Eric Chenaux trio q&A Pt. I

May 19

By Ado Nkemka

Read this Q&A ahead of “Delights of my Life/In the Mirror of this Night,” the May 29th concert with performances by Eric Chenaux Trio as well as Margaret Gay and Laura Reid (duo performing Mark Ellestad). Learn more about the event and get tickets on Showpass.

For Part I of this Q&A, I was able to catch Eric Chenaux, a former Torontonian who now lives in France, as he was about to take a train to Paris to catch a flight to Toronto about a week, or so ago. This interview was lightly edited.

Ado: How did you all meet?

Eric: And into the hazy and illusory territory of memory.

That is one way to start.

I like it.

Or, I like it enough.

But also.

I enjoy thinking that we are still meeting each other.

There were two french philosophers (Oh my, here we go! This does not bode well does it?) that wrote a series of wonderful books together in the 1980’s (or so) and in the biography of one of the gentlemen he spoke of his working and personal relationship with the other. He was not one to often display a maudlin sense of nostalgia or of romanticised personal narrative, in fact his work was in direct opposition to such things (oh, opposition, sounds violent, well I am not sure if it is, so please feel free to use a softer word if it pleases you)…

In this discussion he spoke of how he and the other continued to use the “vous” form when addressing each other. The “vous” form or the verb “vouvoyer” as opposed (all of this opposition, we really are living in troubled times) to the more informal “ tu “ in french is used with strangers, elderly people, and when we're talking to people in a professional context (at least to begin with). These two comrades (you know, real lefties!) and friends used vous as a way to acknowledge that even though they were close that neither would be so bold as to believe that they knew who the other was.

You know, of course, they knew who each other was, but in the sense that they wished not to project themselves onto the other. And this produced a radical sense of intimacy. I have always loved this little story. So many problems can come to be when we think we know the other, and even the other within ourselves (that is a bit too much). With all of this in mind I take great pleasure in thinking that Ryan, Phil and I are continually meeting each other, on and off the stage, leaving room for the other to change and modulate. I am very much looking forward to meeting Phil and Ryan in Calgary.

Right now, what are you inspired by?

Thinking of inspiration.

Well, it is spring.

We are breathing in gloriously.

And our lungs are filled with the sweetest of things, are they not?

But I imagine that the question may be, “what do I breathe into the lungs of my musical practice to satisfy its oxygen requirements?”

Well, it is spring.

Norberto Lobo and Yaw Tembe - Abrigos

Sun Ra – Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, Languidity

Freestyle Fellowship – Innercity Griots

Paul Bley- Floater Syndrome

Alvin Curran – Endangered Species

Ailie Ormston – Frames that lean, that roam

Kieran Daly – Plays Standards with Dan Fortin and Philippe Melanson

Chico Mello / Helinho Brandao

Ahmad Jamal – Legendary 1958 Pershing Lounge

Chris Connor – Chris Connor, A Jazz Date With Chris Connor

Sam Amidon, Salt River

Nappy Nina - Naptime

Patty Waters – Sings

Peggy Lee – Mink Jazz

Eric, what led to the creation of “Delights of my Life?” Why is it a record you had to put out into the world?

I have always been of the belief that one should take an artist's description of the beginning of a process (from the standpoint of having completed it) with no small dose of salt. But with that in mind I will try to answer the question with a little more generosity. Ryan has been a part of my music (and many other musics) for many years. I had not played with Phil, but I had and continue to be a huge fan of the musics he has been involved with, notably with the stellar band Bernice. I knew that he performed on electronic drums, which I thought was a perfect way to introduce drums into my music, after a long pause. As it turned out, Phil and Ryan are close and I thought that I could write music for this trio. I had been going it alone, more or less for some time, and I wished to share music, time and company with others and I felt more or less prepared to do so. Which means that I thought I was up to hosting. Sometimes we are and sometimes we are not. I was up to it. And so were Ryan and Phil! How wonderful. This recording was also a wonderful opportunity to invite Ryan and Phil to the home I share with Mariette, Blinky (dog), Gibelle, Fanny and Mykhos (horses), here in south central rural France.

Ryan and Eric, your history of collaboration goes way back, what is the most recent thing you’ve each discovered about each other's playing?

I will never understand Ryan’s music. And luckily I have no real yearning to do so. I trust his music implicitly. And by that, I mean that I can trust him more than I trust myself. Or to say it another way, and perhaps in a more wonderful way, that trusting Ryan amplifies and increases my own trust in myself. Ryan’s music is a vast, open, beautiful, generous and wild ensemble of spheres.

What theoretical concepts or thematic ideas are you currently exploring in your work generally?

I am writing these sentences in quite a rush, before my train leaves for Paris to catch the flight to Toronto. I do not travel with a computer and I wish not to write too much using my phone, so, many, if not all of these thoughts are somewhat truncated. I am very much still in love with songs and the way songs allow my music, or give form to a music that explores soft psychedelias. A song is a place to experiment. To experiment with what? I probably do not have time to know that right now. I am not sure that there are themes but there are sentiments. Sentiments that reveal themselves to me or sentiments that I encounter in the practice of my music. They express themselves to me. Very much not the other way around.

Music is a place to experiment with that which is unknown to us. You know, to encounter the wonders of life.

You all are pretty far in your careers, what is there left you’d like to explore creatively?

As one may find it easy to imagine. Life is wild. And our feelings and thoughts change, reshape. They appear and recede. What there is to explore is exploration itself. We traverse.

What are you most looking forward to when it comes to the May 29th concert?

Ah.

Finally.

I can be more clear.

An opening to say something clearly has emerged.

How lovely.

I am very much looking forward to hearing the wonderful music of Mark Ellestad.

A wonder.

Is there anything you’d like to share I haven’t given you the opportunity to share?

I feel a soft sense of satisfaction with the opportunities presented.

Thank you very much.

Eric Chenaux bio

Eric Chenaux is a Canadian guitarist, songwriter, singer and sound sculptor. He has released seven solo albums of experimental song on the Montréal-based imprint Constellation, charting an adventurous and uncompromising path through avant-folk, out-jazz and pop composition, increasingly rooted in a unique and elemental juxtaposition of fried, frazzled, semi-improvised guitar and smooth, clear tenor balladry. He has been called “a musician like no other” by Tiny Mix Tapes; his solo albums praised by The Quietus as “stunningly beautiful, genuinely inimitable, whose reputation will only grow with time.” Gracing the cover of The Wire magazine in 2017, the feature article declared: “Chenaux succeeds in generating an astonishing array of timbres. A singer and songwriter possessed of angelic sweetness and clarity accompanying himself with largely improvised, visceral guitar textures that seem intent on undermining and obscuring his own songs. It’s the need to communicate tussling with the urge to obfuscate; lucidity versus opacity; form against chaos.”

Though based in France for the past decade, Chenaux was a key figure in Toronto’s fertile indie and avant/improv music scenes throughout the 1990s and 2000s, releasing a first solo album of instrumental improv guitar in 1999 and co-founding the experimental music label Rat-drifting in 2001, which documents a dynamic cross-section of iconoclastic Toronto experimental music projects, including several ensembles in which Chenaux also figured as a member: The Draperies, The Reveries, The Guayaveras, The Marmots, Allison Cameron Band, Drumheller and Nightjars. Previously he was a core member of the cult Toronto postpunk/math-rock group Phleg Camp and the related duo Lifelikeweeds.

Chenaux’s first album as a singer-songwriter was Dull Lights, released on Constellation in 2006, and an acclaimed, highly original solo discography has unfolded since then: Sloppy Ground (2008); Warm Weather With Ryan Driver (2010); Guitar & Voice (2012); Skullsplitter (2015); Slowly Paradise (2018) and Say Laura (2022). He has featured on a range of collaborative records issued by other labels through this same span, including Okraïna, Avatar, Grapefruit and Three:four. He has performed and recorded with countless artists, including Ryan Driver, Sandro Perri, Eloïse Decazes, Michelle McAdorey, Nick Fraser, Martin Arnold, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, Pauline Oliveros, John Oswald, Michael Snow, Brodie West, Han Bennink, Christine Abdelnour, Michael Moore, Josephine Foster, Martin Tetrault, Wilbert De Joode, Gareth Davis, Jacob Wren, Norberto Lobo, Nathaniel Mann and many more. Chenaux also composes for film and contemporary dance, including a long-standing association with conceptual filmmaker Eric Cazdyn for his solo music, and in recurring collaboration with multi-media and sound installation artist Marla Hlady.

Eric Chenaux lives at Le Pouget in the commune of Condat-sur-Ganaveix in central France.