Joe Grass has worked with many artists for 20 years, from Lhasa de Sela to Elisapie via Marie-Pierre Arthur and Patrick Watson. The in-demand guitarist has also been pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter for all this time and on Friday launched Falcon’s Heart, an album that draws as much from the roots of country-folk music as from his interest in contemporary textures.
“I wanted to write really simple, non-judgmental songs. Like the old country stuff I love, George Jones, all those dead people my friends don’t care about,” Joe Grass tells us with a smile from a little cafe in the heart of Mile End, where he has his studio. .
“But it’s hard to keep it simple,” he adds. There are two parts of me in this project: one that wanted to make beautiful and simple and concise songs, and the other that wanted to deconstruct, to make collages of lots of business, electronic, contemporary, classical , more abstract worlds, and put that together. »
In fact, for Joe Grass, it’s all about balance: in his work with others, for example, the goal is to “create a world” out of his own and that of the artist he’s collaborating with. “Here is me creating a world out of two parts of me. »
But the search for balance does not necessarily mean the quest for perfection. On the contrary.
He also leaves a lot of room for improvisation in the studio, and for this reason has invited musicians from the free jazz scene to join him, to add their palette to the colors of the album.
That’s actually Joe Grass’s secret, knowing how far to go – because “there’s also the danger of overdoing it” – being open to suggestions and contingencies. It is much in this way that he worked with his basic trio formed by musician friends, Robbie Kuster on drums, François Lafontaine on keyboards and Mishka Stein on bass.
“For example Guadalupe, I gave Robbie and Francois something like ‘dust in a psychedelic desert and you’re walking in cowboy boots.’ They understood right away.” What delights him is that the result is not so much like what he imagined, but rather the creation of a new world that he had not even thought of.
For this poetic and soothing album that evokes the unpredictability of life – “I learned that you have to accept certain lacks of certainty” – Joe Grass also favors a writing that is more a vector of sensations and emotions than oriented to a specific purpose. “It’s more about opening up antennas around and within me,” he explains, hoping people listening can project themselves into it.
“But what I had in mind while writing the song, what was going on at the time, nobody needs to know!” »
Originally from New Brunswick, Joe Grass first came to Montreal in the early 2000s to study. “The first summers, I went back to work at the carwash or the zoo in Moncton. Afterwards I started my solo career, I played in bars, I met musicians. I started to build a community, and I thought it’s still cool. »
In short, he never left, and not only did he set up his life and work here, but over the years he also built up a more than enviable reputation as a studio and stage musician, as well as a producer. . When it is pointed out to him how much people want to work with him, he blushes a little.
Joe Grass of course hopes to be able to take Falcon’s Heart on stage. His solo project, which he has been carrying out since 2005 alongside the rest, is just another side of him, “another way of approaching songs”. But this new album with “different colors” for him, he believes in it deeply… while remaining critical of course, which fits with his truly humble attitude.
“There is not a moment where I say to myself: I am 100% convinced that this is my best project. It’s just my newest, and I’ve learned some things in the process. I’m proud of it and can’t wait to play it live, but the world has to like it first! I would be happy for the world to listen to it. »
“I have never seen someone so devoted to their instrument. He seems like a raw, natural musician, but no, he works all the time! Something clicked between us musically on The Ballad of the Runaway Girl, that’s why I’m working with him again. We’re different, I talk a lot, especially if I’m emotional, but he taught me to trust, that if we don’t cheat, we’ll get where we need to get. This album changed my life, because Joe allowed me to jump and face my fears. And he is discreet when he could be so show off. But never. It’s all about the music. »
“If Lhasa asked him to play with her at the time, it was for his sensitivity and his ability to listen. Joe played on Close to Paradise and I worked with him a lot. He is extremely talented. I like his way of playing the pedal steel, which is a very country instrument, but he gave him an almost neo-classical sound. He can play anything, banjo, mandolin, any style. He could have been a Nashville session musician, which is a compliment, because in Nashville, all the musicians play like gods. »
“I called Joe at the last minute during my tour in 2009, to replace my guitarist. And I flipped over! It was him until the end, and he’s been around ever since. He looks calm like that, but he’s not so calm. He can play rock with a lot of hair, or be extremely tender, or go far in the sophisticated. He is very gifted and knowledgeable, able to be nono too. That’s what fascinates me, because it’s rare, all that in the same person. »
