Kevin Fowley – Ne Pleure Pas, Jeannette (Basin Rock Records)
There’s something hypnotic and calming about this song and self-directed video by Kevin Fowley: a man in what looks like a French farmhouse making and taking a leisurely continental breakfast of coffee, croissant, juice, baguette, butter, jam.
All that’s missing to complete the picture is some accordion music, but that would be a cliche too far; what we get is an ancient French folk song, sung (offscreen) by the self-described “word mumbler and string plucker”; it’s the perfect conjunction of sound and vision.
Although the man in the film seems entirely content with his solitary breakfast, the words of the song are melancholy and maudlin. Ne Pleure Pas, Jeannette is a traditional ballad about a young woman who wants to marry a man in prison who is facing the gallows for his crime. It is taken from Kevin’s forthcoming album, À Feu Doux released on 26th July on Basin Rock Records.
Fowley is half-French and half-Irish and grew up between the two countries, listening to French lullabies sung by his mother in one room, while his father would be playing Irish folk tunes from Donegal on his fiddle in another. “I’m lucky to have been brought up bilingual and bicultural,” he says.
“What I find interesting is that I usually think in English, but if I intentionally start thinking in French, a markedly different side of my personality comes through, encouraging different thought patterns.”
That dichotomy is displayed on an album of French lullabies dating back as far as the 14th century that brings together musical elements from both worlds, gliding seamlessly across folk, jazz and a shimmering in-between sound that feels reflective of a man who has soaked up such a rich yet varied collection of musical influences since day one.
They are traditional songs but they are not what most of us would recognise as traditional songs for children. “You can imagine in the 15th and 16th centuries when the songs were written that parents would sing them to frighten their children into obedience,” says Fowley, who adapted the songs in Dublin with contemporary arrangements and faint tape manipulations by Ross Chaney on subtle synths, samplers and modular processing and Caimin Gilmore on moody double bass.
Listening to them today, you can imagine yourself in a smokey Paris jazz club in the early hours, a bottle of absinthe by your side, discussing French art, literature and philosophy to a soundtrack of Serge Gainsbourg, John Martyn and Gábor Szabó… and a Franco-Irish fellow by the name of Kevin Fowley.
More of Tim Cooper’s writing at his Louder Than War author’s archive and at Muck Rack. He posts music daily at EatsDrinksAndLeaves.com
À Feu Doux is available to pre-order via Bandcamp; Kevin Fowley can also by found at his own website, on Facebook and Instagram.
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