Words: Jay Thomas

Anik Jean Le trashy Saloon Album Tacca Musique

When Klublife was asked to cover the FrancoFolies festival in Montreal earlier this summer, I didn’t know what to expect. Was the festival a platform to celebrate cultural diversity or was there more going on behind closed doors? In a time when most government-sponsored activities are frowned upon, Les FrancoFolies de Montréal was the exact opposite. What I did find was the best music festival in the country, with everything from rock and folk to all forms of electronic and rhythmic beats. We were lucky enough to catch Anik Jean one evening and sat down with her to find out more about the festival and her new album Le Trashy Saloon.

Klublife: To the average Canadian outside Quebec, Les FrancoFolies de Montréal may appear to be just another music festival. What does FrancoFolies mean to you?

Anik: Well, FrancoFolies is one of the biggest festivals for us here in Quebec. Like when you perform at the FrancoFolies, like it’s really cool, it’s like, good for your career. ’Cause everyone goes there, there’s like stages everywhere and it’s a big party for like a week, you know? And for French music it’s the festival, so it’s very important for an artist to be performing there.

Klublife: We caught your performance at this year’s FrancoFolies and the crowd was up and down during your set. But all of a sudden you sang in English and it seemed to level out the crowd. Why do you think it had that effect?

Anik: There were a lot of people who didn’t know me who came to see me. ’Cause here in Quebec, I’m kind of a weird creature or something. I really feel like I’m a bizarre person or have something wrong or whatever. People are not always sure about me. But I always feel that like it takes a long time to get the crowds in Quebec to be part of it. I mean, when I do my shows, if I play in the bar or in a venue, the people know my material so they’re totally like “wha.” But in a festival like this, it is the first time I’ve played it with my band, and I could see people were like “hmm,” but then at the end they were like “OH YEAH.” At the end I felt like they were more there than at the beginning ’cause they were more like observing what was going on. You know?

Klublife: And from a songwriting perspective, do you do a lot of co-writing or do you do a lot of writing yourself?

Anik: For that album I got three songs from Jean Leloup, who is a big star here. He gave me three songs for this album and we co-wrote one together and the rest of it was all my material. Sometimes I would have my bass player writing a bass line at one point and we co-wrote a little part of the music but mostly it was all my songs on the album. Soon 13 songs there were nine songs I wrote.

Klublife: Did you do a lot of writing while you were traveling or did you do most of the writing here in Quebec?  

Anik: That album, I did it all in studio. It was like a moment thing. It was really like a last-minute thing. It was writing songs–while I was recording one, I was writing one. And so then we had to stop the tape and do another recording of something else and everyone was confused and I was just writing and confusing people. But it gave the album that I did—you’ll see it when you receive it, it’s really um, it’s all recorded live, so I wanted to do that. There are two songs that are on click track but all the rest is live, so we’re all in the studio recording at the same time.  

Klublife: When can we expect a tour? Once the album comes out what’s the plan for the tour?

Anik: Well, the single that we’re releasing, which you heard, it’s going to be released in August I think. So I’m imagining that we’re going to go on tour in fall. And I really wanted to go to the rest of Canada, like Vancouver, Toronto, uh…everywhere, you know? Because I did Quebec a couple of times. And it’s cool because I was nominated for the Junos. So I met a lot of people when I went to Halifax and Canadian songwriters and stuff like that. And now I’m going to Toronto, so like it’s cool ’cause like, I like to meet new people, you know? So, uh…I don’t know maybe I could get a tour with another band or you know, another artist. I play with Feist, I really like that.

Klublife: And do you see yourself doing—I mean obviously when you made that step, when you made that leap to singing 100 per cent English, do you think that you’ve alienated some of your French music fans that would expect to see more French? Because it’s a decision that you have to make as an artist, it’s a balancing act…

Anik: I know. But the way that I got here and the way that I approach people with my album, they knew that I was writing in English first, you know? Even if it’s not my first language, it’s like I wrote an entire album before that and while I was writing Le Trashy Saloon I wrote an English album as well. So they knew I was there before and that’s why I put three English songs on the album, to know and prepare them to be like “yeah, maybe the next album’s going to be in English,” you know? ’Cause like I was not writing in French and it’s because of Jean Leloup that I started writing. But it’s not my natural thing when I’m writing, you know? It’s really different to write in French than in English.

The new album Le Trashy Saloon is now available at hmv across the country and you can find out more about Anik Jean’s tour at www.anikjean.com. For more information on this year’s Les FrancoFolies de Montréal festival log onto www.francofolies.com!