Richard Desjardins
About the artist
Richard Desjardins was born in 1948 in Noranda (now Rouyn-Noranda), a small town in
the heart of the Abitibi-Timiskaming region. His first encounter with music came thanks
to his mother, who introduced him to the piano before he started school. By age 16, the
young pianist was accompanying his elder brother Roger in local bars. He then joined a
number of local bands, while working days as a copywriter for Radio-Nord.
At 27, with four musician friends, he formed a country-rock band called Abbittibbi, and
they honed their craft mainly at hotels in northern Ontario, playing hits from English
radio and a few French songs written by Desjardins. They were always scrambling for
money, and the musical brotherhood lasted only a few months before breaking up.
In 1976, Richard Desjardins moved to Montreal, soon followed by the rest of Abbittibbi…
and the band started up again. At the time, Abbittibbi was only performing occasionally
in clubs, for which they earned starvation wages. Never mind. They succeeded in
launching a first album, Boom Town Café, and sales were going well, but the band broke
up once again after a series of problems with the record company.
Desjardins decided to go his own road, and began putting together an album with roots
in poetry and traditional music, where the words would soar on the notes of the piano
alone. The singer-songwriter-performer was in no rush, and a few years later he had a
repertoire of new songs he enjoyed singing in bars, cafés and small rooms,
accompanying himself on electronic piano. Les derniers humains finally came out in 1987
and this first solo work quickly sold out, so Desjardins immediately went back to work
writing new pieces for a follow-up album. The spectacular Tu m’aimes-tu, recorded at the
Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur in Montreal, was released in 1990. Trying to market
his product, Desjardins knocked at the door of every producer in Montreal. Everywhere
he went, the answer was No. With hindsight, it’s clear those producers missed the boat.
Tu m’aimes-tu, which Desjardins would produce himself, sold more than 125,000 copies.
1990 was a turning point in Desjardins’s career. Invited to open the Stephan Eicher show
at the Festival d’été de Québec, he had the crowd at his feet, calling out for more. During
the same period, Pierre Falardeau’s film Le Party, for which Desjardins had written the
score, was enjoying enormous success. The Festival d’été de Québec awarded him its
Prix miroir de la chanson francophone, and in 1991, at the L’ADISQ awards night, his
peers finally recognized his talent by presenting him with the Felix for Songwriter of the
Year, and Pop Album of the Year.
Success on the other side of the pond would not be long in coming. The programmer at
Paris’s world renowned Théâtre de la Ville offered him a three-night gig, and Desjardins
perfected his style in front of everyone-who-was-anyone in Paris. That first appearance
on French soil would be followed by many more. Richard Desjardins played the Bataclan
(equivalent to the Spectrum in Montreal) no fewer than a dozen times. After his
1993Quebec tour, he launched Richard Desjardins au Club Soda, a live album that
included several new songs, monologues, and even songs he had written back in his days
with Abbittibbi.
After touring his solo show (some 450 performances across Quebec, France, Switzerland
and Belgium), Desjardins returned to his roots, re-uniting with his brothers from
Abbittibbi to record the powerful Chaude était la nuit. The album tour that followed was
enough to convince Desjardins that he had been right to believe in the project. That
reunion of his old pals became, in a way, a bridge to the next stage in his career. It was
a “belle aventure”, since immortalized on disc as Abbittibbi Live, recorded at the Vieux
Clocher in Magog.
Then, with friend Robert Monderie, he decided to do something about the issue of
deforestation, preparing a wide-ranging, four-year investigation that would become the
hard-hitting documentary exposé L’Erreur boréale (Forest Alert). The film raised myriad
questions addressed to decision-makers and turned a spotlight on the critical status of
Quebec’s boreal forest. Desjardins was devoting time and energy to the making of the
documentary, but he was still working on his career as a musician, songwriter and
performer, and in 1998 he launched his third solo album – this one recorded in studio,
titled Boom Boom. He set out on a cross-Quebec tour that would last for the next two
years.
In 2000, Richard Desjardins moved to France, where he performed regularly in cities and
towns outside Paris. Back in Quebec in 2001, he set off on tour once again, armed this
time with nothing but a guitar and his implacable words. The new tour, Desjardins et sa
guétare, would take him to fifty small towns and give him time to work on the songs for
yet another album, his eighth, titled Kanasuta. The name, meaning “Where the devils
dance”, comes from the name of a forest in the area where he was born, which was
protected through the efforts of an organization he had helped found. The mission of
Action boréale is to oversee forest management in Quebec.
Kanasuta went on sale in 2003, just as the XIIth World Forestry Congress was meeting in
Quebec City. The Kanasuta tour began in February 2004 and would last two years.
Desjardins and his musical partners from the Kanasuta Project have given more than 120
performances in Quebec, Canada, France and Switzerland. The tour has also been
captured on disc (with more than 5 hours of material, including the documentary Forest
Alert). Kanasuta won 5 Felix awards at the 2004 L’ADISQ ceremony, and the Prix Miroir
at the 2005 Festival d’été in Quebec City. Desjardins and his musicians will perform the
show again at selected locations in Quebec in the summer of 2007.
In 2006, Richard Desjardins began filming – with partner Robert Monderie once again – a
new documentary. Le Peuple invisible is a look at the Algonquin people, scheduled for
release in 2007. In February 2007, Richard Desjardins is the Guest of Honour at the 6th
Festival Voix d’Amériques.
AWARDS
Hero – Environment 2005
Sélection du Reader’s Digest
Petit Larousse illustré, 2006
Prix Miroir Most Popular Show, Festival d’été de Québec, 2005 – Kanasuta
Prix Mérite du français dans la culture, 2005
Awarded by the Union des artistes, the Union des écrivains, Sartec and the Office
québécois de la langue française
Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros (Songwriting) 2004 – Kanasuta
Prix de l’Organisation internationale de la francophonie 2004 – Kanasuta
Félix Best Writing (with Patrice Desbiens), Show of the Year (ADISQ) 2004 – Kanasuta
Félix Songwriter of the Year (ADISQ) 2004 – Kanasuta
Félix Pop Album of the Year (ADISQ) 2004 – Kanasuta
Félix Show of the Year, Singer-Songwriter-Performer (ADISQ) 2004 – Kanasuta
Doctorat honoris causa, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 2004
Félix Writer, Show of the Year (ADISQ) 1999 - Boom Boom
Man of the Year, L’Actualité, Québec, 1999
Prix miroir Best French-Language Song (with Abbittibbi), Festival d’été de Québec, 1995
Prix Québec Wallonie-Bruxelles du disque et de la chanson, 1992
Félix Singer-Songwriter of the Year (ADISQ) 1991- Tu m’aimes-tu
Félix Pop Single of the Year (ADISQ) 1991- Tu m’aimes-tu
Félix Producer of the Year (ADISQ) 1991- Tu m’aimes-tu
Jacques-Blanchet Medal 1991- Tu m’aimes-tu
Prix miroir Best French-Language Song, Festival d’été de Québec, 1990
AWARDS FOR THE DOCUMENTARY FOREST ALERT (L’ERREUR BORÉALE)
Prix Solidarité Canada-Sahel, awarded to the person having made a significant
contribution to the struggle against desertification, 2000
Prix Frederick Todd, for exceptional contributions to the advancement of landscape
architecture in Quebec, awarded by the Association des architectes paysagistes du
Québec, 2000
Prix Jutra (Québec), Best Documentary, 1999
Prix Gémeaux (Québec), Best Editing, 1999
Prix Robert-Claude Bérubé, awarded by the Office des communications sociales, 1999
Prix du développement durable en milieu rural, Festival international du film
environnemental Ecofilm, Lille, France, 1999
Prix du reportage magazine, Festival international du film d’environnement de Paris,
France, 1999
Grand prix du festival, mention environnement, Festival international du film nature
et environnement de Grenoble, France, 1999.
-30Inspired from web site : www.richarddesjardins.qc.ca