Bleu Jeans Bleu spent nine weeks at the top of the Mediabase Francophone Top 100 with “Scotch & Poches,” and that called for a proper celebration: Sour Puss (blue, naturally) and a game of Finnish skittles in a Sherbrooke park.
“Now, I go to the grocery store and people talk to me about Scotch & Poches. It’s crazy, because that song didn’t even exist eight months ago,” marvels Claude Cobra, Bleu Jeans Bleu’s singer-songwriter, better known to his parents as Mathieu Lafontaine.
The song Scotch & Poches was inspired by his neighbour, who works at the SAQ and gets him to try a scotch every now and then. “One day I was setting up the bean bag toss in the yard. I said, ‘Hey neighbour, how about a little Scotch & Poches?’ I said it with a bit of a swing to it. My eyes went wide like an owl’s and I thought, ‘That’s a song right there!’”
Fun and Games
Few bands have quite the same effect on a crowd as Bleu Jeans Bleu. Their songs spread joy wherever they’re heard, whether live or on the radio. Looking back, Claude Cobra has come to understand that his role as a musician is simply to make people happy.
“One time I went to see a career counsellor and he told me, ‘Being a musician isn’t a job, it’s like pie. If you eat pie all the time, eventually you’re gonna get sick of it. You need to find yourself a job that’s like bread. You’ll never get tired of bread, and you can play music on weekends.’ I was like, yeah… I don’t think that’s how I see it. I walked out of there crying. I’d love to talk to that counsellor again! But he wasn’t wrong about one thing. He said the only way making music can really fulfill you is if you care about what it does for other people…”
Bleu Jeans Bleu exists for and because of the party; the two are inextricably intertwined.
“Before the band even existed, these were drinking songs I’d play at parties late at night. Then at one point I thought, ‘Hey, we should record these songs.’ Christian Adam Gilbert, my partner since day one, was the one who pushed me to get into the studio and launch Bleu Jeans Bleu.”
And quite frankly, we’re grateful to Christian Adam Gilbert for giving fate that little nudge.
With information from Thalia Chaput.