The first time I heard the honey toned voices singing along with an acoustic guitar, I was a block away sitting in a small Jazz lounge called Le Jazzons.  Very low key place it was where I sat next to Victor Vogel as he jammed with other musicians after hours during the Montreal Jazz Festival.  As I walked out the bar I heard the music coming from rue St Denis and saw a crowd at the front of a bar I was about to soon visit and fall prey to its charm.

The closer I got, I could hear why there was a crowd where they were singing along, most swaying and moving their hips to the music inside.

Blues is the type of music that I personally feel has no discrimination.   I suppose Jazz is the same but in Montreal, I noticed more people of all walks of life packing into this small Bistro à JoJo on rue St Denis every night of the week. Oh, you can sit in afternoons too to listen to open jamming but after ten in the evening the place is hopping.  It holds less than 100 patrons, so it is not rare to see people on the sidewalk listening to the music.   This was a place I heard so many French and English people singing and talking together savouring the blues here.

posée au comptoir
sirotant une Maudite
le Blues m’apaisent

Manhattan reminds me a bit of Montreal (on a much smaller scale) in that it is an island, drivers are aggressive and honk their horns a lot and it is a city of music and food. Well to me anyway. Driving off the island to get on any bridge is similar to Montreal when there are twelve lanes that merge onto three lanes and they do it day in, day out as we do here too.  So on a much smaller scale I do see similarities…I think NY has a better nightlife in all areas and that is where we differ here. We have a slower pace lifestyle and unlike our Canadian  mega city, Toronto who follows more NY style rush rush rush…we have kept a bit of our ancestor’s mode de vie, vivre et laisser vivre.

weekend gig
island of many lights
stringing the blues
serenade on the Hudson
under midnight blue skies

© Tournesol ’15

CP Time Machine

* La Maudite is one of many beers brewed in Chambly, Québec by UniBroue. Chambly is the town where my children were raised. La Maudite is a stronger beer at 8% alcohol and Unibroue has other beers up to 10% however my favourite is La Blanche de Chambly at 5%; it is a wheaty beer tasting more like a Belgian beer.