A short trip down Rendez Vous Doux lane
After leaving LUBA I did a short time with Gerry Boulet formerly of OFFENBACH. He hired me to play on a song on his first solo album RENDEZ VOUS DOUX. Amusingly enough the solo I was originally hired to play in the single ANGELA, happened in the blink of an eye. They were running the song so that I could learn it…I was tuning as the solo approached and then I just winged a quick try at it. Gerry loved it and said they’d keep it. I complained that I hadn’t finished tuning. “Too bad” he said “I like it and it stays”. I was actually disappointed that I wouldn’t get to spend much time with him in studio so he let me stay and play on another tune. I did their first tour and then was off on another project.
A strange phone call
That other project came by way of a strange phone call I received at my Kirkland home. I answered and a voice introduced himself as “Richard Seguin“…a pause…”le chanteur” the voice said. The name sounded familiar but I thought it was a friend playing a joke so I said “OK Richard Seguin le chanteur…I’m not interested, get lost“. I hung up. The phone rang again…same voice…and I figured out it was no joke. Richard explained he had heard of me through other recording artists and his own band members and wanted to know if I would come and play a song on his upcoming album. I said of course…after apologizing profusely for my mistake, we both had a good laugh…the first of many to come and set a date to start recording.
I arrived at STUDIO ST CHARLES and set up. I stayed for the song and he was so pleased that he asked if I would stay for another. He had a sound in his mind that was similar to the BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN song MY HOME TOWN. We worked and worked this one song for hours and it was going nowhere fast. We took a break but I stayed in the studio and started playing a rhythmic punchy acoustic riff over and over and Richard asked what it was. I answered a little abruptly that “THIS is how the song should go“. There was a few moments of silence from the control room and I figured they were trying to word how they were going to fire me! Then his voice came through the talk-back mic and he whole heartedly agreed that that is how the song should go and signature sound of AUX PORTES DU MATIN was recorded. He then asked if I would stay and complete the album. I stayed for five years!
I was realizing that there was a treasure trove of great francophone artists that I wasn’t aware of and a great big treasure chest of amazing Quebecois musicians surrounding me that I had never noticed…and my first two steps through that door was with the two most popular at that time!
We called ourselves LES ANGES VAGABOND. We were Denis Toupin on drums, Rejean Bouchard on guitars and vocals, Helene Dallaire on keyboards and vocals, Pierre Duchesne on bass and me on acoustic guitars, lap steel, accordion, banjo and vocals. Helene left to pursue a career in TV and she was replaced by keyboardist/pianist Claude Castonguay. We toured and recorded for the next five years..hundreds and hundreds of shows in Quebec, across Canada, France and Belgium. We became exhausted at one point and decided to give the band a break and Richard, guitarist Rejean Bouchard and I embarked on an acoustic tour of smaller halls. It was a smashing success culminating with the release of the live album VAGABONDAGE for which (engineer) Glen Robinson and I won a FELIX as engineer of the year. When I left the band I was 38.