Jean dularge : A Short Story (2019)
Texte en anglais seulement.
Thumbnail: Annie France Forget, 1967.
Link to the art project, archived in Pratique Artistique.
Prologue : Jean-Guy Gagnon
Winter, 1965.
Professors, guests and students gather during a three-day conference (Jan. 13-15) held at the newly inaugurated (1963) University of Moncton; together, they are to debate on the place of Acadie in modern times. Among them stands a young priest named Jean-Guy Gagnon, who is impatiently awaiting his turn to speak during a session focused on arts and culture. In all disciplines, measures evoked are urgent: the need for an art gallery on campus, the need for community theatre in French, the need for an Acadian publishing house; however, the quasi-absence of recorded acadian music seems to strike the majority of attendees as particularly troubling.
Jean-Guy is certainly no expert on the matter, but he’s been hired on a small research contract and, thus, has been studying the situation for a few months now. He explains to the crowd that the main problem is the lack of music industry infrastructure in Acadie – no managers, no labels, no studios, no producers. However, the priest isn’t without recommendations:
1) That we establish a label by and for Acadians here and now;
2) That we organise a census of Acadian songwriters, both professional and amateur;
3) That we choose the person with the most potential for a paid one year residency in Montreal in order to develop a network in Quebec.
The enthusiasm is palpable. Already, the Congregation of the Holy Cross has offered to finance the project in its entirety. In no time, Acadisco (a portmanteau composed of Acadie, disk and company) is adopted as the business-label name, a board of directors is elected, and Jean-Guy Gagnon is chosen as its general director and responsible of artist management.
No pictures are taken; applauses have barely stopped resounding when the discussion shifts towards the census: how do we frame the call-out, through what method do we disseminate? Chatter rises between attendees, when all of a sudden, a spokesperson for the Caraquet Acadian Festival speaks-up:
« Why not organize a contest for our Festival’s theme song? At that point, submissions can be judged on a level basis, and the possibility of a residency can remain secret until the moment when we choose to formally offer it to a deserving candidate, if deserving candidate there may be ».
Everyone agrees. The table is set. A call-out is drafted and immediately posted in the Journal l’Évangéline.
Of the 228 submissions, 29 are selected for final auditions. In the end, Jean Dularge, a 28 year old fisheries educator from Cocagne, NB,, will not only be the winner, but also the ideal residency candidate in the eyes of his soon to be manager Jean-Guy as well as Acadisco.
Chapter 1 : Adam Savoie
Sitting alone at his table, Jean can barely see through the cloud of cigarette smoke rising from tonight’s ephemeral crowd of odd college beatniks. He’s been in Montreal for almost a month now and has given-up on achieving stardom by means of the city’s established Yé-Yé music circuit; a shallow industry machine that pumps out teen idols averaging about ten years his junior. Instead, he’s recently set his sights on the underground café hangouts of the more mature folk singers, visual artists and poets, mostly students, recent graduates and dropouts from the soon to be closed École des Beaux-Arts.
His drink of choice is beer. And tonight, he’s drank enough to begin doubting his senses when the open mike emcee calls out the next performer’s name: ‘‘Adam Savoie’’. The smooth consonant ‘‘s’’ cuts through like so much nostalgia to any homesick expat – ‘‘Savoie, an Acadian name’’, he thinks to himself. As the performer makes his way to the upright piano, Jean can’t help but stare in amazement at the overgrown mane of hair and beard flowing from this guy’s prophetic head. In the months that would follow, he would come to recognize this as an image modelled on that of American Beat poet, Allen Ginsberg.
As the first chords of the song ring out, Jean is immediately taken by the almost spoken word delivery of the opening lines:
You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand.
You see somebody naked and you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard but you don't understand
just what you will say when you get home
The song is Ballad of a Thin Man, a moody Bob Dylan original from his new album Highway 61 Revisited, and Jean’s never heard anything like it. He’s so taken by Dylan’s poetry that he barely even notices the audience clap in disinterested coolness as the final chord resounds through the dark café. It suddenly dawns on him that the prophet pianist with the Acadian last name must know something that he doesn’t, something that will help him write and record good music in this uptight city.
Fall 1965:
During the first weeks of October 1965, Jean Dularge and Adam Savoie began writing their songs Jim Waterboy, Jos Fedric and Viens voir l’Acadie. In the weeks that followed, the songs were completed, charted by Adam and sent to Acadisco for approval by Dularge's manager, Jean-Guy Gagnon. Within days, approval came in the form of a cheque and some instructions for the two musicians to go to a walk-in studio and record a set of acetate demos for prospective labels to consider. The demo would eventually come packaged with a letter stating terms, a copyrighted chart and a press photo of Jean Dularge.
fig. 1 : Adam Savoie's written manuscript of Viens voir l'Acadie.
fig. 2 : Dularge and Savoie's acetate demo from November 1965.
Chapter 2 : Bob Dylan
February 20th, 1966
Jean’s palms are so damn sweaty he can barely take it. His arms are folded around his chest, trying to conceal the tape recorder hidden in his jacket, as he stands in line at Place des Arts, waiting to go see his idol Bob Dylan. It’s no secret that the infamous folk rocker has gone electric – his last two albums state that pretty clearly – but it’s less known in Quebec that his electric performances have been gaining almost unanimous boos across the US, and Jean is about to find out why.
Having now passed through the gate without question or odd glance, the Acadian singer can finally begin to relax. Although he doesn’t really know why, his plan is to record Dylan’s performance in it’s entirety: perhaps to study, perhaps to cover, or at the very least to preserve it’s memory. As he takes his seat, he can’t help but notice the clashing mix of teen beat boppers, here to see the singer of Like a Rolling Stone, sitting alongside well-dressed college students, here to see the singer of Blowing in the Wind. Although camped in clear opposition, both groups buzz in anticipation for whichever version of Dylan is about walk out on that stage.
Then it happens. Like a lightning bolt, the crowd roars out the second that Dylan, all androgyny and gaunt, marches his Cuban-heeled silhouette to a lone microphone at center stage, carrying with him acoustic guitar and harmonicas in tow. During the whole first half, he plays his acoustic guitar alone, and Jean sits there in his seat, reels spinning, holding each impulsive clap, as to not add noise to the already bad recording. Some of these songs are old, but some of them are new, and Jean tries to catch the words through the distortion of loud speakers and the occasional howl of angry folk purists. His new songs are long, and the set feels endless.
No one in the crowd knows it, but Dylan’s acoustic set has just now come to a close. Fans are still clapping when he suddenly takes off his guitar, handing it to a tech off stage as members of The Hawks walk towards their respective instruments – it’s the electric set. Dylan, back turned to the crowd, then begins to bounce and stomp as he loosely strums a dry melody on his telecaster, giving drummer Mickey Jones the desired tempo. An almost inaudible ‘‘One, two, three, four’’ is heard before a pistol shot snare hit cues the band to blast through the gates, driven by Garth Hudson’s blaring organ lines. The whole thing just about throws Jean right off of his seat. With reels spinning wildly, he sits there in amazement as he listens to Tell me, Momma for the first time.
Winter 1965-1966:
During the long months spent shopping their demo to evermore-reluctant record execs, Dularge and Savoie spent most of their free time reading, writing and exchanging poetry. Through listening to Dylan and reading the works of Allen Ginsberg and his fellow beats, the two began writing in a vernacular style that would eventually bring Dularge to compose the politically charged chiac lyrics of his second attempt at writing Viens voir l’Acadie and his cover of Dylan's Tell me, Momma.
fig. 3 : Typewritten poem by Adam Savoie, sent to Jean Dularge by mail in February of 66. The duo had begun exchanging and commenting on their poems as a writing exercise.
fig. 4 : Typewritten poem by Jean Dularge, sent to Adam Savoie by mail in March of 1966. This specific poem addresses the theme of chiac within a power structure that seeks to devalue its speakers – something that Dularge was witnessing first hand in Quebec.
Chapter 3 : Harry Trask
April 30th, 1966
After spending the morning recording the bed tracks for Viens voir l’Acadie, Jean can finally take a break while Harry and Frank set up some mikes for the overdub sessions. As he sits there looking at the improvised studio, taking long slow drags on his cigarette, he can't help but think how unbelievable it is for him to even be there. In the months leading up to the sessions, he had all but given up on recording his music following a slew of refusals from just about every recording company in Montreal. Thankfully, the Congregation had friends in high places, and Jean-Guy knew which strings to pull in order to get the proper resources in place for a temporary studio.
Leads had come from members of the Congregation in Nova-Scotia, who pointed towards Rodeo Records in Halifax, a country music studio that had moved its operations to Montreal four years earlier, leaving their young intern producer Harry Trask out on his own. Like Jean, Trask was the son of a lobster fisherman, and at the time of first contact with Jean-Guy, he had been at a crossroads between pursuing either a career in music or dropping everything for life at sea. It would turn out that Trask was the ideal candidate for the job: not only was he willing and able, he had the knowhow required to assemble the gear needed for the studio. Among other things, he had his eye set on the new multi-track tape machines that had become the main attraction at most studios since his brief stay at Rodeo.
Multi-track recording allowed for instruments to be overdubbed after the fact; a technique being put to good use by artists such as The Beatles, who’s use of the studio on recent singles like Paperback Writer was becoming evermore complex. In the case of Viens voir l’Acadie, the multi-channel bed track would be bounced to a single track, allowing room for horn overdubs, which would in turn be bounced to a single track, allowing room for vocal overdubs, and so fourth. At Jean’s request, the song’s production was being modeled on Dylan’s new single Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, which, in Trask’s vision, could be achieved by layering the marching band sounds featured in Jean and Adam’s written arrangement.
That afternoon overdubs for trumpet and trombone took place with seasoned jazzman Reg Poirier: an Acadian from Parkton who most notably had sat-in during a show by John Coltrane at the notorious Birdland (club) during a brief stint in New York in 1963; and he loved to brag about it. Not unfamiliar with a studio-work environment, he barely seemed to notice the presence of the camera, held by Jean-Guy for the purpose of generating promotional material for Jean’s eventual single release. The film kept rolling as backing vocal overdubs were provided that night by Campbellton’s own Gallant Sisters. Now established vocalists in Montreal, the sisters had risen to metropolitan fame recording backing vocals on most of the city’s Yé-Yé singles since 1964.
fig. 5 : Harry Trask and Jean Dularge in the studio.
Aftermath : Donat Lacroix
Jean Dularge left Montreal once and for all in December of 1966 – he had been there for a year and four months. De retour in his native rural Acadie, he decided to stay clear of all cosmopolitan aspirations and follow in the footsteps of his father, a lobster fisherman.
Meanwhile, two emerging acadian signer songwriters, Edith Butler and Donat Lacroix, had begun building upon Jean's earlier nostalgic song writing model to evermore-greater acclaim. Soon, Bulter would sign a contract with Columbia Records and release the groundbreaking Avant d'être dépaysée and Lacroix would join his new manager Jean-Guy Gagnon in releasing Acadisco's one and only long playing album Viens voir l'Acadie. The title track was borrowed from Jean Dularge's original 1965 demo version of the song, which Lacroix received from Gagnon and recorded along side the other two Dularge originals Jos Federic and Jim Waterboy.
In 1972, during the preparations for the album's design, Dularge was asked by Gagnon and Lacroix for some liner notes that might accompany an album with his own song as the title track. The hand-written text found at the back of Lacroix's monochromatic 1974 album sleeve attests to Dularge's joy in finding his '' real vocation '' as a fisherman. It would be his last public manifestation:
‘‘ When I land my boat on the wharf each Friday night, I feel at ease knowing that my feet are on the ground and my beast on the shore, because we all know a good gang of fisherman that never came back from the sea. Still, we’re like hermit crabs : if the wave doesn’t come up and keep us wet, we die. The sea, my home on the coast, the scales stuck to my clothes, the sand in my boots, wide open spaces and tranquillity as far as the eye can see, I wouldn’t let that go, not even for the most beautiful song ’’.
– Jean Dularge