2024 – Baie-Saint-Paul | The shooting star Karl Tremblay in the blue sky of Festif!

(Baie-Saint-Paul) It appeared late in the morning, on the phones of Festif! subscribers: “A shooting star passed over Baie-Saint-Paul. Join us at 12:30 in front of the MRC.” Which everyone would quickly understand: the Baie-Saint-Paul festival had prepared a tribute to Karl Tremblay. A modest tribute in its conception, but not with all the heart that had been put into it.

“We’re going to the Cowboys!” It’s been far too long since we heard this phrase, uttered by many in the streets of Baie-Saint-Paul on Saturday, thinking they had correctly deciphered the message sent by Festif! via its mobile application. This allows the event to warn festival-goers that a surprise show is about to begin.

Of course, it was not exactly a Cowboys Fringants show, but a tribute to Karl Tremblay, conceived by Clément Turgeon Thériault, the event’s general and artistic director who, breaking with his discreet habits, made it a point of honour to speak.

“I wanted to present this,” he said on the small stage set up in front of the Caisse Pop, explaining that he had brought together friends of the Cowboys family and the Festif! family, artists of all generations, “because the Cowboys have left their mark on several generations.” And they have left their mark on Festif!, those who attended the first edition of the event that celebrates its 15th anniversary this weekend^and anniversary and is often described as the greatest of all small festivals.

The first to be invited to the microphone? Sweet cowboy Alex Burger and Frannie Holder, the female voice of the original version of merchant fleetthe song that this duo had clearly chosen that day.

Before he struck the first chord, Burger recalled playing a Cowboys song at a high school recital, “but we got lost and had to stop halfway through,” an experience he’s likely not alone in knowing.

Frannie, best known for her work in Random Recipe and Dear Criminals, two bands whose sound has absolutely nothing in common with that of the Cowboys, has admitted that her participation in merchant fleet is one of the most “absurd and magnificent” entries on his resume.

“I never thought I would have to do it in a show without him,” she said before singing it with Burger, and also much to the audience, which had grown very quickly, even though they had only been warned at the last minute.

Bébert’s hut

If Frannie Holder Never Thought She’d Have to Sing merchant fleet Without Karl Tremblay, no one on this planet could have imagined that the venerable Yves Lambert would ever create his own “one of the strangest songs” (his own words) from the flashy catalog, Hector’s Hut.

But this is indeed the moment, as jubilant as it is improbable, that we are about to experience: the historic voice of La Bottine souriree sinking its teeth into the ultimate Cowboys’ drinking song, with its age-old belligerence and one of the songs with the most verses.

With welcome help from the audience, who repeatedly shouted the chorus’ “Yes, sir,” Monsieur Bébért revealed, in a voluntary (if imperfect) performance, just how much this nonsensical hymn to drinking and friendship owes to Quebec folklore (which is to say, a lot). No, we never thought we’d hear this monument to Quebec music utter the words “Miss January who showed us her ass.” It cost the Cowboys Fringants, it cost Karl Tremblay.

As long as there are these songs

Mara Tremblay and Catherine Durand (Hauterive) were in Charlevoix later in the day to accompany their friend Marie-Annick Lépine. They then gave two lively interpretations, first of one of the rare pieces in the Cowboys’ repertoire, written by Karl Tremblay, Royal Puba text that perfectly suits the powerful and cracked voice of Mara, to whom all the songs in which the word ‘dawn’ appears already belong a little.

It was the middle of the day, but Mara miraculously made the northern lights dance in the blue sky of Baie-Saint-Paul, marked behind her by the Quebec flag hanging from the tourist information office.

Then not a single eye would remain dry On my shoulderwhich Catherine and Mara sang among themselves and with us.

It is to Émile Bilodeau, one of the principal heirs of the Cowboys Fringants, who would have the privilege of ending this short tribute that will remain in our memories for a long time. He had chosen As long as we have love And Falling starsit was taken up in chorus by the small, emotional human flood that had gathered in the rue Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

“Karl lives in us every time we sing Cowboys songs,” said Émile, and if he is telling the truth, Karl Tremblay was there, in the vocal cords of hundreds of Quebecers of all ages, Saturday, in Baie-Saint-Paul.

Enough to believe that as long as we have love, fresh water and clean air, a roof and four walls and the Cowboys’ choirs, there will indeed be joy in our hearts and in our backyards.