Pigeon d’argile
Around 1994 I was a multi instrumentalist and singer with Richard Seguin. We were touring on the success of his album AUX PORTES DU MATIN as well as his previous releases DOUBLE VIE and JOURNEE D’AMERIQUE. As usual, musicians are frequently involved in multiple projects at once and we were no exception. There was a kid named Kevin Parent who had won the POUVOIR DE LA CHANÇON Songwriting festival and TACCA MUSIQUE had signed him and hired Pierre Duchesne (our bass player with Seguin) as producer. Pierre turned to some of his own band mates to perform on this first album PIGEON D’ARGILE. The recordings only took about 5 weeks as I recall and I liked Kevin right away. He was a tall , handsome, lanky guy with an oddball sense of humor, goofy accent and some seriously good songs. His music had the same tormented urgency to it as he did personally…almost as if they were lurking in there and threatening to come out. When they DID come out they were good. I played acoustic guitars, dobro, lap steel and electric guitars on that first album. It’s sales were steady and I toured for a short time in his band. Then sales shot over 50,000 but we were still playing small entry level halls honoring the contracts previously signed.
A bomb goes off
In 1996, sales of Pigeon d’Argile had topped off at just around 65,000 units and everybody figured that was it and it was time for a new album. I was no longer touring with him at this point. That’s when he appeared on the 1996 ADISQ awards and took home three FELIX awards for Male Artist, Concert of the year and Best single. Then the bomb went off and sales shot up to over 350,000 units.
Since that time I have performed on several of Kevin’s subsequent albums and toured with him on and off as well.