An album born in confinement

When Patrick Groulx saw all his show dates postponed last spring, due to COVID-19, the comedian wondered what he could do. This is where the idea of ​​designing a third album came about with the Pat Groulx project and the Bas Blancs. The newspaper spoke with him.

Patrick Groulx must have had a fairly busy 2020. His fourth solo show, simply titled GROULX, had been running for a year and had several full dates on the calendar.

“We started out on a word of mouth strategy,” said the 46-year-old comedian. My tour was starting solid! “

His shows have mostly been postponed until next year. Because he was starting to get bored of the stage, this summer, Patrick Groulx participated in four evenings of the Parallel Project, organized by his agency, the Phaneuf Group.

“I played in front of 50 dispersed people. It was another matter! It was there that I realized to what extent our profession depends completely on the public. “

On the TV side, the comedian also had to put on ice his project to export the show In my head, which is of interest to the European market.

“I was supposed to go to France in March,” he says. We were dealing with the last business. But it’s a show where you need the audience. And we mix that up with fiction. These are two cases that weren’t COVID at all (laughs)! I was in a great process of exporting the concept. There was also interest from Germany. I’ll have to wait. “

Because he suddenly found himself with a lot of time in front of him, Patrick Groulx decided to start strumming the guitar again.

At the end of March, he shared a piece he had just written on his social media: Little song of containment. The song was an unexpected success.

“I launched it very naively and we have exceeded a million views,” he said. People started to share it. It was there that I realized that the music is very tabarouette. “

The comedian then recalled that he had started writing another play a few years earlier, Need nothing. “It had nothing to do with confinement, but it made perfect sense,” he said. It’s about freedom. “

Because he is still in regular contact with the musicians of the Bas Blancs, Sébastien Daigle and Grégoire Painchaud, with whom he released albums in 2006 and 2009, Patrick Groulx asked them if they wanted to make a third record.

So here he comes with an eight-track album designed during the pandemic. “It was completely born in confinement. I haven’t even seen once guys! He said of his fellow musicians.

On the album Need nothing, we find the part Everybody out, which evokes deconfinement. “It’s been two months that we were confined, when I wrote it, and it did me good to give a little hope and to think that the song would come out when we were deconfined. It is a song country bluegrass joyful. It’s the first time I’ve used the word “frolic” in a song and it makes me laugh! “

More serious, the song The falls speaks of a separation. “Obviously, I’m basing myself on what I’ve been through,” says the comedian. We often talk about failures in separations. But I did well with mine. I am still very close to the mother of my children. I wanted to write a song about it. “

Pat Groulx’s third album and the Bas Blancs, Need nothing, is on the market.