Daniel Lavoie: official website

Daniel Lavoie: "Here in the Heart"

Voir-Montréal, by Légaré Felix
October 1992

The last time that I met up with Daniel Lavoie was at the time of the release of Long Courrier, his twelfth album, in the spring of 1990. Then, Lavoie had, bit by bit, slipped over to me several words on his English album, recorded at the same time as Long Courrier. “Something very different and not a translation of my songs, as was the case with my other two albums in English, Tips and Cravings,” he was pleased to say.

Two years later, he admits that Here in the Heart had come a long way since “the first thought of making a double bilingual album with Long Courrier. But Roch Voisine had got their first. And after, Long Courrier kept me so busy that I left the English album on one side for the right time. Then, when I came back to it, I realised that some of the songs had aged badly, so I chucked them out. At that time I had the idea of going to Los Angeles.” To meet up there with an old acquaintance, the publisher Bo Goldson. Goldson had also invited the writer Mary-Beth Derry to meet up with him there. With contact established, the work did not drag, Lavoie and Derry quickly understood each other and co-wrote four songs for Here in the Heart. “This was a most interesting contact. It was the first time that I had written with another person like this. When I worked with Thierry Séchan (brother of Renaud) we sent each other faxes. With Mary the work was always “on the hoof”, very spontaneous.”

Without doubt, it was this that moved the words towards more distinctly concrete themes than those of Long Courrier. Far from the daydreaming of his last disc, Here in the Heart appears like a kind of instant tune for the times. One feels there much anxiety, of the sort a Father almost apologises to his children for handing down a world in turmoil. “Anxiety? Yes, it’s perhaps the right word. These are my worries in the recent years with a growing teenager and a little one who has come into this world. A world which I believe to be very much more different from the one of my youth, it seemed less negative and, above all, less violent. Today, one has the impression that there are many young people who don’t have any choice about playing the game of violence. They are caught in a trap. I don’t attach blame to anything in particular as being responsible for this. It all follows on from the choices one can make. But at the same time, I try to look at all this from a distance and with a bit of good humour. No need to get panicky. It’s not as bad as all that.”

As evidence, there is 100 kilowatts which ironically depicted a future world where birdsong had disappeared to be replaced by “a CD played at 6 o’clock and at 4 pm…”

In sound it’s not too far from Long Courrier. There’s always an exact balance between acoustic instruments and synthesizer in these noiseless atmospheres. And there is always a delicacy in the arrangements and production which is largely the hallmark of Lavoie and the indispensable André Lambert. As for some of the songs composed and recorded in Los Angeles, Lavoie made a call to Billy Williams, director of Lyle Lovett and another pal of Bo Goldson. J“Billy suggested several musicians to me one of which was the excellent double bass player Leland Sklarr. He had been big throughout the 70’s. Another wasames Taylor and he came to record with Phil Collins” >From the team from Montréal one stuck with the “family”: Hart Rouge, Maurane and Warren Williams as chorus, Bob Cohen on the guitar and Michel Cusson who made several appearances. A good alliance since harmony ruled throughout the entire album. “I very much liked the gentle “country” nuance that the Californian musicians brought to the album. But to be frank, the way of working with them made me aware of one thing: one doesn’t have to go so far to find musicians of this quality. There’s loads of them in Montréal.”

There’s a risk in facing up to the English speaking Canadian market where he is totally unknown. “That spurs me on a lot, because I have the impression of becoming a poor bastard starting at zero. Except that I have 20 years experience in me, that scares me a lot less!”