Moncton NB, February 9, 2023) – Surprise, surprise! Menoncle Jason will be releasing a live double album on Friday, February 17, 2023, featuring all the songs from his first two albums. “Live avec la paroisse” (meaning live with the parish) features recordings of two shows that were performed in Southeast New Brunswick, in Memramcook and Moncton. The double album will be available on all digital platforms, on CD and cassette!
Public release: Saturday February 18
The album will first be available to the public at a launch on Saturday, February 18, 2023, at 7:00 pm, at the Monument-Lefebvre in Memramcook. During this evening, the recording of the show “Menoncle Jason live in Memramcook” will be shown on a big screen as part of the first edition of the Memramcook Film Festival, a film directed by Martin Goguen. Admission is free.
Like an archive…
“Live avec la paroisse” features recordings of two shows that were performed in Southeast New Brunswick: Memramcook and Moncton. “Live avec la paroisse is like an archive of Menoncle’s work that is finally being brought out into the open,” explains the Memramcook-born artist. It was by chance, while rummaging through his boxes in the back of his baby barn, that Menoncle came across a mix of old reel-to-reel and VHS tapes. He dusted them off and realized the quality was good enough to play them for the rest of the world,” he says with a laugh.
All lyrics and music, as well as the arrangements, are by Menoncle Jason. Mike Trask directed and recorded both shows. “Live avec la paroisse” is released by Moncton’s label Le Grenier musique.
Disc #1 features 14 songs recorded as a television show on May 25, 2021, at the Monument-Lefebvre in Memramcook, songs mainly from the album “Dans son prime” released in 2016. On this recording, we can hear Jason “Menoncle” LeBlanc (vocals and guitar), Christien “Éloi” Belliveau (guitar, lap steel and vocals), Nicholas “Roland” LeBlanc (bass and vocals) and Marc-André “Terry” Belliveau (drums).
Disc #2 features 12 songs that he performed at the launch of his album “La grosse piastre” at the Salle Bernard-LeBlanc of the Aberdeen Cultural Centre in Moncton on December 10, 2019. It features the same basic quartet as on album # 1 as well as Monica “Yvonne” Ouellette (trumpet), Jérémie “Léonce” Poitras (saxophone), Miguel “Clarence” Dumaine (keyboards), Katrine “Matante Atou” Noël (vocals), Julie “Dorilla” Aubé (vocals), Marie Andrée “Brenda” Gaudet (fiddle), Matt “Irish” Hayes (fiddle) and Mike “Virgil” Trask (guitar).
1st radio single on February 10th: “Halle ta marde – Live à Memramcook 2021”
The song “Halle ta marde – Live à Memramcook 2021” is the first radio single available now from the double album. In this song, Menoncle rages against people who don’t perform at work! The live version of this song will also be available on YouTube on Friday, February 10th.
Menoncle Jason
Menoncle Jason is a character invented by singer-songwriter Jason Leblanc. Inspired by people he has met in Memramcook, in southeastern New Brunswick, where Jason is from, Menoncle is a sort of parody of a person living in the country, and who has trouble adapting to modernity. The music, however, is not a parody, it is rather of a high quality. For Menoncle, everything was better before… Constantly nostalgic, he would love to live in the past. This universal character denounces the consumer society, the over-indebtedness, the malaise of humans in everyday life. His style always has a humorous and committed touch. His first two albums were very successful with the critics. The artist looks for the sounds of the “Golden Age” which colors his classic country retro chiac style. With his deep, gravelly voice, he manages to create a singular sonic ambiance where the sound is a bit more 1960’s pop rock, but still with the signature country sung in chiac that defines him so well. His first album “Dans son prime” was released in 2016 while “La grosse piastre” was released in 2019. Both albums were signed on Moncton’s label Le Grenier musique. In February 2023, he releases “Live avec la paroisse”, a double live album with all the songs from his first two albums which are in fact the recordings of two shows that were presented in Memramcook (2021) and Moncton (2019).
