPH: “Songwriting is how I work out my emotions”

Story by Melody Lau | Thursday June 1st, 2017

The first time Raffa Weyman wrote a song, she cried. It was a tune she co-wrote with her best friend at the age of 12, an “epic pop hit” that excited her to the point of tears. While there’s no recorded proof of this track, Weyman as RALPH, has since gone on to write a few more pop gems that contain just as much sentiment, embedded in an infectious synth-based sound. “Songwriting is how I work out my emotions,” she explains. “It’s therapy, it’s how I accept things and move on; I love being transparent that my songs are often autobiographical, because it makes them real and raw.”

That kind of honesty is crystallized into earworm melodies on her latest self-titled EP, and it’s paid off with millions of Spotify streams and an increasing amount of interest from music fans and critics alike. For Weyman, the key to a great pop track is “a wicked hook, and a melody that gets stuck in your head for days,” with an added bonus of exceptional lyrics, if possible. Weyman easily checks off all these boxes with a poise that’s striking for a new artist. “I would be lying if I said I was 100% confident in my sound and who I am; I’m always learning and growing but I feel like I’m in a really good place,” Weyman says.

Weyman just signed to 604 Records (home of Carly Rae Jepsen, Coleman Hell, Small Town Pistols) and is already hard at work on her full-length debut. Working with producers in London, Berlin, Los Angeles and Toronto, Weyman says she’s super-excited about the work she’s put into the record so far, and isn’t afraid to take some risks, too. “What happens if you try to write a ‘70s ballad with a dubstep drop?” she ponders. “I love the idea of genre bending.”