Les Cowboys Fringants

This past weekend was a very exciting one! On Friday evening I went to a concert in Geneva with a bunch of people from the Ultimate team including: Gaëtan, Fred, Lois, GuiGui, Franzi, and Clément. We weren't the only ones though: lots of people brought along friends and family, and so we were closer to 15 in total. I brought along Kati and she brought along a friend named Ian, who turned out to be an American from Nashville who is doing his third year at UNC-Asheville at the university here in Besançon. The three of us drove down with Fred, plus GuiGui and met up with the group at the venue. The fact that the concert was in Geneva isn't hugely relevant... we really didn't see any of the city besides the inside of the concert venue. We met up with Franzi and her friend Tiny, who was visiting from Germany for the week, Clément and his fiancé, Lois and his girlfriend, Gaetan and his mother, brother, aunt, and cousin. The concert was held at a multi-purpose venue, that was, say, closer in size to the Taft Theatre and than to US Bank Arena (sorry for you non-Cincinnatians). We were in the standing area in front, and I won't bother to estimate the crowd size since I'm horrible with those kinds of estimates.

The group, Les Cowboys Fringants, is from Quebec and was started in the mid-1990s. Their genre is alternative rock-folk-country, although I could classify it as closer to rock than the latter two. The principal band members are, from left to right: bassist, a singer/guitarist, electric violin player (Marie Annick), and keyboardist. Marie-Annick, who also plays the accordian, the mandoline, the piano, and the guitar, totally stole the show.

They also had a drummer and a couple of back-up guitar players. I went into the concert having listened to nothing else but their music for the three or so weeks leading up to the concert, but only knew all of the words to a handful of songs. Their songs are very catchy but incredibly fast, so I really could only retain the lyrics if I looked them up online and practiced following along. My personal favorites are Plus Rien, Chêne et Roseau, and Tant qu'on aura de l'amour. They played the first and the third, but not playing all three wasn't for a lack of playing time. The concert started around 8:45pm and didn't finish until nearly midnight!

The part that was sort of surprising for me was that they took a break halfway through. Having an intermission at a rock concert was certainly a new thing for me (not a French thing, but apparently common in Quebec). There was no opening band, just Les Cowboys. They also came back for, wait for it, three encores. Personally I find more than one a little annoying and a little egotistical on the part of the band (I can't help thinking they do it because they like hearing us screaming their name). Each time they played one or two songs... why not just come back once, play four or five more songs, then go home?

It was a really awesome experience though. Their music is the kind that makes you want to jump around and dance, and we definitely did plenty of that. It was Clément's birthday and I had the impression he was pleased to celebrate it with such a great concert. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to bring in cameras, and there was no way I was going to be able to smuggle my Leica in without getting caught. If I find out someone took a picture with their phone though, I'll try to post it.

PS Happy Valentine's Day!