There has always been music at Jeanne Côté. Her mother teaches music, her father runs the Petite-Vallée Song Festival and her sister is also a musician and singing coach… “I was taking piano lessons because my sister was taking them, but that’s not necessarily what which turned me on the most, she says. I was writing, in fact. I wanted to write novels. » Arriving at songwriting through writing, she ended up appreciating this art which allows her to remain introverted while expressing herself. She released a record titled Suite pour Personne in January 2023 and won the Francouvertes a few months later.
In her current job, she aspires to do “a lot with a little.” This is why she likes the minimalist approach, full of good, simple ideas, of the Quebec tandem Bibi Club (made up of Nicolas Basque and Adèle Trottier-Rivard) and the British duo Rozi Plain. She also admires Joni Mitchell and her “absolute mastery” of lyrics. “There is something cinematic in the way he tells his stories,” says Jeanne Côté. She got the full measure of this artist by listening to her album Hejira while having the texts in front of her, as singer-songwriter Émilie Proulx had suggested to her. The experience was remarkable. “Joni Mitchell really became a monument to me in that moment. »
Café Robinson by Marie-Jo Thério. “I find that this tune contains a novel in terms of emotional density and possible meanings,” she explains. The track is seven minutes long, but tells a story “that could last an hour.” That Jeanne Côté would choose a romantic song makes sense, since she wanted to write novels. That she chose Café Robinson is just as logical for an admirer of Joni Mitchell: this piece by Marie-Jo Thério inevitably evokes The Last Time I Saw Richard, the last song from the album Blue, one of the masterpieces of the Canadian artist.
Her summer is already quite busy with concerts in eastern Quebec and the workshops she will lead in Petite-Vallée. Jeanne Côté took advantage of the momentum her victory at the Francouvertes gave her: her next record is already finished, she now hopes to find a record company to market it. This album will be different from Suite pour Personne, but the arrangements will remain minimalist, she assures. “I have the impression that the text takes its place more and that the meanings are more open when we leave space in the songs. »