A forest, a fortress made of stone at the foot of the Vosges Mountains in eastern France, close to the german border (our drivers remind us that their parents went to german school when they were little, and that the place is riddled with artificial lakes – meant to be a liquid Ligne Maginot that would flood the area in the event of an invasion). The jazz festival takes place on the small...
The morning after the show: Bagpipes from all over the celtic world. Scotland, Eire, Isle of Man, Breizh, Asturias, Galicia, Acadie etc. Some orchestras are military, others host iroquois-crested punk drummers.
Moriarty on tour: Festival Interceltique de Lorient, 08.2012.
Moriarty on tour: Festival Interceltique de Lorient (F), August 4th 2012. A concert in the cradle of celtic music, with guests Mama Rosin from Switzerland and Christine Salem from the Reunion Island… looking for the missing link between Acadian, Cajun, Blues, Folk and Maloya music. Quick rehearsal in the afternoon with the Mama Rosins and a few songs fall into place. The gig takes place...
Moriarty recording a few songs with Christine Salem and her percussionists Vincent Philéas, David Abrousse, Harry Perigone. Special guest: Portia. Paris, July 2012.
Cévennes. Intense heat, rugged stones and dried out river. Reminiscence of italian paesini. Kids leaping into the green water. The show is sold out, 2000 people or more on the village square, hot and noisy. The festival is one with spirit, run by volunteers. We start the show at 10:45 pm and watch all the faces, they came from the nearby valleys, or cities further away, Montpellier, Nîmes...
Rehearsing with les réunionnais, Christine Salem, Harry & David. Les Lilas, 18.07.12.
Early morning after a sleepless night in La Rochelle. Long train journey through Paris-Lyon-Aix-Les-Bains. Tucked between magnificent mountains and the depths of Lac du Bourget, the biggest festival stage we’ve ever seen, looking like the carcass of an oil refinery in Romania. Two bands can play there, side by side, they look like tiny insects dwarfed by the towering structure. People start...
Huge parking lot turned into a concert arena for eight thousand people, overlooked by medieval walls and a lighthouse shaped like a gothic spire. Wind blows hard, cloud shadows sweep the ground fast-forward like Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven. The air is loaded with Atlantic moisture and the huge structure above our heads shudders and squeaks under the gusts like the masts and sails of an...
Playing this morning among the animals.
Concert-déambulation acoustique, Musée d’Histoire Naturelle de la Rochelle (F). Francofolies, Friday, july 13th 2012.
After a long trip from Quebec, landed in the rain and the mud, surrounded by courageous, dedicated and somewhat hysterical concert-goers.
Moriarty on tour: Festival Foin de la Rue, St-Denis de Gastines (F), July 7th 2012.
Thirty-six hours in transit: right after the concert in Quebec, hopped on an airplane to Paris, then drove a bus through diluvian rainshowers to reach a festival in western France and play again, drenched in mud and jet-lagged. Tom wanted more, so he took the wheel again and drove back to Paris through the night.
Moriarty on tour: Québec-Paris-Laval, July 6,7,8th, 2012.
4:30am : sunrise over Quebec city, amidst plumes of smoke giant spiders hover in their webs above the sleepy acadians. Later we hop on a bus with all our messy gear to reach rue Saint-Joseph for our concert au Cercle. White-haired bony-cheeked drifters watch from their bench as youths line up along the sidewalk to enter the club. The venue is filled up and warm, some watch the show from the...
Leaving Sherbrooke. A hotel with endless corridors and a swimming pool with fake rocks and floating seniors. A hockey coach named Ivan came to the show and now bids us farewell. On the low-cast highways of Estrie, bikers on Harleys with racoon or fox-fur tails flying in the wind, titanic iron bridges from a bygone era, wide estuaries. We reach the hotel lobby swarming with musicians, managers...
A day off in Mile End, roaming through square cornered streets lined with small yards and quiet porches and indie culture hangouts, until torrential rainshowers wash out the city. Les chats les hipsters quelques vieillards à barbe blanche fuient aussi. Our good friend Christine bravely set up a concert in the Dépanneur café on Bernard O. Street, with Montreal band Sweet Aloysius. Inside the heat...
Leaving Montreal, a bus drive through the wide Canadian landscape, endless industries and iron bridges, low skies, hills and mountains and rain and lonesome gas-stations… We reach Sherbrooke and the wonderful théâtre Granada, looking magical kind of like the Club Silencio from Mulholland Drive. People are sitting around tables in darkness, their faces dimly lit by candles like some sorts of...
Sunday, July 1st. Canada Day (not over-celebrated in Quebec though). España supporters flood the Boulevard Saint-Laurent and explode in outbursts of raging joy, all yellow and red after the victory of eleven men on a lawn. Tonight we’ve been invited to play two gigs on one of the festival’s main stages on the Place des Arts, surrounded by the art museum, the national theatre, and a...
Second gig at the Metropolis Savoy club; sold-out room, warm, cheerful and amazing audience. We started acoustic again with an acadian song from the Lomax archives… « j’ai pris mon char ici belle pour m’en emmener au texas belle… »
Moriarty on tour, Montreal Jazz Festival, Quebec, Canada, 30.06.2012
Hopped on a flight, 8 hours across the Atlantic, no sleep, aircrew with acadian accents, stories about winnipeg, manitoba, guy maddin, klondike, yukon gold rush, cree indians, les voyageurs, les 500 femmes du roi, how Canada was made / 3pm landed Montreal Trudeau airport, blinding sunlight, bands queueing for cabs to the jazz festival / 4pm jet-lagged into the Metropolis, old-timey ballroom...
The oracles said it would rain, but the storm and the hailstones went away and we played the gig in frontal sunlight, blinded and warm. Around us the eerie modernist park was for once filled with thousands of people. Inside the greenhouses the dressing rooms felt like sweatlodges. We climbed inside a tiny truck at the back and from that dark cabin the sound was sent across the airwaves of France...
A gig in a chapel, a cloister once paced by peaceful monks, now invaded by publishers, writers, architects, party-crashers and the indomitable RKK / Rémi Kolpa-Kopoul on the turntables. Moriarty on tour, Couvent des Recollets, Paris, June 2012.