Rockin'
Cats
Glamour Puss is a New Brunswick based blues band that tours constantly carrying that East Coast party-vibe to the far corners of the civilized world. Pictured above in Paris, France, the band consists of (l. to r.) Roger Cormier on keyboards & vocals, Travis Furlong on guitar & vocals, Don Rogers on sax & vocals, Ron Dupuis on drums & vocals and Paul Boudreau on bass & vocals. They will be touring Ontario and Quebec in support of their new NorthernBlues release Wire & Wood. Watch for them September 24 at Toronto's Hugh's Room, October 3 at Ottawa's Rainbow Room and October 4 at Dunnville's Readers' Café.
Bands' names often have musical origins, but the East Coast blues band Glamour Puss got its name in an unusual way, from a 1940's movie.
Two of the band's members, Ron Dupuis and Travis Furlong, were watching a glamour-era movie whose title now escapes them, and Furlong said about a less-than-glamorous character on screen, "He's no glamour puss." Dupuis agreed; he also thought it would be a great name for a blues band as blues has more substance than glitter.
So, with that surreal twist, the band became the Glamour Puss Blues Band, a name that was later shortened to Glamour Puss.
The Moncton-based band has a solid fan base in Atlantic Canada, built over nearly a decade of wowing audiences with their high-energy performances of blues, Acadian music and zydeco. Glamour Puss has recorded several critically acclaimed CDs and, in 1999, Real Blues magazine named them Canada's best blues band.
They became New Brunswick's musical ambassadors after one of their tunes was licensed to the province for a Tourism New Brunswick television ad campaign. The lyrics of the song "Hey, Hey, Slack la Patate," from the CD Blues du Jour (1999), were re-written to promote tourism in New Brunswick and the title became "Hey, Hey, Get Away." As musical ambassadors, the band has played at Tourism New Brunswick events in Quebec and New York.
Glamour Puss has the distinction of being the only "officially" bilingual band in New Brunswick, Canada's only officially bilingual province. In a 1996 census, one-third of New Brunswickers declared a knowledge of both of Canada's official languages. "French is part of the culture here," guitarist Travis Furlong says over the telephone from his home in Lower Coverdale, just outside Moncton. "Everyone in the band is bilingual. The fluency varies but everyone tries."
Recorded in French and English, the band's past three independent releases, all East Coast Music Award winners, include Glamour Puss Blues Band, Blues du Jour and Electric And Alive.
This month, the band's fourth recording, Wire And Wood, was released on Northernblues Music (www.northernblues.com). The band's manager, Bruce Morel, says it's the perfect label for the guys. "The label has an incredible amount of respect, not just here but internationally. The roster has been built carefully and we're proud to be part of it."
Northernblues Music head Fred Litwin expects Wire and Wood to receive a lot of favourable attention. "This CD is going to turn a lot of heads," he says. "It certainly
turned mine."
Glamour Puss celebrates the release of their new CD Wire & Wood with NorthernBlues prez Fred Litwin, manager Bruce Morel and producer Michael Jerome Browne, with new daughter, Lucie Esperanza Markus whose birth provided the only real interruption to an otherwise smooth running, and very successful recording session.
Furlong says the CD is the best one the band has done, with a deeper exploration of the band's Acadian roots and more acoustic instrumentation than on past recordings.
"There's a strong Acadian culture in New Brunswick," he says, and Ron Dupuis, who plays drums and shares vocal duties with the rest of the band, brings that traditional Acadian influence to the band.
Dupuis and Furlong played together in another band for two years before Glamour Puss was formed. "I got to know where his roots were at, traditional Acadian stuff," Furlong says. "I was closest to blues and its derivatives, blues rock and jazz. When that group came to be done, we looked at each other and said it would be fun to play blues and cajun and zydeco together."
The experience of recording their past CD's enabled Glamour Puss to sort out their musical priorities and, as a result, the band has matured, says Furlong, who at 36 is the youngest in a band whose members range in age to 50. "We learned what we wanted to do and what we didn't want to do, individually and as a group."
When it came to writing songs for Wire and Wood, Furlong says that he and keyboard, accordion and harp player Roger Cormier - the two get most of the songwriting credits on the CD - wanted to write as honestly and unpretentiously as they could. "Not that we were pretentious before but we wanted to hone the lyrical and musical content before we brought the songs to the band, for the rest of the guys to do the arrangements."
Along with Cormier, Dupuis and Furlong, the other members of Glamour Puss are bassist Paul Boudreau and saxophonist Don Rodgers. Furlong says the band gave his and Cormier's songs much respect and attention, so that each one was able to find its own life.
Wire and Wood's producer (and guest artist), Michael Jerome Browne, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of blues and the blues spectrum, captured the live spirit of the band in the best possible way, Furlong says. The CD was recorded live off the floor, with few overdubs. "He knew where we were going to and where we were coming from. It was definitely a meeting of the minds."
This fall, Glamour Puss swings this way as part of their Quebec, Ontario and Western Canada tour. Ontario dates include September 24 at Toronto's Hugh's Room, October 3 at Ottawa's Rainbow Room and October 4 at Dunnville's Readers' Café.
For more information, visit the band's Web site at www.glamourpuss.ca.
- Ruth Schweitzer