Mark Bérubé and The Patriotic Few
Photo by Guillaume Schatz
Some artists and their people don’t return calls, so convinced are they of their specialness that they’re fine with making other people wait. Mark Berube returns long distance phone calls on his birthday. He is, by any metric, a good guy.
Thankfully, that’s not all he is. He’s also one of Canada’s most interesting and vital musicians, a guy whose music is—if I can make a health food-related comparison—organic and nourishing without being cardboard-y and bland.
His most recent, June In Siberia, dropped earlier this year received its fair share of critical praise. To Berube, it was a record that blended “the better points” of his previous two records What The Boat Gave The River and What The River Gave The Boat, and did so without a bank account bursting at the seams.
“We didn't have a big budget, so we literally recorded and mixed the album in eleven days,” he says. “I was very impressed with how the players in my band (Kristina Koropecki/cello, Patrick Dugas/drums, Amelie Mandeville/bass) all stepped up and gave killer performances under the watch.
“Obviously, when I take a listen back, there are definitely some things I would change, but I still feel the performances are honest. Not perfect, but honest.”
It’s statements like this that make Berube so easy to deal with, so palatable as both a musician and an interview. Gracious and grateful, you get the sense that he might have listened to “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” a few too many times as a boy, but then, maybe we all should have been so lucky.
Case in point: Berube is stoked to play the Jazz Fest, though the room he’s playing—the Savoy at Metropolis—was small enough to almost be annexed by Prince and used as a dressing room.
“I guess he wanted the Savoy for his Green Room,” says Berube. “I guess that's how people roll at that stature: what is someone's concert hall is another's personal massage parlour. We tried bargaining, but in the end, we're still playing both nights, the Saturday and Sunday, June 25 [and] 26th.”
Berube still has no idea why, but he’s happy about it.
“I really do see it as an honour to play the festival,” he says. “My Dad, a born and bred Montréalais, always raved about the Jazz Fest in this town growing up.”
But does the Jazz Fest gig matter more than any other one?
“No,” he says. “Every gig counts whether there are two people in the audience or 2,000. As for many of us I'm sure, I've been that second person in a crowd for a show over the years and always had a huge respect for the performers who still gave their all.”
Photo by Guillaume Schatz
Mark Bérubé and The Patriotic Few
Photo by sbgnyc.com
Mark Bérubé and The Patriotic Few
You must be logged in to leave a comment.
