COMMENTARY: Quebec has suddenly become country music country

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

Folks who were there might reckon Sept. 12, 2007, was a milestone in country music’s invasion of Quebec.

The place was the Festival Western in Saint-Tite, the little village in the Mauricie region, just north of Hérouxville.

It was a crisp evening with fall in the air, brisk enough that you could see puffs of Kenny Rogers’ breath in the stage lighting – Kenny Rogers, at the time a 67-year-old father of twin toddlers, and the Zeus of the American country music pantheon.

Kenny Rogers in Saint-Tite.

Were it not for the fact the otherwise unremarkable rural crossroads transformed itself in mid-September into a teeming city of RVs, dance halls, rodeo events and a boisterous market for every imaginable bit of country merch and memorabilia from saddles to cowboy hats, a superstar of Rogers’ magnitude showing up for a show there – two shows, actually – would be unimaginable.

But no, there he was onstage, performing his timeless classics with that incomparable whisky-smooth voice, clearly amazed he was blowing the minds of thousands of fans in a rodeo ring in the middle of nowhere in the francophone heartland of Quebec.

Those fans, some 15,000 of them, might not have understood all the song lyrics, but they understood clearly this was a historic moment.

And then, and then … Rogers brings onstage, with the most genteel of Southern boy introductions, Isabelle Boulay, the celebrated Quebec chanteuse, possessed of an other-worldly voice.

In a duet for the ages, Rogers and Boulay performed “Every Time Two Fools Collide.” It was Boulay’s choice, to Rogers’ surprise. It’s beautifully immortalized on YouTube, if you want to feel the seismic energy between the Texas superstar and the darling of Sainte-Félicité in the Gaspé.

Fast forward to the 2015 edition of Quebec City’s Festival d’Été (FEQ), the consummate weathervane of music trends, an event that began 56 years ago as a Québécois hippie happening and grew into a showcase for global headliners of all flavours.

Country music? Why not? Introducing Keith Urban (Mr. Nicole Kidman to many) who years afterward would talk about how his 2015 show in front of the massive, enthusiastic crowd on the Plains of Abraham was his favourite to date in his storied career.

In 2022, post-pandemic, FEQ rolled the dice again and brought in emerging star Luke Combs, who, had there been a roof o’er the Plains, would have blown it off. To prove it was not a fluke, Combs returned to Quebec City and Montreal a few months later for sold-out shows at the Videotron Centre and Bell Centre.

Montreal, that cosmopolitan metropolis, now boasts its own wildly successful country music event. The Lasso festival, now in its third year, pulled in more than 50,000 fans last year for the two-day gathering in August.

So what explains this virée country in Quebec? The simple answer, according to observers, is that today’s country music is not your grandparents’ corny, twangy country music. “New country” is energetic, infectious, uncomplicated, sexy and danceable. It fuses other genres from rap to pop to metal to whatever it is Taylor Swift and Beyoncé do.

As FEQ programming boss Louis Bellavance puts it, “There is a transfer from rock fans to country fans because they carry the same energy. It’s the ‘new country’ artists who bring that energy.”

Country music is like other genres Quebecers have embraced – progressive rock, for one: though the words are usually in English, the vibe is universal and knows no borders.

For decades, Quebec’s dozens of farm fairs, from Richmond in the Townships to New Richmond in the Gaspé, with their stages for country musicians of all types, have been the breeding ground for thousands of fans of “three chords and the truth,” as songwriter Harlan Howard describes country songs.

Those three chords have evolved somewhat – as has “the truth.” Lavish arena shows by big-name country acts have moved into the cities, and festivals are springing up all over the countryside.

But still, there was that magical night in Saint-Tite when two stars collided musically, and the rest is Quebec country music history.