De Temps Antan

De Temps Antan is a super-talented trio of Québécois musicians, performing songs and tunes in the traditional style with a lot of spirit and attitude. Each of these three relatively young musicians -- Éric Beaudry, André Brunet and Pierre-Luc Dupuis -- has done a stint in the Québécois supergroup La Bottine Souriante, and Brunet is the current "Grand Master of Canada" fiddle champion. (Beaudry, in fact, is listed in La Bottine's current lineup.)

On this set of 12 tunes, songs and suites, they all take turns singing lead, and both Beaudry and Brunet provide the foot percussion that's unique to Québécois dance music. Beaudry plays guitar, bouzouki and mandolin, Brunet fiddle and guitar, and Dupuis accordion, harmonica and guimbarde or Jew's harp.

The first three tracks establish the band's modus operandi, with two mid-tempo offerings -- "C'est ben dommage" and the set titled "Pu d'argent / le plancher croche," Dupuis taking the lead vocals on the former, Beaudry the latter. Duipuis' bartone is somewhat gruff, his style having lots of embellishments, while Beaudry's is a lighter baritone and somewhat smoother. For the most part, the vocals are done in the usual Québécois call-and-response style. The third track is an uptempo instrumental fiddle-accordion-guitar reel set, including one about a broken water pump and another about an errant computer, and the whole thing is titled "Suite du laptop." Another track of note is the fourth, a set that includes "La reel acrobatique" with some truly impressive fiddling. Brunet's only lead vocal comes on track five, "La bizoune," a more mellow song with lots of long whole notes from the accompanying fiddle and accordion.

For variety they bring out the slide bouzouki and Jew's harp on "Dimanche dernier," and they sing a lovely three-part harmony on the a capella lament "Chère Léonore." The jaunty "Reel à Marie-Pierre" features long sections of mouth music on the choruses, and some of the reels have instrumental choruses and unaccompanied three-part-harmony verses -- very impressive.

The CD booklet contains a lot of humorous Canadian-themed art, with the musicians in various costumes PhotoShopped into a variety of rustic scenes. All in all, a very nice package of excellent Québécois folk music. I'm looking forward to seeing De Temps Antan at the Festival du Bois in Maillardville, British Columbia this spring!

- Gary Whitehouse - greenmanreview.com

De Temps Antan began life as a small Québécois roots band within a much bigger one. Pierre-Luc Dupuis, André Brunet, and Eric Beaudry first got together as a trio while playing and touring as members of La Bottine Souriante, a 10-piece outfit with horns. But while La Bottine opened up new horizons for the musicians, its size and volume meant they couldn't play in smaller venues for traditional music.

“The project for the trio was born in 2004, following a request by a friend who does bookings for a room,” says Dupuis from Memphis, where the three singers and multi-instrumentalists were showcasing at a music conference. “He wanted to hear the three of us playing together. It meant really bringing things down to basics, to the essence of the music.”

The trio's name harks back to its early days, and is a pun that's largely lost in translation. The words mean “of olden times”, but when spoken they sound the same as de temps en temps, meaning “from time to time”.

“It's because we were only able to perform every now and then, between our commitments with La Bottine,” says Dupuis, speaking in French. “We still managed to tour a bit and to make an album, A L'Année. Since then, André has left La Bottine, and I left last fall. But Eric—who plays bouzouki, mandolin, and guitar—remains a member.”

Touring outside of French Canada has become the lifeblood of Québécois roots bands these days. Dupuis, De Temps Antan's accordionist and harmonica player, notes that his group has become increasingly popular in parts of the U.S. Before he and his bandmates hit Vancouver on their current tour, they will be teaching at Centrum, a music and arts centre in Port Townsend, Washington.

“We were there last summer as well,” Dupuis says. “Traditional music is only really big in Quebec during the Christmas holidays.…Recognition at home always seems to take longer to come.”

Nevertheless, home is very much at the heart of De Temps Antan and the source of much of its music. “A lot comes from our own families,” says Dupuis, who, like the other two members of the trio, is a singer. “On the album, especially, there's a lot from the village of Saint-Côme, where Eric was born.

“He's got many songs and tunes from there,” he continues. “And he also inherited the work of someone in the village who collected back in the '60s, among them Eric's granddad, an excellent fiddle player. So you get a sense of the richness of just one little corner of the country. Our aim is to keep the essence of that music, but to have an open-minded attitude—in short, to let it live.”

De Temps Antan plays the Festival du Bois in Coquitlam's Mackin Park on Saturday and Sunday (March 7 and 8).

- Tony Montague
March 5, 2009
- Straight.com

The French-rooted communities in Canada and Louisiana have become treasure houses of culture, and that culture summons up a way of life where people worked hard, loved hard, and danced just as hard.

A good dance band has to keep the dancers moving. And if the beat isn't right, the dancers will know it -- and show it. So not only do you have to be fleet-fingered, your energy has to match that of the dancers, it has to push them, lift them, provide that wonderful ride and release that is a good dance. Watching and listening to the Québécois band De Temps Antan at their WOMEX showcase, that point was powerfully brought home. The room was only just large enough for the crowd that came to hear them, and there was certainly no room for dancing. Still, one could see the many dance gigs that must have shaped this trio. You'll see a superb interaction and great joy in their presentation, and they feed off the energy in a room and get stronger with each song. Having reviewed the footage I shot many times, I can tell you that I almost felt exhausted myself by the end of the set-- yet their tempos remained rock solid and their arrangements tight.

That said, I've chosen to start off my video with one of their slower songs, one they found in an archive. These guys do their homework researching older material and giving it fresh new arrangements. "Jeune et Jolie" (young and pretty) has a sturdy melody, and the band works it for all its worth. It gives you a chance to see that these guys --who all, by the way, tenured with "La Bottine Souriante" that institution of Québécois music -- aren't just wonderful instrumentalists, they are also excellent singers. This is followed by a buoyant dance medley.

Watching a performance like this makes me wonder what we may have lost in our journey towards more and more impersonal modes of music delivery. I ask myself "what is the difference in the experience of dancing to a live band, and dancing to a deejay?" It's a hard one to answer, but there are differences, and they are worth thinking about and evaluating.

De Temps Antan is: Éric Beaudry (guitar, bouzouki, vocals, feet), André Brunet (fiddle, vocals, feet) and Pierre-Luc Dupuis (accordion, harmonica, vocals, feet).

This is the third in a series on WOMEX 2010, the World Music Convention that took place in Copenhagen.

-Michal Shapiro - The Huffington Post

If everything goes according to plan, the Quebecois band De Temps Antan will successfully transport an audience from their seats to a homegrown, French-Canadian kitchen jam session.

Playing traditional folk tunes derived from the shared, rich heritages of Quebec and Louisiana – with Cajun influences being the most obvious connection – the trio’s performance goal lies somewhere between being cultural ambassadors and being the life of a really great party.

Speaking with a thick Quebecois accent tinged with what sounded like a constant smile, the band’s violinist, André Brunet, said the traditional folk songs offer a small-town feel that most anyone could recognize.

“We work a lot to bring the spirit of what is a kitchen party,” said André Brunet. “It’s really fun to bring people there. Even if they don’t know what to expect for sure people will go home from the show with a nice vibe of smiling.”

De Temps Antan brings their home-style act to the valley on March 18 when the Whitefish Theatre Company hosts their show at the O’Shaugnessy Center.

The group – consisting of Brunet, Pierre-Luc Dupuis on the accordian and Éric Beaudry on guitar, mandolin and bouzouki – all come from similar, small-town backgrounds in Quebec, where the unique, rich culture is channeled into energetic songs with ever-evolving melodies.

Part of their heritage is to provide the percussion with their feet, Brunet said, stomping to a rhythm rooted deeply in other genres of music, such as salsa or African drums.

“We start tapping the feet before walking when we are young,” Brunet said. “It’s the basic rhythm of the Quebecois spirit; it’s just a groove.”

Similarly, the lyrics are often part of an old, storytelling tradition from the region. Brunet said the group dug up some of its repertoire in a university library in Quebec where archivists stored songs sung by the older generations of regional villages, some recorded in the 1950s and 1960s.

The music and melody comes from the trio, Brunet said, which has a significant musical history of its own. All three met while playing in the popular folk band La Bottine Souriante, soon locking on to one another’s similar traditional backgrounds and influences.

After a year or two, they started playing together as a trio because it was a good fit, Brunet said, but it was not initially a full-time endeavor.

Calling themselves De Temps Antan, the band evoked a double entendre fitting their style: when translated, the band’s name means both “yesteryears” and “once in a while.”

Now, in their sixth year together, the band is a fulltime priority for Brunet and Dupuis; Beaudry is still involved with La Bottine Souriante.

“It’s very fun because we know each other for years, but we never got the chance to play often together,” Brunet said.

Fun is a constant, overarching theme for the trio’s music and performances. Audience participation is a mainstay at their shows, where the band chats and laughs with the crowd, as well as plays call-and-respond tunes to get the crowd into it.

And though their songs are in French, Brunet said most audiences catch on to enough words to sing along. Even if they don’t know what they’re saying, they understand the underlying language of music, Brunet said.

“I remember when I was young listening to many English singers; I was just not understanding any words but I was listening to the melody,” Brunet said.

Brunet said the Flathead Valley audience members should be prepared for a friendly, funny and lively evening.

“It’s a nine- to 99-year-old show. We invite people to come have a good time,” Brunet said. “It’s going to be fun and people will have the chance to have a good time, a full two hours of laughing and good melodies.”

-Molly Priddy
March 4, 2011 - Flathead Beacon

Quebecois folk music group De Temps Antan brought its audience to its feet — and even a few members to the stage — during their lively and exciting show “Les Habits de Papier” in Spaulding Auditorium at the Hopkins Center for the Arts on Saturday night. The group performed songs from their second album, which presented a language barrier for most of the audience — the lyrics were all sung in the band’s native French. Nevertheless, the band overcame the linguistic differences and received overwhelming praise.

The three band members — Eric Beaudry, Andre Brunet and Pierre-Luc Dupuis — first met and combined their talents while performing in a different band, La Bottine Souriante, a 10-piece ensemble that is one of Quebec’s most prominent folk music bands. Brunet and Dupuis used to be principal players and lead singers of the band, while Beaudry still performs with both La Bottine Souriante and De Temps Antan.

Brunet is a master fiddler — having won top honors at the Grand Master Fiddling Competition in August 2008 — Dupuis is talented on harmonica and accordion and Beaudry is a virtuoso on a number of stringed instruments, including the guitar, mandolin and bouzouki. The band’s members were all inspired by traditional Quebecois music, the genre on which the three were raised, Dupuis said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

“The music, it’s genetic,” Dupuis said. “It’s an arrangement of everything you hear in your life.”

The band often derives inspiration from Quebecois tunes, from which they have found arrangements or made their own. In addition, De Temps Antan supplements their repertoire with their own folk compositions, which are a blend of traditional elements and other musical styles including bluegrass and Cajun music. Performing traditional folk music has allowed the band to spread their heritage outside of Quebec, according to Brunet

“It’s fun to make people know our culture, our music,” Brunet said.

Eight years ago, the three — whose camaraderie is more than apparent — formed De Temps Antan as a side project and performed gigs in the off-season of La Bottine Souriante. The band’s name — much like its music — looked to the French language for inspiration, according to Dupuis.

“De Temps Antan is a play on words,” Dupuis said. “Because it sounds like ‘de temps en temps,’ which is an idiom that means from time to time, but also antan means yesteryear.”

Notably, all three band members contribute vocals, and the band relies on the contrasts between their vocal tones to establish the correct mood of a song. The band’s music ranges from plaintive and soaring to delightfully dance-like and rapid, with a distinctive tone that is a little wild in rhythm and that borrows palpably from history and traditional French folk music.

De Temps Antan has been on a worldwide tour with “Les Habits de Papier” — translated as “the newspaper suits” — for several months now. The band took to the Spaulting stage decked out in white jackets printed with French crossword puzzles.

The aisles were filled with dancing audience members by the final song. People in every row swayed in their seats, tapped their feet and clapped along with the music.

After the show’s intended conclusion, with the quick-paced “Petipetan,” the entire audience stood for the band’s exit and remained standing and applauding for nearly two minutes. De Temps Antan conceded at last, performing a final encore of three songs.

Carried by their charisma, humor and virtuosic musicianship, De Temps Antan showed that music transcends the boundaries of nationalities and cultures — music speaks its own language.

Katherine Tai

Published on Monday, January 9, 2012
- The Dartmouth

« Hostie, Calice, Tabernacle! » These words are usually reserved for holy objects in the Catholic Church but could also be also be used in the Québécois vernacular to describe the release of De Temps Antan’s new CD. Translated to English, they would mean: Wow, Far-Out, WTF! With their new CD titled Les Habits de Papier (Paper Suits), this trio of young French Canadian super stars shows us the full gamut of their talent and energy. With an ear-blowing mix of traditional fiddle tunes and songs as well as newly composed material, this band proves that they can handle any gathering from an intimate house concert to an arena show. All of them are former members of the seminal Québec band “La Bottine Souriante” and the three of them can put out the same rocking energy as the entire Bottine band.

guytheguy_7336I first met “la gang” at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend two years ago, when they were the guest artists and teachers at the camp. They proved to be great teachers as well as performers, but they also were wonderful ambassadors for their culture. From late night jams to early morning teaching sessions and concerts, they were always in top form. This same versatility and enthusiasm comes through on their new CD. André Brunet provides the driving motor for the group with his powerhouse fiddling and pounding foot rhythms. Eric Beaudry adds a touch of artistry with his charming voice and impeccable guitar and bouzouki work. Finally, Pierre-Luc Dupuis rounds it all off with pristine harmonica and accordion support, as well as a voice that would be welcome in any rollicking tavern party in Québec. The songs go from romantic (Adieu Marguerite) to raucous (La Turlutte du Rotoculteur) and the instrumentals cover tender melodies (La Fée des Dents), Cajun honky tonk (La Maison Renfoncée), slide guitar (Dominic à Marcel), and finally all-out hip hop fiddle frenzy (Pétipétan).

If you buy their CD, you will get a great sense of where the music of Québec is going today. Better yet, go to their concerts and you will experience “la joie” du Québec – energy and joy to sustain anyone through the long and lonely months of winter. As the boys in the band would say: “On va tu en avoir du fun en calice mon chien! » (translation provided upon request only).

(Guest CD Review by Louis Léger aka Dr. Squeeze) - Victory Music

Pierre-Louis Dupuis (voix, accordéons, harmonicas, guimbardes), André Brunet (voix, guitare, pieds et “Grand Maître du Canada” de violon depuis août 2008) et Eric Beaudry (voix, guitare, bouzouki, mandoline, pieds) forment, depuis 2003, ce trio venu de Lanaudière (région qui abrite décidément de nombreux et talentueux groupes de musique traditionnelle québécoise !). Ces trois anciens membres de La Bottine Souriante nous proposent un nouveau disque éblouissant. Explorant, actualisant et dynamisant une musique venue du terroir, les trois compères reprennent des airs à danser et des mélodies venues de la tradition orale avec un swing déconcertant et une joie évidente qui fait plaisir à entendre. Ajoutons à cela quelques compos originales de haute volée, et nous avons au bout du compte un très bel album où musiques et parties vocales se conjuguent en toute beauté. Un vrai feu d'artifice !
- Trad magazine