Interview with Lionel Wernert & Gipsy Bacuet of the Lee O'Nell Blues Gang
By Mick Michaels
The
Cosmick View: Hello, and welcome to The Cosmick View/MBM Ten Pounder! Thanks for taking some time to chat
with us!
CV: Describe your definition of the band’s sound and style and how does that definition uniquely
describe the music?
Lionel WERNERT: Well, I’m
the leader, composer and guitarist of Lee O’Nell Blues Gang, a five pieces
band; and I’m happy with that sound question and not only a style question to
describe the band. Nevertheless, since our debut, I’ve always tried to mix a
vintage sound with modernity in composition. For this second album, “This is Us,”
released in September 2022, we’ve also added much more guitars and background
vocals to tend to a Contemporary Blues Rock and a more produced album. I used
to work with only few pedal effects, to get the real sound of the amps, and the
one I use are a French model Scribaux Amps, made by a fabulous man who became a
close friend…always working on what I’m looking for. It is really a chance to
be able to work with the manufacture.
CV: Today, everyone talks about artist
and audience connection. Is such a level of connection actually achievable for
an artist and if so, how have you made the connection to your fans?
Lionel: I think that fans are fans if and only they
recognize themselves in you music; in the way you approach the songs. I think
they need to be in a common universe but also they need to get surprised by
what you will put in your songs. I think musicians really need to have studied
and digested a very large musical culture to be able to bring something new.
Nowadays, you can’t invent music and that is what is interesting: to produce
something new without repeating or copying what has already been produced. We
are all influenced by someone, and if you can produce something in which people
feel your main influences without saying that you are a pale copy, then you
have succeed. When I decided to form my bad in 2019, I already had this idea in
my mind. That’s maybe the reason why I’ve waited so many years to lead my own
band. I was waiting to find the exact voice which could tell stories with
different shades. I found it in my wife’s voice. And it was the same for the guys;
I needed some musicians who came from different universes with different
experiences. My drummer comes from real Rock, my bass player from Blues, and my
keyboards from Classical piano and jazz. For those reasons, I think we
succeeded in making a rough connection with our audience. But nothing is won by
advance, and the hard work is not to deceive them in your next album…. They
have to find something new and something they already recognize at the same
time. It’s a very short and close combination you have to create.
Gipsy BACUET: I think that if you are true on stage, if you
sing with sincerity, you cannot do something else that connects with people.
Even if you sing a part of your life, a lot of people recognize their life in
your songs. The music you produce movs people as well as someone else’s music
moves you. When you are on stage, you are under the spotlights, and audience is
in the dark, but it’s important to make a sign to someone, to smile to someone who
is looking and listening to you. We are doing this “job” because we love
people. Artists are nothing without audience and the interactivity while shows.
When you go on stage, it’s to express yourself and to give something to people.
They say that applause is the food for artists. That’s right!
CV: Is fan interaction an important part of the band’s inner culture?
Lionel : Yes it’s important for the way they give back to
you a kind of recognition about your work, but I will never be influenced by
what they could ask or suggest. The music world is now a much more commercial world
than a creative one. And for that reason, I will keep on doing what I want to
produce. I will keep on expressing myself in my own way. I hope that will keep
enjoy coming to our concerts, and keep on buying albums, but I will never let
me influenced by some commercial suggestions.
Gipsy: In that world you must keep being yourself with
your integrity, your own style you have developed and created. This is the
reason why the public who discovered you began to appreciate you, then to buy
your album, then to follow you.
CV: Can a band truly interact with its
fans and still maintain a level of personal privacy without crossing the line
and giving up their “personal space” in your opinion?
Lionel: Of course thanks to all the social media
platforms, it’s easy for fans to contact you for whatever reason. Some of them
are nice and caring, they congratulate you on the concert they just shared or
write you all the good things they think about your latest album. But some try
to become more than fans, and there, yes, you have to know how to set limits
without being mean so as not to pass for someone you are not.
Gipsy: Yes, but the line is very thin…and I think it’s a
part of the “game»”. There are so many kind people at the end of the shows, but
there also are some who are here to destabilize you even by messages entire weeks
before or after your concert. The harder thing is to respond to people with bad
intentions being careful not to create controversy. You have to find the right
balance. But in life you always have the choice. But most of time, fans
appreciate when you send them a little message for their birthday for example.
Of course it can encroaches on your time, because you too you have a personal
life; but from the moment you decided to go on stage, you must know such things
can arrived.
CV: Is music, and its value, viewed
differently around the world in your opinion? If so, what do you see as the
biggest difference in such multiple views among various cultures?
Lionel: I don’t know for music generally speaking, but
regarding to the “style” we play: yes it’s different. We are a Blues Rock band,
and for example in France, where we are living, Blues Rock is not our culture.
It comes from USA. So it’s a bit difficult here to be such a band, recognized
by festivals who prefer artists coming from USA, or England …. I don’t understand
and share this point of view. I’m a self-taught child of rock and I grew up
listening to all the 70’s rock legends coming from England and USA, same for
the Blue. So, this culture is a part of me and now that I’m trying to bring it
in. I really realize that I was born in the wrong country.
Gipsy: But thanks to webzines like yours, thanks to
radio shows all over the world, our music can be discovered and maybe we will
have the chance to play outside our borders. We will soon start to play in
Belgium, which is a country where Blues Rock is much appreciated by the
audience. They are more open-minded than the French.
CV: Do you feel that a band that has an
international appeal, will tend to connect more so to American audiences? Would
they be more enticed or intrigued to see the band over indigenous acts because
of the foreign flavor? Lionel:
I
would be very surprised if you could tell me the name of a French artist known
in your country. Our language is not practiced around the world. And a lot of
French bands, from the moment they play a style such as Blues, Rock or Jazz,
cannot sing except in English . That music was not born in France, so for me,
there is no point in playing these styles of music singing in our language.
France is definitely an old country with old mentalities and old traditional
culture.
Gipsy: I really join Lionel in that way of thinking. As
I’m the lyric writer, I didn’t even try to make a song in French? That doesn’t
sound Blues or Rock. It’s impossible for me. If you like a style of music, you
like it in its totality, and it isn’t worth trying to make it yours only adding
your native language. I think that is ridiculous. Sorry for our French friends
and audience who might read that, but that’s what I think. And that is also why
I work with American friends to try to have the best American accent possible
in my way of singing. I think that to speak in another language than your
native one may be fun with a foreign accent, but not when you sing.
CV: Has modern-day digital technology
made everyone an artist on some level in your opinion? Have the actual lines of
what really is an artist been blurred?
Lionel: Oh, a big yes! The lines have been blurred! You
can make music by yourself with whatever modern technology you want, if you
don’t have any culture you will definitely not be an artist. And the only way
to know if the artist is really one or not, put him on stage with musicians and
let him jam with them…you’re gonna have your answer. My point of view is that without
any global culture, a big music vocabulary you will not be able to express
yourself. That is why I’ve listened, practiced and studied all the riffs, the
phrasings of so many legend guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Albert King, Peter
Green, Eric Gales, Joe Bonamassa, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Thin Lizzy and many
more….
CV: How would you describe the difference
between an artist who follows trends and one who sets them?
Lionel: The artist who follows trends is not an artist;
he’s a product who will never have a long and interesting career. An artist is
the one who really create or bring something new in the music world, often
without the recognition he deserves.
Gipsy: And the actuality joins us here: How tabloids
have been able to write “Who is this
unknown singer?” speaking about Bonnie Raitt after the last Grammy Awards
ceremony? Were they joking? You know real artists often die in indifference,
and their work is often recognized by the general audience only after their death.
And then everyone claims “ oh what a great artist he/she was!” Money destroys
all today. But sincerely, I’d better have a small and good audience that comes
to share our music than a big one that doesn’t care!
CV: Has music overall been splintered
into too many sub-genres in an effort to appease fan tastes in your opinion? And
has such fan appeasements, in actuality,
weakened music’s impact as a whole by dividing audiences?
Lionel: Yes, in a way all those sub-genres divide
audience. And that is exactly what we face here in France every day. That is
the reason why we decided with Gipsy not to belong to any label. We decided to
put all the caps at the same time, composer, lyrics writer, promoter, “booking
agency” and so many times we receive answers from Festival that our music is to
Rock for some of them or to Blues for others. In reality, the programmers don’t
let the chance to their audience to discover new universes. Themselves, they don’t
like so they impose their point of view to the audience.
Gipsy: Someone here in France wrote about us ”Lee O’Nell
Blues Gang, the band that has it all figured out when it comes to putting some
Rock in Blues and vice-versa.” We think it’s a good way to define our music,
but some doors can be closed for the same reasons. We don’t want to be
classified in too short and restrictive genres or sub-genres but here in
France, we don’t have any choice. That is the way it is. That’s why we do our
best to be discovered in England, USA, and Europe countries where audience is
much more open-minded.
CV: What can fans expect to see coming
next from you?
Lionel: We would like to surprise them even more and
those who are already filling us are also going in this direction.
Gipsy: This year, we will have the chance to be openers
for great bands and artists such as Ana Popovic, or The Cinelli Brothers for
example , That will allow us to be discovered by new audience. And we also
already have the chance to collaborate with Jade MACRAE…a fabulous Australian
Singer and background vocalist for Joe Bonamassa, with lyrics work. Maybe one
day new and more important collaboration will appear.
Lionel: We really hope that with such webzines as yours,
our music will meet more audience in lot of different countries to star touring
everywhere.
CV: Thanks again for taking some time and
talking. It is greatly appreciated.
Lionel: Thanks so much to you Mick, and the whole team of
The Cosmick
View!
Check out the Lee O’Nell Blues Gang at:
Official: https://www.leeonellbluesgang.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU9bcdZ-UVh2_EM83NxyjFg
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4uU0QwUeHcEk1e7tsANRjH
Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/fr/artist/107074722
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leeonellbluesgang/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leeonellbluesgang/?hl=fr
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