Song Demo (2017): "Jolie Rouge"

What did it sound like before it sounded GOOD? Like this!

So back in 2017 or so, our pal Fred Simard was starting a cidery in Chicoutimi, QC. He sent us a test design of a can. It looked like this:

Fig 1. WHAT???

WHAT????

Yeah, look, other bands have all kinds of accolades and fans and awards and they open for the Flopjack Mollies and they make tons of dough and groupies throw themselves at them and some of them even have Juno awards. But how many can say that a REAL PROPER CIDER was manufactured and named after them?

So we wrote “Jolie Rouge” for our planned sea shanty album, and it’s actually a river shanty but who cares. Some might have spotted this, but the first verse is copied from the English drinking song “Fathom the Bowl” (Roud 880), which has as its second verse:

From France we do get brandy, from Jamaica comes rum
Sweet oranges and apples from Portugal come

Which we morphed into:

From France we get the brandy, from Martinique the rum
Sweet red Cabernet from Italy does come

And the reason I changed the rummy place to Martinique is because I had the best time ever there as a low-budget tourist with my buddy Tommy, and we got absolutely blitzed on rum every night, mixed into this drink they call Ti' Punch. Martinique actually has a fascinating history and has been home to many heroic persons and philosophers and rebels over the years; Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon for example.

Fig 2. Not a Ti Punch

Anyway I had to put a demo together for Fred, and it actually worked pretty well. But the first verse, as you will hear, is very different, there were some not-very-good lyrics in that we had to change in the studio. This was recorded by me (Nick) in a tiny studio apartment in Vancouver, BC using only the finest shittiest microphones available. And now, Cidre Jolie Rouge is a hugely successful business, having demonstrated the viability and popularity of REAL CIDER in a world where people still think Strongbow and Magners and Angry Orchard are actually cider and not sweetened prison wine.

If you’re a paid subscriber, go ahead and enjoy the demo…