J’écoute la radio : notes on Daniel Lavoie's concert tour (2012-2014)

©Spectra Musique

 

To see a big picture one needs to step away from it. In order to understand the role a concert tour played in a performer’s carrier one needs to wait a couple of years after the tour’s ended. So, what exactly was the J’écoute la radio tour? Now, 3.5 years later is the best time to answer the question.

...By asking another question first. How do you break back into action 4 years after your last album and a couple of years of sporadic performing and a stint as a radio host? The answer is: by trusting your talent and trusting your public, and if you are Daniel Lavoie you know these two things will stick with you even if the Earth crumbles. And so you bravely submit yourself to a music agency, record a solid album of tested hits, produce a new show and face a tour. The plan seemed part gamble, part calculation and part who-knows-what sorcery, but it worked. 

The J’écoute la radio tour in its various incarnations lasted from Spring 2012 through Fall of 2014 and went through different phases of life as if it were a living and breathing being raised with love and care. Its childhood was quiet and tentative, its maturity spectacular and fearless and its home stretch a lot quieter and relaxed but fully confident and gestating new beginnings.  

Daniel Lavoie at Club Soda, Montreal, February 23, 2013

I think one of the main tasks that the tour accomplished was establishing who Daniel Lavoie was. Yes, yes, everyone knows Daniel Lavoie. But which one? Before my first J’écoute la radio concert in my mind there existed several of them with completely different styles of music and hair, each one from a different decade, they shared the name and the smile, but not much else. And it was in April of 2012 in Trois-Rivières’ Cégep theater that I got to realize that all of them were indeed one artist, whom, despite what I used to think, I knew very poorly. (I wonder if the artist felt the same? I wonder if he needed to find the real self through the survey of his own work?) It was as if portraits of different people on pieces of tracing paper laid over each other miraculously formed one silhouette. A rock star, a chansonnier, a pop singer, a poet... Why choose if you can actually be all of those things?! And he was, and he was big, a lot bigger than the room he was performing in, and he was armed with a guitar (shock!), he had 4 musicians behind his back, and he spoke of things that worried him in today's world, and he was completely and totally in the moment.

The 3 encores on that early leg of the tour included the breathtakingly arranged Ils s'aiment, the thoroughly revised Boule qui roule and the absolute gem of Vérité sur la vérité, performed alone at the piano, complete with the legendary acoustic foot stomping which I wouldn’t silence for anything in the world, because it was Music itself that pulsated through that rhythm right in front of you and the rhythm was life, and it was truth, and it was everything...

Oh, those J’écoute la radio shows!  They saw the apparition of Frollo with an electric guitar, with my all-time favorite arrangement of Tu va me détruire followed by the coup de grâce of Belle. Bang-bang, you shoot me down. (The future was nearer than anyone could’ve predicted...) 

  

Daniel Lavoie - Tu vas me détruire, Moscow, May 30, 2012.

 

Then came France, Russia, Ukraine and Russia again. The French showed up and the Russians got out their camcorders. France saw the stage premiere of cathartic J’écoute la radio (the song) and Être prêtre replacing Vérité sur la vérité. J’écoute la radio, the only new song of the show had nothing in common with its album version, was mindblowing and also one of the bravest artistic decisions of the tour. The song was so emotionally and musically charged it became the climax of the show. Perhaps to balance it all out the texts between the songs got lighter, the singer became funnier and all in all gradually the show acquired that perfect balance between the popular and the unknown, the things people are ready to hear and the ones that are burning to come out, between the visible and the true. 

 

Daniel Lavoie, J'ecoute la radio, Moscow, October 19, 2013.

 

And then there were Quebec’s many-many small towns again, stages, roads, Montreal’s prestigious Club Soda and more roads and small towns. And the adoring public everywhere, because it turns out that the public never forgets love, once given or received.

The last season of the tour saw the show go down to the trio format, change its name to Soirée intime, things indeed got deliciously more intimate and the singer got a chance to try out new covers when he felt like it. 

Daniel Lavoie's Soirée intime in L'Ange Cornu, L'Assomption, Quebec, August 20, 2014

If every life experience comes with a lesson, the experience of observing a show tour from its beginning to its end (rather than seeing just one show) gave me the deepest respect for the artist, his profession and his career in which no victory came easy, each one was paid for in hard currency of sweat, trials and disappointments. You write, you sing, you play, you fall, you pick yourself up, you smile and you march on. Left foot - right foot - left foot - right foot... 

Because remember that rhythm? You know, it never stops and if you’ve got it, it will carry you on.  

In the Fall of 2014 the long tour was over and Daniel Lavoie was 65, firmly back and in top form. And the best was yet to come.

Daniel Lavoie's Soirée intime in L'Ange Cornu, L'Assomption, Quebec, August 20, 2014

*If any of the factual information is incorrect please let me know. I only attended five shows and rely on my own notes made at the time, but humans make mistakes.

**All photos are by Paroles unless otherwise noted ; all videos by tanya090675.