Four years after “In extremis”, the artist released a new album “At the coming dawn”. 13 new songs combining gravity and irony, impeccable ballads and blues-folk. Meeting in Astaffort, on its Lot-et-Garonnaises lands.
The rooms and the courtyard of the former Astaffort school, today the stronghold of the Voix du Sud association that it created, are deserted on October 5. Francis Cabrel came down from his house not far from the village of Lot-et-Garonnais. Before the Parisian promo, first confidences from his biotope on his last baby, “At the coming dawn” which will be released on Friday, October 16.
Francis Cabrel. My meeting with Claude Sicre . He gave me several books on troubadours, “medieval rockstars”. I first said thank you for the nice phrase and read, started working on an entire album on the theme. After five songs, I was no longer moving forward so I gave up the idea of a “Troubadours Project”. There are four left on the disc.
Thomas Chaline has just published a unique book on Francis Cabrel. His bet? Tell the man through his songs. He tells us about his admiration for the Astaffort artist.
“Me, I feel like I told everything inside my songs. They just had to listen!” A phrase launched by Francis Cabrel to Michel Drucker in 1983 which marked Thomas Chaline, guitarist, music fan and author of several books on French singers. In “Cabrel, a life in songs”, it is the texts of the author from Lot-et-Garonnais that he goes through with a fine comb, to better pierce … the man.
Why write about Francis Cabrel?
Thomas Chaline:
“It’s simple, he’s been my idol since adolescence. When I had all the problems in the world like any self-respecting teenager, his reassuring face soothed me. The first time I heard one of his songs, it blew me away. I knew I would write about him one day or another, as a personal tribute. ”
You mention in the foreword of the book the work of investigating song by song: is it more complicated with a personality like Cabrel?
“It’s the same approach in all my books, but this time I knew the artist’s work very well, I only had the pieces of the puzzle to put together, by interviewing his relatives, like Philippe Sella and others. But it is true that he is a mysterious personality. ”
How did Francis Cabrel react?
“He didn’t want to get involved but was curious to see how I was going to get out of it. He even confided to relatives that he had forgotten some stories!”
You have, it seems to me, met, can you tell us about this episode?
“It was completely by chance, one summer in Hossegor in 1998. We talked about music, he’s really a guitar lover. He was everything I imagined about him. He was on vacation, he would have completely could tell me to go and show myself, but he didn’t… ”
Have you come here, to its Astaffort lands?
“I’ve been to his village before, yes, and when you see him, you understand everything. You understand how he lives, and why he releases an album every five years.”
You talk about his attachment to his roots …
“Yes, it’s something very important to him, he always assumed that” redneck “side, portrayed in some shows like” Guignols de l’Info “. In fact, he doesn’t care. J he likes that he is not in the seraglio, in show business and that he has always kept his values. He has never had to fit into the mold, to be round back. ”
The man does not confide much in the media but says everything in his songs?
“He brings up many personal themes, and often takes a stand, you really have to take the time to pay attention to his words. As a guitarist, that’s what interested me, to see what triggers the desire to to write.”
You also talk about the influences of Francis Cabrel, especially blues and American folk.
“Yes, that’s a point in common that we have, he admires artists like Jackson Browne or Bob Dylan. We also have other points in common, we were both born at the end of November and we have a strong link with Vietnam , country of her adopted daughter and one of my grandmothers. ”
Will you come to Agen or Astaffort to present your work “Cabrel, a life in songs”?
“I would have liked a lot, but the Covid-19 crisis is depriving me of it, it’s very annoying!”
Director Philippe Kohly is devoting a documentary to Georges Brassens broadcast on France 3 on Friday, for which he has assembled a series of little-known archives. “We often think that Brassens is a silent bear, but he liked to talk about himself,” he said at the microphone of Europe 1.
“Brassens is often thought to be a silent bear, but he liked to talk about himself.” In his documentary Brassens par Brassens , broadcast Friday evening on France 3, Philippe Kholy pays tribute to one of the biggest names in French song. And for this, he gave the floor to the singer himself.
“The portrait of a man is essentially in his voice. The voice is the soul, much more than the look or the face”, explains Phillipe Kohly at the microphone of Europe 1, in Culture-Media. The director, who had already dedicated films to Jacques Brel, Jean Ferrat and Edith Piaf, this time brings together a series of archives hitherto unknown, following public appearances, and interviews with Brassens. “He has a warm voice, in a cold world,” smiles the director.
“My songs have to sound like they’re spoken”
A moving voice, and sometimes surprising words. “My songs must seem to be spoken, that those who hear me think that I cannot sing, that I make easy little music. It must not only by means of musical artifices, I divert attention from the text, ”explains Georges Brassens, for example, an accomplished musician.
“Brassens is full of personal contradictions: he also said that what counted at the beginning is the music. And he just liked the music, those of Tino Rossi for example, that his mother sang”, specifies Philippe Kohly.
“I admire you a lot”, slips Johnny
The documentary returns, with actress Sandrine Kiberlain in voiceover, on certain moments in the singer’s life. His arrest in Sète for theft when he was a teenager, the STO during the Second World War … and even a cross interview with a certain Johnny Hallyday. “I admire you a lot”, slips the very young yéyé …
Pas De Merde 