Maxime Galand, professionally known as Maxime de Wilde, completed his three-date album release tour with a performance at Fort-Coulonge’s Café Downtown last Thursday. Joined by guitarist Louis Lafontaine, bassist Willy Rivet and drummer Dustin Rivet, Galand’s energetic 45-minute set was met with much applause from the venue’s audience. Earlier this month, Galand performed . . .
in Gatineau and Montreal to promote his latest release, Mauvais Temps, a four-track EP with a vibrant fusion of rock, jazz and acoustic sounds.
For Galand, pinpointing a specific genre has been a non-problem. “Actually, I have a hard time myself identifying the styles,” he said. “It’s songwriting. It’s really based on stories and storytelling.”
Galand started writing Mauvais Temp just before the start of the pandemic, eventually finishing the EP at his home in Fort-Coulonge.
“I had nobody with me, so it was only me and my guitar,” he said. “You can feel that in the songs, they are very self-conscious and thinking about time passing.”
The EP’s title is a double-entendre. In French, ‘temps’ means both ‘time’ and ‘weather’. “It’s like a metaphor between the weather and the time passing too fast,” said Galand.
Though, Galand feels that under different circumstances, these songs may have become something else. “Now things are different, I would probably write quite different songs.”
These “quite different songs” may soon be realized, as Galand has already started writing his next release. He has already received funding for a full-length release on behalf of the Canada Council for the Arts. “I am curious to see where this will go,” he said.
As a French-speaking artist, Galand has an arguably steeper climb towards mainstream success in Canada’s predominantly English-speaking provinces and the United States. But for Galand, Quebec’s vibrant music scene has allowed him to find success through his own voice.
“A lot of musicians start in English hoping for commercial success and they switch to French because there is more funding and more publicity in Quebec,” he said. “That’s how I think and speak, so I wouldn’t even think about working in another language.”
Galand hopes to continue performing and maintain this momentum. “I give everything that I have for this project,” he said. “If it doesn’t work today, try tomorrow.”
Jeremy Morse
Fort-Coulonge
March 30, 2022
