| Guy Bergeron
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My guest, has been at it since the 70'S. He is fiercely commited
to his art. Mixing blues,R&B, a twist of folk and rock stirred
in for good measure. This recipe makes out Guy Bergeron.
Hi and welcome to the Zine, How's things?
Things are all good here Claude, thanks for having me aboard. Been a good summer so far...the fish are biting, and the songs are writing themselves these days. I'd be a fool to complain.
must say, that I truly admire your determination to safeguard your
creative independance...Is it any easier now than when you first
started?
My reasons for doing the music on my own, stem to stern, originate from my need to have my songs done my way. Ive worked with a few bands and have had the opportunity to play with some fine musicians in my day. For the past 13 years or so, however, Ive been gigging solo, with just the acoustic guitar and the voice, and this is still how I like to take the music to the people live.
For capturing the tunes in recorded form, I really wanted to flesh them all out track by track, arranging and playing all of the parts myself. This way I figured the final result would be closer to the way I originally heard the songs in my head.
Its been a learning curve to do it this way, believe me, and I have a new respect for sound engineers now. Drummers, too...Im no Billy Cobham on the traps, and never will be. Its all easier now that I know how to use to tools I have in my playpen.
Its also easier now that I have finally gotten to a point where I know what my own sound is, and I dont have to re-invent the wheel every time I go to put a tune down.
I never learned to speak French, although many of my relatives do. My Mom is Italian, and she speaks that. So I come from a multilingual family and all I speak is Yankee. Darn shame, I think.
Im sure some of my heritage inherently sticks to me, as it does to anyone. However, I would have to think of myself more as a Yankee than anything else, as this is what I know to my bones.
In these days where anyone can dubbed themselves music critic does it
gall you that these people can criticise people like yourself who have
obviously paid their dues with years of performing?
Long as people been writing and talking, plenty of people that dont know anything have been commenting and criticizing. I take the praise and the criticism the same way...all press is good press! Its nice to get a shining review, but its just as good to get any review. It aint art till someone looks at it, and it aint music till somebody hears it.
Most of my time on the guitar has been logged in gin mills, and youre dealing with people who have had a few and are ready to get ornery no matter what. Cant make everyone happy, so got to make yourself happy. I'll be happy with a small, fiercly loyal following, and the occasional critic telling the word that my music is crap.
My writing has changed over the years, for certain. Although I've been doing solo for a long time, my material was never typical singer/songwriter. What has changed my material the most is now, instead of writing what I want to say, I write what I would want to hear.
I love the blues, been a big fan since I can recall. I really dig the old soul and funk stuff too, when everyone else in my classroom was listening to Deep Purple and Rush, I was more into Funkadelic, Jr. Walker & The Allstars, and Muddy Waters.
I went through an "avant garde" phase, and thank God thats over. As I was playing mostly acoustic for a while, I went through this thing where I was striving to be a singer/songwriter type, and doing more introspective crap with the writing. Thats just not me, though. Everytime I write a tune, I try to recall what it is I dig about music, and apply that. I occasionally jump genres to get that accomplished, depending on what I hear in my head.
"Last of the Hip White Boys" is starting to take off somewhat, and Im really marketing that one now. Im very proud of this one. There are some instrumentals on here that Im very happy with, and really show off my electric guitar playing. Im also really happy with all of the songs, theres a good representation there of the delta style, along with some nasty guitar funk and good old rootsy rock and roll. That cover of "Some Kind of Wonderful" has sort of a 70's arena rock flavor to it that cracks me up.
"last of the hip white boys" is a great title! How did you come to
name it this way?
Its kind of a joke, really. I know a lot of bigoted people think that you got to be a certain shade to play certain genres of music correctly. Like its inherent to a musicians genetic makeup. Good music comes from the guts..and everyone has the same colored guts, far as I know.
What is the hardest part of creating?
The hardest part of the whole process is getting the music heard. Next to that the rest is child's play.
If you could pick one song in your catalog that has not been truly
noticed and say" Hey this tune is really special, give it a listen" which will it be
and why?
I know which songs are special to me...Livin in the Valley is, and Big Dumb Fish. These are my two finest moments so far, in my opinion. Livin in the Valley is semi-autobiographical, and I aint the type of guy to break down crying, but I my eyes were squirting a little when I was writing that one. The end result is a song thats actually kind of funny in a sad, lonely way, and has a good rockin beat to it. You gotta laugh at life, even after it kicks your ass a little bit.
Big Dumb Fish is special to me because of those lyrics, I think thats a great tune. I just redid that one. It was originally done as a folk song, with acoustic guitar only. The new mix, called "Fresh Fish", is a funky thing, and came out killer! Im saving that one for my next release.
Visit the website at: http://guybergeron.indiegroup.com
email comments to: guybergeron@hotmail.com
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