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Dagger Gordon
May-02-2005, 10:16am
Been listening a lot to this 1990 album lately. Forgotten how good it was, and how much mandolin Michel Bordeleau played on it.
I like their brass stuff, but this was made before that. Pianist Denis Frechette plays some trumpet - I guess that was the start of the brass.
Latterly, Michel hardly played mandolin at all - all fiddle, guitar, drums, feet and singing, and when I saw them in Scotland in summer 2003, only the bass player Regent Archibauld was still there from the 1990 line-up, which was a really great group.
What are some of these guys doing now? I gather Andre has a studio (recorded Tony McManus' 'Pourquoi Quebec', I think); what about Michel Bordeleau? I thought the way he worked the mandolin into that line-up was excellent.

Paul Hostetter
May-04-2005, 3:21am
André Marchand and Michel Bordeleau are singing in an amazing a capella group called Les Charbonniers de l'Enfer. Also in the group: Michel Faubert, Normand Miron and Jean-Claude Mirandette. The album is entitled Wô, which about sums it up. Can you imagine a group full of such stunning instrumentalists who only sing together?

A somewhat related recent CD, Hommage á Marius Barbeau, includes André Marchand and Daniel Roy, who was the flute/whistle guy in the original La Bottine, plus Lisa Ornstein and Danielle Martineau.

André Marchand just toured Australia with Grey Larsen, and they have a new CD as well.

And Tony McManus is about to be here where I live. Yay!

Dagger Gordon
May-04-2005, 4:07am
Thanks, Paul.
I'm very interested to hear all that.

All the best,

Dagger.

Paul Kotapish
May-04-2005, 12:12pm
Hey Dagger,

Michel is a monster player indeed. The fact that he can play so beautifully while maintaining one of the strongest imaginable grooves by clogging with his feet--seated, of course, in the manner of Quebec fiddlers--is even more amazing.

And here's another vote of enthusiasm for Les Charbonniers de l'Enfer. You can find their two discs at Trente Sous Zéro - Thirty Below:

http://www.clic.net/~thirtybe/094-95.html

Michel has also done some work in recent years with Martine Chiasson in an ensemble of somewhat flexible personnel called Athanor. They have at least one CD out, and I understand that another one is on the way.

http://www.cam.org/~athanor/English/english.html

La Bottine is still afloat, but with none of the original members. The "new" guys are all great players and they are still a tremendously fun act, but according to Sandy Silva, they aren't performing all that often these days.