Les Chercheurs d'or, Saturday, Feb. 28 at 1 p.m. and 3:45 p.m., and Sunday, March 1 at 1:10 p.m. as part of the 2015 Festival du Bois, Feb. 26-March 1, at Mackin Park in Maillardville, 1046 Brunette Ave., Coquitlam. For tickets, full festival schedule and venue information, visit festivaldubois.ca.
The members of band Les Chercheurs d'or are continuing to evolve musically while remaining strongly rooted in the folk songwriting tradition of the past.
The Québec City area-based quintet, which draws on Appalachian folk, bluegrass and deep woods country, is committed to preserving that approach, seeing multiple band members contribute to the writing, as well as avidly covering songs by other musicians.
"What we find important is being able to play old pieces, to adapt them and then to incorporate whatever influence we have into what we're doing without it being sort of taboo," says Luke Dawson, double bassist and vocalist with the group. "For a long time it seemed wrong to cover songs and being a cover band was wrong... whereas there's such a deep folk tradition about playing other people's pieces -and I'm not only talking about old '30s, '40s, '50s music. We're playing pieces by friends of ours and other songwriters and that's what this band is about, is playing pieces that come from all over," he says.
Les Chercheurs d'or is making its West Coast debut next weekend at the 2015 Festival du Bois, an annual celebration of francophone music and culture, being held Feb. 26-March 1 in Maillardville, a Coquitlam community rich in French-Canadian history. The family-friendly arts festival, which offers insight into Maillardville's history and culture, is produced by the Société francophone de Maillardville.
Other francophone, folk, world and roots music artists featured at this year's festival include Le Bal à l’huile, Lennie Gallant, Bardefou, Charlotte Diamond, Tanga, Locarno, Wesley Hardisty, Jocelyn Pettit, Genevieve Toupin, Tri-Cities Fusion Gospel Choir, Les Échos du Pacifique, Alouest, Will Stroet and Lexi Calbery.
Participating visual artists include oil painter Leanne Christie, and Longueuil region woodcarver Michel Campeau who will complete an eight-foot sculpture during the festival that will become a permanent Mackin Park feature. A host of traditional food offerings will be available, including maple taffy and homemade poutine.
Les Chercheurs d'or, which records in French, was launched seven years ago. Dawson, a classically trained musician who was brought up in Quebec's punk-metal scene, has been a member for the last three. His band mates include Isabeau Valois (vocals, mandolin and banjo), François Gagnon (guitar and vocals), Simon Pelletier-Gilbert (percussion and vocals), and Marie-Christine Roy (violin and vocals).
While they've been out West a few times, playing Calgary and Winnipeg for instance, their appearance at Festival du Bois marks their first time playing in B.C, something Dawson is looking forward to.
"This is a French festival, but still, part of the audience is English and we've played in places in the United States as well in front of anglophone audiences. It's always fun to see them get into it because basically we're playing North American music. A third of our pieces are actual adaptations of American pieces so they can recognize stuff and associate things together. It's a different kind of challenge compared with when we're playing back home in more French quarters. But it's new and anything new is good," he says.
The band is currently promoting its 2013 eponymous album, a follow to a 2010 release, also eponymous, when the group's name incorporated its lead singer, then known as Isabeau et Les Chercheurs d'or. The name translates into The Gold Diggers, a reference to prospectors of yesteryear.
"The band started out as close as you can think of to a bluegrass old time music outfit and gradually incorporated more modern influences, stuff that everybody's been listening to, new releases and such, but still on the old instruments," says Dawson. "We'll be listening to Fleetwood Mac, Wilco or whatever, and then writing these kinds of songs but still with the old instruments - the mandolin, the banjo and the double bass. Sometimes our songs will sound very poppish, very hooky, very pop-orientated, but with the old time sounds."
Dawson describes their 2013 record as a transition album, as it features a mix of acoustic pieces that are closer to what the band started out doing, with some modern exploratory pop elements thrown in.
"It's a bit more eclectic than what's coming up - but it's interesting in that way. Some of the takes are live takes just around one microphone, and some of the other takes are very produced, lots of tracks, more sleek kind of sounding," he says.
The LP, which was mixed in Los Angeles with engineer Sheldon Gomberg (Ben Harper, Ryan Adams and Rickie Lee Jones), showed early signs of the direction the band is continuing to move in, and its next record, scheduled for a fall release, will cement that style.
"The influences are different. This band, as I said, it was very old-timey and traditional and not Québécois, but really North American bluegrass, Appalachian, folk. Now we're really more into writing songs that don't have anything to do with what we were trying to imitate or bring forth so it's a bit more personal I would guess. But then we have this sound, which is pretty established, that we've kept around so that is still there," says Dawson.
While Les Chercheurs d'or is already playing some of the new songs that will be featured, the final tracks will ultimately sound different to fans.
"We don't try and translate our recorded pieces as they sound on the album," says Dawson. "We try and make it so that our recordings are different on purpose so that when we play them in a show it's a bit of a surprise. Again, because we have these acoustic instruments, we have to find new arrangements. There is quite a big difference actually between some of those pieces and the way they're heard on a recording and the way we play them live."
Following Les Chercheurs d'or's Lower Mainland appearance, the band is set to head abroad in March for a string of dates in Europe.
