English transcript of the episode Marco Calliari : Peur pourpre
Please note : This is an English translation of an automated (yet perfected) AI transcript. It is provided for informational purposes only. While we did our best to capture the vibe, automated tools can sometimes twist spoken words—especially with our local Quebec slang! For official or accurate reference, please consult the original audio episode.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Hugo Lachance: We are here on March 30, 2026, broadcasting from Montreal, and today I’m hosting a veteran who has been active for over 30 years—and is still going strong, by the way—as much in the metal scene as in traditional Italian music. And no, it’s not Stefano Faita, but the great Marco Calliari on L’Album Podcast.
Before properly introducing my guest, I want to thank all the subscribers who have joined me on social media: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, and especially YouTube. Come join us, it really makes a huge difference. It’s a quick gesture and it’s completely free, but it means a lot to me. So, thank you to all the new subscribers. This episode is presented by the Hopéra microbrewery. I want to give them a shoutout, they’ve been supporting me for a really long time. Hopéra is first and foremost a resto-bar on Saint-Dominique Street in Jonquière. A few years ago, they also opened a production facility where they brew their beers. There’s a nice little tasting room inside where you can sample their products fresh out of the fermenters, and they also display memorabilia from several artists. So, check it out, it’s in the industrial park in Jonquière. Oh yeah, and definitely try their excellent products, for real, it’s really cool.
Thanks again to Vlad and his crew for supporting this podcast. Also, if you love the podcast, well, you can support it yourself. There's a link in the description. You can make a one-time donation or a monthly donation via PayPal. Everything is in the description. And for those listening on audio, head over to www.lalbumpodcast.ca. Thanks to everyone who does, it’s super cool. So, Marco Calliari, hello!
Marco Calliari: Hey Hugo, how’s it going?
Hugo Lachance: Doing well, and you? Welcome to L'Album Podcast.
Marco Calliari: Thank you so much.
Hugo Lachance: Look, we’re in a beautiful environment. Where are we exactly right now?
Marco Calliari: We’re in the Saint-Michel neighborhood. We’re at my place, my humble abode for the past 15 years. But this is my hometown neighborhood, and it's also where the band Anonymus was born. The twins were born here. Carlos was born in Santiago, Chile, but he arrived here when he was 6 or 8 years old.
Chapter 2: SEGMENT: Artist Profile
Hugo Lachance: Go check out the episode with B.A.R.F., we talk about it there, but we'll have a chance to get back to it. Yes, with pleasure. I always ask the same questions and you’ve already answered the first one, but I’ll ask it anyway. Marco Calliari, where did you grow up?
Marco Calliari: A Montreal guy from the Saint-Michel neighborhood, on 22nd Avenue and Everett. And yeah, that's pretty much it. That first answer covers it.
Hugo Lachance: Perfect. And your childhood album, what's the furthest back you can remember?
Marco Calliari: Oh my god, my childhood album is the Best Of by Joe Dassin. Ah yeah, OK. Yeah, but actually there were several because in my parents' basement, it was all vinyl. There was Patof, who was terrifying. There was Joe Dassin, and there was Elvis.
Hugo Lachance: That's a first, bringing up Patof on L’Album Podcast.
Marco Calliari: Patof! But no, listen to this, "Patof Blues" is dark. It's so dark. And I had that one, like Patof au Congo, it was a bit like Tintin. It's a bit politically incorrect by today's standards, but you have to check it out. And actually, I had Elvis. Elvis inspired me a whole lot when I was a kid. And a ton of Pavarotti vinyls, too. My parents were huge opera fans.
Hugo Lachance: It’s funny because you're already answering the next question. That's pretty much it.
Marco Calliari: I have several albums, and among those, there's also my sister's influence, who brought home some Loverboy. We underestimate Loverboy, but that guitarist, he was rocking like nobody's business. Oh yeah, go listen to "Working for the Weekend," it was firing on all cylinders with those big galloping riffs. Absolutely, they had that total kitsch hard rock look of the era, but it packed a punch. And Def Leppard's Pyromania.
Hugo Lachance: Oh yeah, absolutely that one! Oh my god, that marked all of us metalheads, it was one of our first vinyls anyway. And speaking of which, what's your teenage album, the one that shaped you?
Marco Calliari: That's also hard to say. Pyromania is a huge piece, really a huge deal. But there was also Supertramp's Crime of the Century which... just talking about it gives me goosebumps, seriously. I've always been eclectic in my musical universe. I listened to CHOM-FM radio a lot, it forged my musical culture, even up to francophone music culture because they were the only ones playing Harmonium.
In fact, it’s funny because I have a memory of hearing Offenbach on CHOM too, and for me, Gerry's voice opened up a lot of things on a guttural level. Excuse me, I'm losing my voice just talking about it. Having that kind of raspy voice, like wow, OK, we can do that, we can really open up. Musically, my teenage years were pretty eclectic, but that’s when I dove into metal and rock. And of course, the guys from Anonymus—we've known each other since pre-kindergarten. Yes, the twins and I, we did everything together: we played sports together, we played with G.I. Joes. For the twins' 8th or 9th birthday, I bought them Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry on vinyl. They fed me Kiss stuff; they were huge Kiss fans, mega fans. I was right there when they found the Dynasty cassette on the ground in front of the convenience store on Villeray. Those are all moments that marked us musically and stayed with us in the end.
Hugo Lachance: Ah, that’s great. And so, the question: what was playing in your parents' car or at home?
Marco Calliari: In the car, it was pretty much Italian radio. Yeah, because there’s a legendary station in Montreal, Italian radio AM 1280, CFMB, La Radio Italiana. It's still running. Ah yeah, OK. And it's truly a great station. The hosts, I find them excellent. They are new immigrants from Italy who arrived 5 or 10 years ago, they are top-notch. And I actually hosted a show over there for a few years.
Hugo Lachance: Well, shoutout to them.
Marco Calliari: Yes, shoutout to them. Victoria, Julia, and the whole crew are really cool. So at home, that kind of static-heavy AM radio sound is sort of comforting. It's in the same category as a fireplace or vinyl. So at home it was 1280 AM, in the car too, and otherwise, that's pretty much my culture. In my room, I listened to CHOM, and when I raked leaves, I cranked CHOM all the way up. It played everything from Jimi Hendrix to Octobre, a ton of really fun stuff that is still around; it's like my comfort station. When I'm tired of listening to Ici Musique or something else, I put on CHOM and it's like: ah cool, they're playing Supertramp or Led Zep, excellent.
Hugo Lachance: And your first instrument, well, it's pretty much the guitar, but technically the recorder.
Marco Calliari: Ah yes, well that's a classic. Yes, a classic, the recorder at school, xylophones, marimbas, basically percussion. But the guitar, my mom bought me a 50-buck guitar. I still have it—it's really not in good shape, but I still have it anyway. And I strummed on that, and in 6th grade, we had a guitar class at elementary school. I just strummed and strummed.
Chapter 3: The Formation of the Band Anonymus
Marco Calliari: And at 14, well, the guys from Anonymus and I said, let's start a band. And we kind of agreed that I was supposed to be the bassist.
Hugo Lachance: OK.
Marco Calliari: But I had bought a guitar beforehand. I got an electric guitar first, an Oscar Schmidt. So I was like: but wait, you guys are twins, two guitarists, it makes no sense. You could accompany yourselves. Well, when Carlos became the bassist, he wasn't mad about it either.
Hugo Lachance: OK. No, but that's good, you couldn't become the bassist, you already had a guitar.
Marco Calliari: I already had a guitar. It's the law. So yeah, the guitar was pretty much my instrument of choice, along with vocals. Because in Anonymus, we're four guys and we didn't necessarily want to sing. We weren't confident enough to say: hey, I'm gonna be the lead singer. So we just sang tracks. I sang tracks. Daniel sang some too at the beginning. We kept telling ourselves we’d find a singer eventually, but it never happened, so we became the singers. We were sort of like The Beatles: John, Paul, Ringo, George, it's really the same profile.
Oscar was the Paul, I was the John—I'm still alive, of course—but anyway, it was fun not to compare ourselves. At the beginning when we played, it was completely eclectic. It was metal, but we covered The Beatles, The Police, Led Zep, Slayer, Metallica, Pantera, Sepultura, and company. And then we had our originals in there, French and English, we mixed it up, and eventually, that turned into a first album in '94.
Chapter 4: SEGMENT: Artist Profile (Continued)
Hugo Lachance: Yeah. OK. Well, we’ll talk about Anonymus again. And at what point did you realize that music was going to be fundamental in your life?
Marco Calliari: For me, it happened early, like really early. In fact, I'm the only one in my crew who didn't consider doing anything else. For me, it was inevitable. I finished high school and I didn't go learn a trade. In my mind, the trade was music. I had looked into... that's my dad's nervous tic right there. Anyway, either I was going to become a luthier and take a course at Cégep Limoilou, or I was going into guitar in music, and I did my audition in jazz when I was 16 at Cégep Saint-Laurent.
Hugo Lachance: OK. Yeah. Saint-Laurent.
Marco Calliari: And for me, that Cégep, oh my god, I stood in front of the building and I was like: I want to come here, no matter what. OK, I want to come here. So I went to do an audition in jazz, but forget it, it was so competitive. I wasn't the best, I had a metal background. I played rock tracks and they didn't have a metal program over there yet.
Hugo Lachance: No, but all the metalheads went into jazz back then because you truly learn a ton of things.
Marco Calliari: Exactly, but my first audition didn't work out, so I was sad. I told myself, well, this is all I want to do. So I enrolled in social sciences for a semester, and during that time, I found a flyer on a bulletin board that said "guitar lessons with a professor from Saint-Laurent." That professor became my mentor, André Roy. He came to see me at a show a few weeks ago right here in my living room. I was so proud. I adore him.
André Roy opened the door to classical guitar for me, actually. He had asked me: "Do you want to go into jazz or classical?" He showed me a couple of pieces. I was like: I love this.
Hugo Lachance: Oh yeah? OK.
Marco Calliari: Because I would never get the chance to do this, to go down this path if you don't show it to me. If I go into jazz, I feel like I'm always going to swim in the same waters. So I wanted to broaden my horizons and he was a wonderful teacher. I loved my years there, and actually, I took a sabbatical semester without telling my parents. Every morning, I went to the Anonymus jam space on Iberville to practice my classical guitar. I ranked among the top applicants the following year. So at 17, I entered Cégep in classical guitar and I did that. Anyway, it was a really fun path.
Chapter 5: The Wikipedia Fact-Check
Hugo Lachance: We're going to do the Wikipedia fact-check segment. I'm browsing through Wikipedia and we'll validate if it holds up. In Canada, Marco Calliari is an Italian-Canadian singer and guitarist.
Marco Calliari: Yes, my parents were born in Italy, they arrived here in 1961.
Hugo Lachance: Ah ok, cool. Marco's career begins in '89 with the formation of the Quebec metal band Anonymus. The group is formed by four childhood friends.
Marco Calliari: Absolutely, all of that is true. And indeed, childhood friends, we pulled all kinds of crazy stunts together. New we were well-behaved. In fact, most metalheads are pretty well-behaved, they are good guys from good families. We started so young that our parents were involved. It wasn't as if we were making this music to defy our parents or because we were frustrated.
Chapter 6: The Frank Bello Anthrax Anecdote
Marco Calliari: No, it was music we loved and it gave us an adrenaline rush. I didn't take much in my life in terms of drugs, I never needed that. The adrenaline provided everything I needed.
Hugo Lachance: No, but that's perfect. Absolutely. For bands like Anthrax, it's kind of the same thing.
Marco Calliari: Same thing, exactly. Frank Bello—not long ago, I went to see him.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, oh yeah, you went to see him, that was cool. Oh my god, I saw it on YouTube.
Marco Calliari: It was really fun. At Long & McQuade, they brought in Frank Bello from Anthrax for a clinic, he's super nice. But we had the chance, Anonymus in '96, to play with Anthrax. We did a series of shows for the Polliwog tour the year Anthrax was there, and we played right before them. So we hung out for an entire tour. We even had dinner together before the tour. It was like a childhood dream.
Hugo Lachance: But did he recognize you when you went to see him?
Marco Calliari: Look, it was packed and I couldn't meet him afterwards. During the Q&A, I said: by the way, we've met before, I was in a band that toured with you guys. But he didn't recognize me just like that. His response was a bit of a bummer, kind of lame because he said: "I remember it was long and it was far." I think he might have even said it was cold, too.
Chapter 7: The Wikipedia Fact-Check (Continued)
Hugo Lachance: Moving on. It's in 2003 that Marco Calliari begins his solo career, leaving metal music behind for traditional Italian music. The transition between the two universes happened notably thanks to classical guitar lessons at Cégep de Saint-Laurent and a month-and-a-half trip to Italy around the same time.
Marco Calliari: A trip that truly marked me. The other guys from Anonymus went to technical school for printing or civil engineering. Carlos still works for a screen printer, Araya at Image Folie. Shoutout Carlos! But in what you said, there's one thing that isn't entirely true: I didn't leave Anonymus in 2003. I started my solo career, but for the first three years, I was juggling both. Listen, it was Woodstock en Beauce one night, the next day I was opening for Richard Desjardins in Saint-André-Avellin, the next day we were in Chibougamau. It was crazy, I wasn't sleeping enough. For 3 years, I did that. L'Académie du Massacre was my whole early career. When I released my first album in 2004, well, I wasn't expecting an explosion. It was as if I had just invented Italian music, everyone was starving for it. But my first album is all originals. There’s one Neapolitan song, one revisited Anonymus track, and the rest is all originals I composed over 10 years. And in those 10 years, that's when we released the first five albums: Ni vu ni connu, Stress, Instinct, Daemonium, L'Académie du Massacre.
Chapter 8: Awakening to Italian Song
Hugo Lachance: And your trip to Italy is an important part of the story.
Marco Calliari: I was at Cégep, I had just started classical guitar. And then I get this chance—my dad comes from Trentino. Trentino is in northeast Italy. Right below Austria, between Milan and Venice. It's an autonomous region. They manage themselves. They really knew how to bounce back after the war, because postwar Europe was hell. So Trentino truly rebuilt itself and they set up Trentini associations around the world, and they offer the children of those immigrants a chance to come back and learn their parents' culture. It's insane.
Hugo Lachance: That's insane. They even look after the diaspora.
Marco Calliari: Exactly. So in '94, right before releasing the first Anonymus album in August, I get the opportunity to spend a month and a half in Italy, paid for by the autonomous region. There are 50 children of Trentini immigrants from all over the world. We learn the Trentino culture. And I bring my acoustic guitar with me. I have my sheet music for Les Colocs, Beau Dommage, The Beatles. I don't just strum metal by myself, I have fun.
After spending 2 weeks in my dad's region, I go join my cousin in Turin for my 20th birthday. We go to the seaside in Rimini. Incredible beach. August is wild. We go there for 3 days for my birthday. I strum my guitar on the beach. My cousin runs into one of her friends, Franco, who also has his guitar. We jam all day in the sun. He mostly plays anglo stuff. I teach him some Beau Dommage and Les Colocs. And then my cousin says: why don't you guys play tonight in front of the hotel.
Hugo Lachance: Ah yeah, OK.
Marco Calliari: So we put together a little setlist after dinner, we set up two chairs. There are about fifty people, we play the tracks we learned. But in all of that, there isn't a single Italian track. At one point, an old man in the back stands up: "Why don't you sing in Italian?" Look, I speak Italian, but I don't know any Italian tracks. My first reflex is to look at Franco and say: go ahead, you're Italian, play an Italian track. He looks at me and says: I don't know any.
Hugo Lachance: Oh wow! OK.
Marco Calliari: That moment for me, I was ashamed. I was so ashamed for him, but for myself too. And I promised myself that this moment would never happen to me again. So when I came back to Montreal, I went to Archambault, bought an Italian songbook, learned "Bella Ciao," learned "O Sole Mio," and started writing what would become my first album in 2004. It was such a defining moment. I even have the photo of that moment with Franco on the stairs.
Hugo Lachance: That's a great story.
Marco Calliari: So they have their own spoken Italian. Within an immigrant community in a new country, you gather with your peers—other Italians—but these Italians come from all over. They come from Sicily, they come from Naples, and everyone has their own dialect and way of speaking. So it's like a kind of mix. But I'm lucky because my mom speaks Milanese. Milanese is the Italian you learn in school. It's like the standard French from France we learn in school here: we learn the standard language, but we still say certain local things. It's an international Italian or an international French. My dad is able to do both: he speaks the standard language and the dialect of his valley. Every valley has its own dialect.
Marco Calliari: In short, it's pretty special. So I was lucky because I grew up with proper Italian, if I can put it that way. Except that, academically, I am francophone. So of course, when I think in Italian, I build my sentences the way I would in French. This meant that back in 2004, an Italian could understand me because all the words were correct, but sometimes they weren't in the right order because that's not how they would say it. I built my first album without asking anyone for help because I was doing it for myself. So there are mistakes. There are mistakes, but they are intentional too, and I didn't even know they were mistakes at the time—it was just my way of expressing myself back then.
Marco Calliari: Then, when I made my second album, Mia dolce vita, which consists of covers. But with covers, the words are already correct. Except you also have to respect the pronunciation. In Italian, you have double consonants: double L, double M, double N. That's why people often say the Italian language sounds like it's being sung. But it's sung for a million reasons, including out of respect for the language. There are a lot of vocal rises, like with the word camminare, for example.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah.
Marco Calliari: OK. Camminare, which means to walk, to journey. With the two M's in camminare, you go up on the first M and come back down on the second. It's the same for Calliari versus Laliari. And on Mia dolce vita back then, I wasn't doing that yet. I hadn't taken any lessons: I hear it, I sing it. And back then, I often thought it was more fun to sing sole mio as if there were a double L, even though there isn't one. It's funny because I was telling this story to my girlfriend just this morning.
Hugo Lachance: OK.
Marco Calliari: My second album turns 20 this year, Mia dolce vita. And we are preparing a big show at the Outremont Theatre for the 20th anniversary. It's going to be on October 23rd, we'll have seven musicians on stage, it's going to be completely wild.
Marco Calliari: But it's also very cinematic. It used to be four musicians, these were films shot in Italy, or in Spain and Italy actually. They pretended they were in the United States, but they mostly called it Spaghetti Western because that was the era when Italian directors started making American westerns, and they did it better than the Americans. Dude, it was crazy. There were the "3 S's"... actually, Tarantino made a documentary about the 3 S's, who are the three major directors of that Spaghetti Western era. Tarantino is heavily influenced by that culture. And you had Sergio Leone, who was the top guy, he was brilliant at editing. That's mostly what set him apart. And he wasn't afraid to mix actors who didn't speak Italian: you had a Spaniard, you had a Robert Charlebois. Charlebois even did one. You had people from all over, each speaking their own language. So afterwards, they had to do overdubbing. Morricone was great, Leone was great at that, and they did it to perfection for the era.
Marco Calliari: Editing in 1960 and 1970 was a whole different ball game. It's like light-years away from today, but those guys worked miracles. And Leone teamed up with Morricone, who is one of the greatest film score composers. He truly left his mark, everything was perfect in that whole trip. So anyway, Spaghetti Western, Outremont Theatre.
Hugo Lachance: Yes.
Marco Calliari: I'm there as a spectator, and during the intermission, I'm in line to grab a beer or whatever. And there's a man, a tall gentleman in line ahead of me, who turns around and tells me, out of the blue and completely blunt: "Signor Calliari, before singing the language, you must respect it, you must learn the language." He tells me: "You don't say O Sole Mio, you say O Sole Mio." And I was like: "What the fuck man, what did I do wrong?" And I remember answering: "Listen, start by understanding each other in Italian between Sicilians and Milanese, and then we'll talk." That's the only thing I replied, but out of respect, I wasn't angry. I was just caught off guard, it was surprising. I thought to myself: "Damn, give me an award instead of giving me a hard time." But all that to say, I went back home and said: "You know what? From now on, my albums are going to be flawless." So I met an Italian professor from Concordia named Dario Brancato, who still works with me. Dario is Sicilian, an Italian professor, and his Italian is perfect.
Marco Calliari: For Al Faro Est, an album of originals, I reviewed every single one of my lyrics with him. Sometimes, there were phrases or words where he'd tell me: "You can say it that way, but you're better off saying it like this." So it was a fun team effort, and all my ideas are intact.
Hugo Lachance: But that's a beautiful sign of respect. It also could have given a unique color to your lyrics since you are the son of an immigrant after all.
Marco Calliari: Yes, that too, but I have an anecdote related to what we just discussed. When I did my interview with Voivod... go listen to that one, it's excellent. At one point, he mentions that he had asked Jason Newsted to help Snake with the lyrics, to put some order into them because they were talking about where he picked up his English. Jason replied: "Are you crazy? I'm not touching that, because he talks like Yoda!" He inverts words, like you were saying, and that's exactly what makes it charming. So I'm not touching a thing, he writes his own lyrics, it's perfect. That is very cool, and I admit I've never compared the lyrics with other singers, but with Snake, indeed, it brings out all his charm in the lyrics and the accent too, which isn't perfect but won people over right from the first album.
Marco Calliari: Absolutely. I'm a huge fan of world music. When I listen to a singer who sings in another language with a thick accent, I find that so endearing. Take Gogol Bordello: his English is so broken but it's important. So I'm proud of Che La Vita which came out exactly how it came out, and my Italian has evolved, but I definitely still have my signature. There are parts I keep, you can't pick up every single accent all at once.
Hugo Lachance: That's completely to your credit. We'll keep going. In 2010...
Marco Calliari: Al Faro Est is one of my best albums because I went all in on it. I had an extraordinary producer, Stacy Legal, who is old school. We worked on old RCA gear, real preamps, everything was mind-blowing, using vintage mics. And I have over 50 musicians on that record. Al Faro Est is the album I'm most proud of. And at the same time I'm doing that in Montreal, I get a call from MC Mario who says: "Hey, I feel like doing a remix of L'Americano." But I hadn't really caught on because I'm not part of the DJ world. L'Americano is the song that's on Mia dolce vita. But that's a 1950s cover of Renato Carosone, a great figure in world music. I covered two songs of his: L'Italiano and L'Americano.
Hugo Lachance: No way, you did L'Italiano and L'Americano by the same artist? To prepare for the interview, I listened to your albums on shuffle. So now we're here for your new album.
Marco Calliari: We're getting there, we're getting there! We're not quite there yet, but we're getting there. Anyway, going back to MC Mario. The thing is, I didn't know anything about the DJ world. There was an Australian group, what were they called... Yolanda Be Cool. They released a remix of the original version by Renato Carosone, the crackling 1950s version, and it made waves. What happens in the DJ world is that when there's a hit somewhere, the other DJs see how they can do their own version or monetize it. MC Mario was on top of that, and he saw: "Calliari, Canadian content, he already covered this song." So he calls me. For him, it's pure gold because those are my mechanical rights. They did an arrangement, he gave me a couple grand, which was already a lot. But it must be said that at the time, he was huge.
Marco Calliari: MC Mario sold tons of albums; we were still in the era of CDs, which was declining a bit but still active. And he's loving it because he starts playing it and says it's working, people are going crazy. But the thing is, I think people didn't catch the difference between Yolanda Be Cool's version with Renato Carosone's real voice versus my version. I often had people tell me: "Hey, your track is insane," but I didn't say anything. I'm not sure people knew the difference. Anyway, he wanted to make a music video. And I said: "I already have a video that is insane." I had a grant to make it, and the music video for L'Americano is out of this world.
Hugo Lachance: I will put it in the links.
Marco Calliari: We went all out, what we did makes no sense, that clip is crazy insane. So MC Mario asks me to do a music video, and I tell him to go watch mine. He checks it out, he loves it. He remixed it, but the problem is that he put it under his name, under his company. So all the views go to him. He gave me a little money after that, invited me to a Canadiens game, gave me a couple of freebies. He had me play twice at his club, the Millennium. Man, I showed up there with stilt walkers, clowns, wild stuff. I was semi-lipsyncing; I was singing for real but over the music he was spinning. It was cool, but it's when I started asking: "Hey, it's because we have a couple million views there," that he told me it wasn't him who put it online, and I never heard from him again. I'm not afraid to say it, and we're going to keep this part in, because he never even said hello to me again.
Hugo Lachance: Shoutout to MC Mario, we say hello anyway. So we continue, we are still in the fact-check. At the end of 2019, Andrea Gozzi... my Italian is very close... rock history professor at the University of Florence publishes Caliari Bang! Bang!, a biography focusing on the musical evolution of Marco Calliari through his 11 records. You guys met during a visit by Mr. Gozzi to Quebec in 2018.
Marco Calliari: That's the book, by the way I'm going to give you one, it's a nice gift. Thanks to Andrea Gozzi who is a friend who works so hard. He is an authority in contemporary music. I met him in Italy because when I released my first album in 2004, I immediately started going over there to play. In 2008, when I landed in Tuscany, I became friends with Andrea Fornani, who manages Andrea Gozzi's band, I Matti delle Giuncaie. They became my house band in Italy, we did so many collabs together. I brought them here three times. Andrea fell in love with Quebec. He became friends with one of my great accordionist chums, Fred Péquit. And Andrea, well, he writes books.
Marco Calliari: He wrote the book in French. It came out here right in the middle of the pandemic, so it didn't make the noise we would have wanted. But it's truly a beautiful book with QR codes, covering the story from Anonymus until now. We say hi to Andrea.
Hugo Lachance: Ciao Andrea. Here we go. The oldest article I could find concerning you is dated December 18, 1995, in La Presse. It says: "Today, we distribute our CDs and cassettes ourselves. We handle the postering and promo," proudly indicates Marco Calliari. It also talks about your performance in the semi-finals of the Polliwog contest. Do you remember this article?
Marco Calliari: I don't remember this specific article, even though I'm an archivist. But yes, I remember all the steps. I still do that today in one way or another: I still have flyers, the fieldwork doesn't change.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah. The pretext for this was to talk about Anonymus. Your discography, you have five albums with them: Ni vu ni connu, Stress, Instinct, Daemonium, and the classic L'Académie du Massacre. That's pretty prolific.
Marco Calliari: It wasn't long ago that I realized we did all that in 10 years, from '94 to 2003. For Daemonium, we went to Wild Studio with Pierre Rémillard and told ourselves we were staying there for a month. Now that is luxury. We were never on majors, it was all grind and hustle: the first loan we took out, our parents co-signed for us. It took guts for our parents and for us too. In '99, we paid 25,000 bucks to Colin Richardson to produce our album.
Marco Calliari: Colin is the guy who produced Machine Head, Carcass, Fear Factory. Instinct is the album that sounds the best in the evolution of Anonymus. Because of his name, we were in magazines alongside Iron Maiden and Korn because it sounded like a ton of bricks.
Hugo Lachance: I'll admit I'm not generally an Anonymus fan, but I know it sounds huge.
Marco Calliari: And then, for Daemonium, Carlos Pé, our manager, wanted to become the sound engineer. We stayed there for a whole month.
Hugo Lachance: And L'Académie du Massacre gave another boost to Anonymus, you guys moved up to a more mainstream level.
Marco Calliari: Absolutely, but nobody knew that would happen. Nobody made that album saying it was going to blow up like that. Actually, it was during the Polliwog tour. We won the Polliwog contest in '95. And at that time, Mononc' Serge was right in the middle of 13 tonnes trash. Marijuana was playing on MusiquePlus. It was Carlos who came to see us; he was a fan and followed Mononc' Serge. He just told us: "He's in the same lineup as you guys, why don't you invite him?" Then Carlos asked: "Why don't you do Marijuana style metal in your show?" So we call Mononc', he comes to the jam space, and we make a metal arrangement. Dude, we did it once. He bellowed it once and said: "OK, we're not touching it, we're not even doing it a second time." We did it live. It was as if we had just invented the atomic bomb.
Marco Calliari: Following that, Mononc' set his mind to rearranging a bunch of tracks and composing a few. Mononc' is a writing machine. He would show up with his pre-productions, we'd throw them into the Anonymus shredder, and it came out exactly like that. It created a huge buzz and it still works today.
Chapter 9: The Beginnings of the Solo Career
Hugo Lachance: Look, another article by Marc Bernier on June 17, 2025, for Metal Universe. "Raised on the sound of opera lovers, Marco nonetheless made his entry into the music industry in a completely different style: metal." A founding member of the band Anonymus, he active there from '89 to 2006 before dedicating himself to a solo career in world music. While this transition might surprise some, his former stage partner, Oscar Souto, thinks otherwise: "Marco didn't leave metal. He simply added a string to his bow. A sign that the metalhead still lives within him, he periodically reunites with his former stage companions." How did your departure from Anonymus go?
Marco Calliari: Oh well dude, we were in the middle of the big L'Académie du Massacre tour. By the way, L'Académie du Massacre was the first time we actually paid ourselves. It wasn't much, but they were paychecks. Before that, we reinvested everything, we put everything in the bank to pay for the jam space, to pay for the next production, to pay for the next tour or expenses. We each had our side gigs. Personally, I worked at a convenience store. After that, I started teaching guitar privately in two schools. Oscar worked for a long time at La Baie. He could take time off whenever he wanted, it was crazy. Anyway, I release Che la vita right in the middle of the tour, but I'm thinking I'll sell maybe 50 copies to family. That was my goal, I was doing it for myself. I needed that. I hired a publicist, it was her very first job, Cindy Labrecque. She's a lawyer now. I made the album with François "Frank" Lalonde, an absolute authority in production. He's the drummer for Jean Leloup's La Sale Affaire, the one for Mononc' Serge and Les Frères à Cheval. He co-produced two albums for Lhasa de Sela, who remains my permanent reference. Frank produced my album Che la vita. At the time, there was a huge buzz: Boule Noire and Boom Desjardins invited me, Chantal Jolis invited me even before the first album came out when I just had a guitar-vocal demo. There was a need, something happened, so I slowly started trading my side gigs for full-time stage work.
Chapter 16: The Song "Bella Ciao" as a Source of Conflict
Hugo Lachance: Question for you: how did the Italian community react?
Marco Calliari: Oh my god! Well actually, they embraced me in the media. But we're opening up a huge topic here. Without being political, I became political through song. I perform anti-fascist songs without outright saying I was an anti-fascist. By doing Bella Ciao and Ed ero fanciullo, which are anti-fascist songs, that immediately positions me. In the Italian community, without saying the community is fascist, there are people who lived through World War II, who lost brothers, uncles, and sisters through a regime where you had no choice but to be drafted. I understand that. At the beginning, I didn't talk about the history of Bella Ciao, but since 2008 or 2009, I started telling it because it's important that people know the history. Blood was shed, it hurt, and it still hurts today. Personally, I take a historical stance. I do a bit of a "this is what happened" lesson, this is what the song means. From there, you do what you want with it. If you're going to celebrate, you need to know what you're celebrating because it pays tribute to people who gave their lives.
There are two versions of Bella Ciao. The first talks about the mondine, the women working in the rice fields. These women were often beaten, mistreated, underfed. There were major issues regarding women's emancipation, but there was a lot of abuse. These women had songs of protest, like workers in the cotton fields. They sang while harvesting, and Bella Ciao was born from them. The second version, during World War II, the text changed to pay tribute to the partigiani, the rebellion that formed to fight against fascism. The text tells their wives: "go find the most beautiful flower in the village, go plant it on the hill in tribute to us who are going to fight for our homeland and for the good of our family."
I've been told, and I'm not afraid to say it: half the community doesn't come to see me because I took a stand. My audience is mostly francophone because of a song, because of a position. A former Italian politician from Quebec who likes me a lot once told me: "Marco, stop playing politics, stop singing Bella Ciao because there are people who don't come to see you because of that." My message is that I'm glad they don't come, because I want to sing for people who are like me, open-minded people. But I respect their choice and I am empathetic to what they went through. I have stories in Italy where they straight up tell me: "Marco, tonight, don't do Bella Ciao." I've actually been scared before. I saw a skinhead tattooed with swastikas in Italy. The Rome region and the northern regions are very right-wing. Neo-fascism has increased, the prime minister is far-right, it's scary. You don't want to be a visible minority in Italy. It's crazy that a song can make people make choices like that. On the other hand, in Tuscany, which is a revolutionary left-wing populace, when I play it, it kills completely. I get goosebumps. I played with Bandabardò, the Cowboys Fringants of Italy. When they handed me the guitar to do Bella Ciao in front of their crowd, it was a powerful honor, more powerful than at a Saint-Jean-Baptiste show right in the middle of Rouyn-Noranda.
Chapter 10: Solo Discography
Hugo Lachance: Quick solo discography. Che la vita in 2004, Mia dolce vita in 2006, Marco Calliari in 2008. Wait, 2008, was that an EP?
Marco Calliari: It was a mix of the first two albums that we released in Europe, in France and Switzerland. After that there's Al Faro Est in 2010, Mi ricordo in 2013, One Night in 2015 which is a live album, Calliari Bang! Bang! in 2019, Molotov Amour in 2022, and Peur pourpre in 2025. Mi ricordo means "I remember." It was the response to Italians who asked me if it would work better in Italy if I sang in French to be exotic. I asked myself what I had that was different from what Italians have: it's my Quebec culture. I covered Quebec songs: "Ayoye," "La bienséance" by Plume Latraverse, "Si j'avais un char" by Stephen Faulkner, "Julie" by Les Colocs, "Ça va venir" by La Bolduc, and "Lindberg" with Louise Forestier. In Italian, it's insane. We recorded everything here. I asked Italian artists to re-interpret them with me, like the duo Musica Nuda with Petra Magoni. She is a vocal athlete, somewhere between Diane Dufresne and a jazz singer. I sent them "L'homme de ma vie" by Diane Dufresne and Luc Plamondon, and they did something mind-blowing. For me, that's my passion: Quebec dreams of Italy, but Italy doesn't dream of Quebec. I want to give them that, make them discover these classics.
Chapter 11: La maudite machine by Octobre
Hugo Lachance: "La maudite machine."
Marco Calliari: That one is on Calliari Bang! Bang! in 2019 for my 30th anniversary. I made nods to all my albums and I included this Quebec translation that I had put aside back in the day. I have to give a nod to Pierre Flynn, Mario Légaré, Pierre Hébert, and Jean Dorais from Octobre. I did the album launch at the Casa d'Italia. The four guys from Octobre showed up, they made a friends' night out of it. We blasted their vinyl on stage with them. Octobre is one of our hidden treasures. People know "La maudite machine," which is a huge classic covered by buskers and bar singers; that's actually how I first discovered the band in Jonquière.
Chapter 12: SEGMENT: Album Presentation
Hugo Lachance: We are here to talk about Peur pourpre. It's your 7th solo effort. Here is a new chapter: a first album in French sprinkled with Italian, Spanish, and English. What were your main challenges writing in French?
Chapter 13: The Challenges of Writing a First Album in French
Marco Calliari: Oh wow! That's a big question. With Anonymus, we wrote a bit in every language. When I started solo, I realized that my lyrics in Italian were more personal. In French, I wasn't able to write personal stuff because my daily environment is francophone. You're afraid of being judged or revealing too much. Italian is like a filter, a shell, a mind-blowing shield. I asked myself if I had the right to exist in French too. I started writing lyrics with Pasquale Caruana. Mi ricordo was a first step, a confidence booster. After that, I needed lyrics for a more rock-oriented project and I started writing in French. I created a pseudonym, "Molotov mon Amour," to do a test and see if my audience would follow.
On the Peur pourpre album, there's a song co-written with Alexandre Belliard about my cousin, Gary Longhi. Gary was a great Paralympic cycling champion, a prominent figure who lived right here in the Saint-Michel neighborhood. He passed away right in the middle of the pandemic from a violent cancer and requested medical aid in dying. We were extremely close. Alexandre Belliard heard his story and called me to write a track. Alex wrote an insane text, as if he were part of the family. He understood the unbreakable bond between my cousin and my aunt, who took care of him after his motorcycle accident at 18. Gary took care of his mother until the end, but he left before her. The song is very moving. I added my touch and some parts in Italian. Gary died on July 2nd, on his birthday, five years ago. He chose his date for medical aid in dying. It's a moment that truly resonates within me.
Marco Calliari: I wasn't yet able to own it under my own name. And there is a documentary, actually I have a documentary called Caliari QC.
Hugo Lachance: OK.
Marco Calliari: I am the protagonist, but Anita Aloisio made it. She is a documentarian who is on her third documentary, one of her most important being Les enfants de la loi 101. Which played a whole lot on Télé-Québec. OK.
Marco Calliari: She followed me for 7 years and it connects to the answer. Be indulgent, I'm letting it go, it's fine. Anita, when I released my album Mi ricordo—the Quebec songs in Italian—she was truly surprised by the media response.
Marco Calliari: I don't want to say the media snubbed me because it was me, but I think it's a bit circumstantial, the evolution of the media at that specific period. We are in 2013. In a career, first of all, everything we do is so ephemeral it makes no sense. But I had a peak. My peak was Mia dolce vita. So for people, it's "Bella Marco Calliari," it's Bella Ciao, and I'm not getting away from that.
Marco Calliari: I embrace it and I bring them into it, and I teach them other things through it because it's not true that my career ends at Bella Ciao, but I am able to respect that. I'm not going to pretend that I wasn't that person back in 2006.
1:23:54 Hugo Lachance: Exactly.
1:23:54 Marco Calliari: And with Mi ricordo, well, I still felt—and back then especially... now I'm gonna talk about a bit of a bitter side. We try not to be bitter, but sometimes it hurts, sometimes you get responses that are just part of a career too. I felt as if I was being snubbed, as if people were saying he's trying to be part of the gang, so he's doing Quebec songs. Man, I'm fucking québécois!
1:24:24 Hugo Lachance: Well yeah, for sure.
1:24:25 Marco Calliari: I'm a child of Bill 101, and I've seen more of Quebec than your cousin or your aunt. Man, I've toured everywhere and I'm still doing it. I don't know many people who celebrated their 18th birthday in Chicoutimi as a child of Bill 101 and kept doing this job out of sheer love for the province. There are some out there who toured the province once and acted like there was nothing left to do.
1:24:50 Hugo Lachance: No, I get it.
1:24:50 Marco Calliari: There are way more who said that than others who worked like Anonymus and went: "Man, this is so much fun, damn it's so much fun!" We discover things, we feel things, there's gratitude, there's recognition—it's all a big mix. Anyway, she was fascinated by that, by the response. So she told herself: "I want to make a documentary using you as the protagonist to see a bit of what happens in Quebec when you propose something different."
1:25:24 Hugo Lachance: Yeah.
1:25:25 Marco Calliari: And I am something different. I know I'm something different, but I'm not an enemy of the francophonie. It's a bizarre reaction, though.
1:25:32 Hugo Lachance: Well, that's the reaction I had. Instead... now I'm gonna make a connection. OK. Yeah.
1:25:39 Marco Calliari: Elisapie, whom I adore, I've been following her for a long time. We have the same career longevity, we work hard, I've seen all her albums for a long time, and I love her latest album. I'm happy she's getting an insane amount of exposure, but it's not normal. And I'm not saying this against her, she made an album of American and English covers. The francophonie embraces it as if it were... and I'm not talking about Elisapie, I'm talking about the product.
1:26:17 Hugo Lachance: Yeah, yeah, it's fucking good.
1:26:17 Marco Calliari: Yeah. I release an album of francophonie in another language, but I find it a bit ordinary in the sense that it makes you go: "What the fuck, man." You guys are missing out on Metallica in Innu and Cyndi Lauper in Innu. What's going on? I don't get it, but I love it too. I'm looking at you, Elisapie, I love you, it's not about you, but I'm just trying to understand the evolution in all of this.
1:27:20 Marco Calliari: Anita followed me because she wants to understand. The finale of that documentary is when Marco Calliari is going to release something in French.
1:27:33 Hugo Lachance: OK.
1:27:33 Marco Calliari: Because in there, you have the successes, but also the disappointments. I apply for grants at Musicaction to make my first album in French. Damn, I have a career, I have albums, I've proven myself! For me, in the same week, to see that Marc Dupré receives 35,000 bucks and I'm told no for my first album in French, when I have so much to say. I don't hold a grudge against you, Marc. Good for you. Good for you, for real.
1:28:25 Marco Calliari: I find that it makes no rhyme or reason sometimes, and I'm trying to understand. I went into the Musicaction office, and I asked them: "Damn, is it because my name is Calliari, first of all? Why?" I don't know, that's why I asked them.
1:28:40 Hugo Lachance: OK.
1:28:40 Marco Calliari: "And is it because you know I've been hustling for 36 years and I'm capable of doing it alone?" They say: "No, no, Marco, we're trying to find space for everyone." I understand that. It's not an attack on Musicaction because I have received help, even if it's in world music and it's not the same numbers. I'm not turning my back on you guys, it's just that sometimes we try to understand things. Communication in this industry is so important because I know there are people who judge me, they only see my career from a blind spot.
1:29:25 Hugo Lachance: Yeah. Ah... anyway, that's well known.
1:29:25 Marco Calliari: Ah, exactly, but they don't see everything we've been saying this whole time. They don't understand these connections.
1:29:34 Hugo Lachance: Absolutely. But that's why I love doing the podcast, because we can go deep, we have time, and it's profound. No, no, but we're getting somewhere, I'm sure.
1:29:42 Marco Calliari: So the documentary came out, a documentary that is not franco-bashing at all. Paul Cargnello is in it, Katia Rock from Mani-utenam too. Each of us works hard, we have our realities and our hurdles. And only one francophone media outlet talked about it: Radio X.
1:30:03 Hugo Lachance: Oh, for real? Ah yeah, OK.
1:30:09 Marco Calliari: It's the only one. Even my great friend Franco Nuovo didn't dare talk about it. And plenty of others. I don't understand. It's as if I'm being treated like the enemy.
1:30:24 Hugo Lachance: But where is this documentary?
1:30:27 Marco Calliari: It came out, and the only ones who picked it up were CBC. It's in three languages: a French-subtitled version, an English-subtitled version. Sometimes I spoke in French, sometimes in English. I switched to English because CBC signed a contract with the production. It was filmed over 7 years. It's on CBC Gem.
1:30:54 Hugo Lachance: CBC Gem is like their Tout.tv.
1:30:57 Marco Calliari: We'll put it out, we can put a link. It's free, you just have to enter your email. It lasts 46 minutes, it's called Caliari QC. It's really interesting and I repeat, it's not franco-bashing. I am an ally, I am a proud francophone who has immense respect for all these different levels of the francophonie.
1:31:23 Marco Calliari: So the documentary came out, Radio X praised it. After that, nothing. Anita and I were invited to things at McGill to speak about the evolution of the francophonie in classes. What was her name, the professor... she has retired now. It's not normal, this is not normal.
1:31:47 Hugo Lachance: Look, I'm gonna go check that out because it's francophonie week at the school where I work. In Saint-Laurent, we are quite a diverse mix, thank you very much. Not a lot of Italians, but the children of Bill 101, I think it could be super interesting.
1:32:02 Marco Calliari: Anita's Les enfants de la loi 101, which she made like 15–20 years ago, is truly super interesting, it aired on Télé-Québec. And now, Caliari QC really has its purpose too, it's truly about cultural evolution when you are something else within Quebec.
1:32:18 Marco Calliari: And now, I arrive at Peur pourpre because I piled up texts in French. I just didn't know what to do: Molotov, not Molotov. And it's Paul Cargnello who calls me because we've been wanting to work together for a long time.
1:32:36 Hugo Lachance: Wait, we'll get to Paul. In the meantime, I noticed that your voice changes from French to Italian.
1:32:49 Marco Calliari: Well, I don't feel it myself, but people tell me.
1:32:52 Hugo Lachance: It's lower, raspy. Maybe it's a style you give for the album, but in Italian, you are a bit higher pitched because it's more sung.
1:33:02 Marco Calliari: I think it depends on the influences too. But there's the thing about making albums: you can make an album where you've road-tested tracks for a long time live, or you make an album from scratch, from zero. You don't have time to road-test them, so the texture changes slowly. This track that's on Peur pourpre, I sing it more like that live.
1:34:02 Marco Calliari: You record it as if you were building a plane mid-flight. In shows, I use the valve, the throat effect a lot versus the easy clean sound. Like in "Grand Bison," well, it's at full throttle.
1:34:22 Hugo Lachance: Yeah, absolutely. Plus there are throat-singing parts by Béatrice Deer.
1:34:29 Marco Calliari: So it depends, but there's an evolution in all of that.
1:34:35 Hugo Lachance: We'll move on to the presentation itself. So the title is Peur pourpre.
1:34:44 Marco Calliari: Released on May 9, 2025. It's an independent label, it's my own label: Casa Nostra. I opened my production company when I released Che la vita. I didn't see myself knocking on record label doors, my project was like "dumpster cool."
1:35:05 Hugo Lachance: It's distributed by L for Breakfast. Production by Paul Cargnello and Marco Calliari.
1:35:11 Marco Calliari: The lyrics: Marco Calliari, Alexandre Belliard, Mademoiselle Ruiz, and Paul Cargnello. There are quite a few people. Vocals, classical guitar, jew's harp, piano, glockenspiel, whistling: Marco Calliari. Throat singing: Béatrice Deer. Drums, percussion, harmonica, electric guitar, backing vocals, bass, keyboards: Paul Cargnello. Acoustic guitar: Daniel Galipeau.
1:35:40 Marco Calliari: Soprano, alto, and baritone saxophone, trumpet, trombone, tuba, violin, musical saw, flute: Tim Sabourin. Tim is a great musician, an extraordinary human. Tenor saxophone: John Furman. Keyboards, piano, percussion: Sandy Belfort. Piano and keyboards: Valérie Lahaie. Secondary drums and classical guitar: Pasquale Caruana. Piano and keyboards: Zacharie Verdon.
1:36:13 Marco Calliari: And the chorus, the little background singers: Milan Calliari—my daughter—Dalia, Joan, Nadie, Rosalie, Louis-Marie, Jimmy, Miss Kanan, Maï, and Noan.
1:36:37 Hugo Lachance: But all of that didn't happen at the same time.
1:36:43 Marco Calliari: Well no, it's my Frankenstein album! It's the first time I've done this. Paul calls me, we've been wanting to make an album for a long time. We apply for grants, we don't get them. I want everyone to be well paid, regardless of bankruptcy, everyone is gonna get paid before me. That's it.
1:37:24 Marco Calliari: Paul calls me: "Come over to my place, we'll make an album, we won't talk about money." He made me cry because I was in a low spot. I had just lost 60,000 bucks that I invested in a festival that made headlines.
1:37:44 Hugo Lachance: Yeah.
1:37:44 Marco Calliari: I started doing shows in my living room. I got back on my feet thanks to my girlfriend, thanks to one of my friends. I had two paths: bankruptcy or we invent something. What works? People love me, they follow me, they are fans. I did something fun: "Samedi chez Calliari" (Saturday at Calliari's). People come, it's open to everyone by invitation. It's word of mouth.
1:38:26 Hugo Lachance: OK.
1:38:26 Marco Calliari: Well now you know, so write to me on Messenger! These are private parties. My dad is here every time we do this.
1:39:10 Hugo Lachance: During the pandemic, there was "Calliari fait le trottoir" (Calliari hits the pavement).
1:39:13 Marco Calliari: Before the pandemic, yes. During the pandemic, I opened a Facebook page "Calliari fait le trottoir." My girlfriend told me: "They can't come see you anymore, but you can go see them." I took my truck, I built a stage in the back. I survived on two months of CERB.
1:39:46 Marco Calliari: People paid in advance: one track, 5 tracks, 20 tracks. I could go play in Sept-Îles as long as you paid for the round-trip mileage.
1:40:00 Hugo Lachance: You bought a show, basically?
1:40:00 Marco Calliari: It was cheaper. I made much less but I was alive. Four seasons: yesterday I had two propane tanks with heaters.
1:40:25 Hugo Lachance: You didn't let it beat you down, you got through it.
1:40:25 Marco Calliari: It helped me. It took a pandemic for me to receive money. I hadn't had a grant in 8 years and suddenly I was receiving them left and right. It's not normal. I was at the top of my game and nobody was helping me. So it took that to save my skin.
1:41:16 Marco Calliari: I had a safety net but I felt like investing. I fell in love with a stable in Sainte-Sophie for a music video. We threw the festival there. The first edition, I had a full band with Martin Deschamps, Renée Wilkin, Ricky Paquette. It went from world music to rock.
1:41:57 Marco Calliari: We allowed ourselves some Mexican Turco-British style with Ricky. We did Kiss, Hazard. I mixed western, world music, and rock. We had 200-something people. The second year, I flopped. I had a business partner who backed out. He had given me the confidence to do everything fifty-fifty.
1:42:48 Hugo Lachance: Yeah.
1:42:48 Marco Calliari: He convinced me to do 3 days, more artists, and then he left. I wound up holding a hot potato, big expenses, big names like Guylaine Tanguay. We had 300 people, but that doesn't pay for a 3-day festival. I came back from that and I had to give the grant money back to Justin Trudeau. I was down 60,000 bucks. That's when Paul called me, I was very emotional.
1:43:29 // Chapter 27: Paul Cargnello, the Alchemist of the Peur pourpre Album Marco Calliari: And in my head, I didn't have an album, you know. Yeah. And then he told me: "Marco, come over to my place and give me everything you recorded on your dictaphone, in your studio downstairs, in everything." So I'm like: "OK." Ah yes, so I start going through my dictaphones. A little snippet here, like I don't know.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, recorded right here.
Marco Calliari: Yeah, with the dictaphone, my phone. OK, little snippets. I have ideas. I brought everything downstairs. And you know, it's stuff I've been recording for a long time, scattered say between 2018 and 2025. OK. And then all of that, I just give it to Paul, you know. I'm in the heat of the moment, I have to manage to earn a living at the same time. So I give him that. But Paul, listen, I'm telling you, if you don't know Paul Cargnello, go discover him. He's a different beast, he's a true scientist. In fact, at his studio in NDG, the Upper China Studio, that guy does magic, I swear. OK. I sent things, there were tracks that were more complete, you know. I'd say three-quarters of my lyrics were done, but I didn't even know, I hadn't realized I had so much material. It took him to gather that and he named it. He says he's an alchemist basically.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, he will take things and transform them. Absolutely. He's truly an alchemist, let's say.
Marco Calliari: But that's it, so you know, he's the one who made me realize I had enough material to make an album. Yeah. And then that's it, you know, like a simple snippet, you know, "Peur pourpre," I only had that, I didn't even have the text, I just had the piano riff with the echo we have, the natural chorus we have. I give him that and, during a week, two weeks, three weeks that followed, he sent me every night, I remember, we'd go to bed and then I'd check my Messenger. And then he'd send me two, three tracks. I'd listen to that and my jaw hit the floor. I was like: "OK." And you know, it's not far from what I sent him, except he added the groove, he added his bassline, he added stuff. Yeah, and that made the whole key, you know. He made a work of art out of it, you know. And I say it with modesty, we'll listen to it later in detail.
1:46:19 // Chapter 28: The Cover Hugo Lachance: Yeah, now talk to me about the cover. Look, we're gonna do like back in the day, we're gonna make it appear. OK. Watch out. 1, 2, 3... and there you go. Peur pourpre. Oh my god.
Marco Calliari: First of all, you know the title of the album, it almost ended up being La Clé. OK. Because it's one of my favorites and I find the vibe of "La Clé" is mind-blowing. But Peur pourpre really spoke to me a lot. The track, I adore it too, you know. And it's one of the last texts I wrote. "Peur pourpre" is, I don't know why, go figure. I had nothing, I just had the track and the vibe of the track, the instrumentation. And then, what can I talk about in there, you know? I hear that, I hear the mood, what can I talk about? And go figure why, what if I talked about the fears we had when we were kids? Because I had fears, but I'm not the only one to have had fears. Personally, I was hospitalized when I was young. I had a major kidney infection. They saved me, it could have been catastrophic. But they saved me just in time. I've often said that my blood, I think I have more Italian blood and they put some Tremblay blood in me, like from a certain Tremblay, because I truly have a strong Quebec culture inside me and I laugh a lot about that. I have Italian blood, but maybe I have more because they filtered it like hell back then.
Marco Calliari: So anyway, briefly. But back then, I had an obsession with syringes, really strong. And I used to break thermometers and break syringes when they wanted to poke me. Ah yes, no, it was really... I'm okay now, I got over it. But then I started talking about fears. So in the track you truly hear, I talk about darkness, the basement, spiders, things like that. It's really childish but there's something that clashes and works at the same time. And I liked the atmosphere and the fact of having a color. And go figure why I used purple, but I liked what it did linguistically speaking. Pourpre, it's not an easy word to say. Pourpre. Yeah. And in Italian it's Paura porpora. I liked that too, it makes a bit of the same kind of effect. Paura porpora. There are a lot of "p's." I liked what happened physically when you said that and I love the fact that it sets a color.
Marco Calliari: We talked earlier: the white album, the blue album... and purple. The funniest thing in that, and this one I think I've never talked about, is that for me, the first search I did for the color purple, yeah it's a movie, The Color Purple, yes. But the color gave me that kind of color. But my girlfriend afterwards tells me: "But that's not purple? Purple is more in the red family." Yeah but then that's where I saw that it's a bit ambiguous between mauve and red. Purple is very... my god! In fact, I don't even know even to this day, I don't even know what the true purple is. When we say purple, what is it that's supposed to move us? But I liked when I flashed on that color. I liked it and I find it fit a lot with the track, with the mood of the album even. So from there, we went into that, we went simple, and it's an album a bit darker too, huh? It's a rather dark album. It's sure that it's not a concept album, we are far from a concept album, you know. These are tracks I wrote in plenty of different contexts. Yeah, and Paul, he convinced me that everything was connected, that it fit. And it's him for real, he was great at setlists too. He is really great at setlists and at pacing. Yeah, there is truly a purpose for all the tracks that are placed.
1:50:30 // Chapter 29: Messages from Paul Cargnello Hugo Lachance: We're gonna talk about it. Before moving on to listening to the album, I invite you to put your headphones on. Yes.
Paul Cargnello: Hello! Here Paul Cargnello. Personally, I am an author, composer, producer, I don't know, protest singer, punk rock warlord. It's been a long time that I've been working in the music industry here in Quebec and in Montreal. And when I started, I was in a group called the Vendettas, The Vendettas. And I remember that Marco, he had a rather popular group too. It was a group called Anonymus and we had never played together. And I was always a bit insulted, you know. But if we go back in time, me and Marco, we never met while Anonymus was on tour with great successes on MusiquePlus and all that. And the Vendettas in the underground scene, we never crossed paths. It was still bizarre.
Paul Cargnello: But at the same time, I'm glad because in the early 2000s, I started working on solo albums and immediately after the release of my first solo album, Sonny Loop had asked me to open for him at Les Escogriffes. And so, I said yes. I arrive at the show and there was another artist booked. That artist was Marco Calliari with his first solo project, and he has printed demos and sells his first solo project after leaving Anonymus. It was still interesting to have two artists who come from rather popular groups and to start solo careers. It’s a transition that's not always easy for artists and I've had the chance to do that with Marco since the beginning. So thank you Marco, thank you Sonny Loop. And I love you, Marco.
Marco Calliari: Ah ciao comrade! Oh my god it's cool, huh! Comrade Cargnello, it's cool. Cargnello man, I adore him. He's truly an ally, in fact. I find it fun because all that story is true first of all, and we always crossed paths, sometimes more often than others. And now, well now it's like necessary. OK. It's necessary as much for him as for me. But a lot for me in the sense that it's the beginning of something.
1:53:35 // Chapter 30: Message from Gaëtane Roy Gaëtane Roy: Hi my Marco, it's Gaëtane. You know it's been more than 20 years that we rub shoulders, that we know each other and that we love each other a lot, both of us. I had the privilege of first meeting the artist, for me, a beautiful discovery. I remember, I have in memory promo tours that we did together and there I could discover the person you were by seeing you with the media, with all your sensitivity, your love for others too, your compassion, and above all a true artist. You know, in this trade, we meet a lot of people. And they are true, but not always. But you, you are part of the true ones and I take a malicious pleasure in saying that an artist like you, we should clone. I said the same thing recently of Michel Louvain, of Richard Séguin, because when we talk about people I met and who were defining for me, you truly are part of them. Oh thank you! My beautiful Marco. There I'm talking about the artist I've truly always appreciated, but I'd also like to talk to you about the man I appreciate that you are. It's a family man of great sensitivity, a good son with your dad, your mom, and your beautiful Milane.
Marco Calliari: You're making me cry. I wanted to say that I'm always gonna be the Marco for you, that's for sure. You know, I feel like I'm repeating myself because I've often told you how much I loved you, how much I appreciated you, and also for making me discover, with Italy, with Calliari, beautiful people I would have never met otherwise. So abbracci forti my beautiful Marco and my beautiful friend. Oh thank you. Oh my god crying... it's not me who makes people cry.
Hugo Lachance: Well you are the instigator. Bravo. Thank you.
Marco Calliari: Who is it? Oh Gaétane so much my god. Like she said, I met her as a publicist in Sherbrooke. But in my Mia dolce vita tour, at that time, you had publicists who were attached to a region. You could well have a publicist for a campaign, but they knew it was much more beneficial to hire Gaëtane for the Eastern Townships because man, she was the shit! She worked so well, she's a beautiful person. And in 2006, the Mia dolce vita tour, we did two campaigns together, but there was always that big respect. She retired, and one of her sons always came to see me in shows by the way, Fabrice who dances his life away all the time at my shows. In short, she also comes on my trips to Italy since 2006 where I bring my public with me to Italy every year. She comes with us and I feel like one of her sons, as if she's my little mama.
1:56:58 // Chapter 31: Message from Carlos Araya Carlos Araya: Hey Marco. Hey everyone. Hey Hugo. Well look, I hope you guys are doing well. I hope the interview is going well for you guys. My name is Carlos from Anonymus. I've also played a lot with Marco on his live albums and all that. Marco, personally I know him since I was about 9 years old. We met in elementary school in 3rd grade at Saint-Damas school in the Saint-Michel neighborhood. I have a lot of memories with Marco. Of course, we grew up together so we did plenty of silly things, especially starting a music band. Personally I remember that when we started going to see shows together, one night, we went to see a small show at Foufounes Électriques with one of our friends, Martin. We had gone to see a band that was very little known at the time. And I will always remember that the singer during his performance was a bit disappointed with the atmosphere and the fact that the Foufounes was sparsely populated with people. All of a sudden, he wanted to literally kick some serious ass and the singer was Phil Anselmo from the band Pantera for those who know. So legend says that it's since that day that Marco no its no longer has hair.
1:59:17 // Chapter 32: A Run-In with Phil Anselmo of Pantera Marco Calliari: Anselmo was lying on his back and then he was saying: "Pick me up, fuck you man," get up yourself, damn it. He was revved up, it was powerful, man! OK, there were 50 people at the Foufs. Pantera on the Cowboys from Hell tour, right before it exploded. There were only 50 people. He was still seriously fed up, Phil, he had put his mind out anyway and that's it, there weren't many people. And it's true, he was like angry, he was cranked, and in front there was the bouncer, there was Bob. Yeah, OK.
Hugo Lachance: Hello. I have Mario, Marco Calliari's dad.
Mario Calliari: Personally I have Marco and I have a sister, his daughter let's say, no my daughter, Monica. And Marco, the two children, but to me they are magnificent. Marco, I am very proud of him, of what he does. I know he is a person, he is very, very human, he helps everyone a lot. He is always ready to help everyone and personally I am very happy with him. It's sure that 20 years ago, when he was younger, he did metal, it wasn't my music but we went to see anyway. But finally, when he changed, when he went to Italy and came back, he started making music, then well we are always very proud of him. I know he is a very good person, he has a lot of heart and he, it seems like he never sees any wrong anywhere, anything. I hope he will continue. Personally I said I couldn't have a better child, a son or a daughter. Even my granddaughter Milan is extraordinary. And I have a lot of friends too who support me a lot. Because of Marco and Monica, I have a lot and I try to keep them as much as possible because these are a bit difficult moments for me now. I have health problems but I hope I'm gonna get through it. So bravo Marco and continue your career and stay the good person you are. I love you very much. OK ciao, love.
Marco Calliari: And there you go! Thank you! That wasn't me who went to look for that. Must thank Margot. Oh thanks, Margot. Well I knew, I was sure! I was like: "Come on, who is it that knows all these people who are close to me?" Margot. Thanks, Margot, it's really kind. Thank you very, very much. Yeah.
Chapter 14: SEGMENT: Salut à toi!
Hugo Lachance: (0:00) Today, I continue the Salut à toi segment. The concept is that we are a small community of independent podcasters. And the idea is to give a quick shoutout to podcasts I love, hoping that those podcasters talk about L'Album Podcast too. So, we try to create that exchange. Today, I'm talking about Dallaire 33-45. It's not really a podcast, it's someone who does reviews. It's my friend Steve Dallaire who is in the Saguenay. And from time to time, he puts out reviews, he makes tops, charts, he talks about albums often metal, he talks about his vinyl collection. It's done with a lot of lightness and humor, and it also gives you ammunition when you argue with friends about which album is the best. Dallaire 33-45 Steve, I salute you. The link is in the description, otherwise search on YouTube: Dallaire 33-45.
Chapter 15: SEGMENT: One Song After Another
Hugo Lachance: (1:08) We move on to the track-by-track segment. We start with "Grand bison." I invite you to comment on it.
Chapter 16: Grand bison
Marco Calliari: (2:25) Danny is a drummer but he is a multi-instrumentalist. He's a bricklayer in daily life, but he's been making music for a long time. We've been crossing paths with him for a long time. And he's one of the great chums of my former partner, Pasquale Caruana. We did "Molotov mon amour," and "Molotov mon amour" is a triangle between Danny, Pasquale, and me. We throw tunes at each other and it makes that.
(2:51) That riff belongs to a riff of Danny's that he sent me. And then I was like: "OK, molotov molotov." And then I was like: "Ah no, it looks like it's something else." I sent it to Paul. And when I gave it to Paul, immediately, he got on the drums, he got on the bass, he redid a guitar part, he opened up a bridge. Personally, the text, I had already written it.
(3:15) It follows a creative residency between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous people in 2018 that marked me deeply. It's Katia Rock from Maliotenam who sings with us, who has put out an album in recent years. It was part of her dream to do that kind of residency. We were talking earlier about Doba from Caracol, but there it was Doba. Doba was there, as well as Geneviève Toupin, Willows, Lauren who has had a lot of success in recent years, and Ed who is one of Radio-Canada's breakthroughs right now.
(4:05) We were a lot of people in there and we created, but mostly we learned and dialogued. It hit me hard in 2018 not to know everything I learned regarding the First Nations. I am sensitive to all that reality, but to have it in dialogue, in communication with people who lived it, children of those people too, it hit me hard.
(4:37) And plus, we experienced a sweat lodge. Have you ever experienced that? No? Oh my god. I find that to get a Canadian passport, you should have to pass through that sweat lodge to understand where you are truly arriving. Personally, I find it's like necessary. Most people don't even know what that is, a sweat tent as they say, but it's more than just walking in.
(5:15) You are accompanied by a shaman and there's something that happens. And there I'm not talking about drugs, it has nothing to do with it, there are no drugs in there. Truly, it's beyond what you can experience in life. You walk in there and you come out a much more awake person, much more sensitive to everything. And for me, it brought me to "Grand bison," to the whole sort of... I don't want to say that I'm spiritual, but I feel things and I love to respect traditions.
(5:44) The image I had when I came out of there was: did my grandfather know where he was landing in 1950? Because my grandfather arrived here before 1950, and then he went back and brought my father, my grandmother, and my mother. That image always stayed with me. So my duty is to talk about it in "Grand bison" and to respect that.
(6:17) I met Béatrice Deer through that sweat lodge in that residency called Mamou. There are mind-blowing tunes that came out of there, but they haven't seen the light of day yet. Katia, I give you strength and energy please, you have to put that out! It's so beautiful. And Béatrice became a friend. We've done a few collaborations together. I absolutely wanted to have her throat-singing parts in the track "Grand bison."
(6:54) Paul, he did the bass, he did the drums. He did a beautiful job on drums by the way. Personally, when I heard that the first time, I was like: "It sounds like Dehors Novembre." I had goosebumps all over.
Chapter 17: Peur pourpre
Hugo Lachance: (7:19) We continue with "Peur pourpre."
Marco Calliari: (8:11) I explained earlier, but the vibe of this track really impressed me. It starts from that piano part. It's two chords like in "Sweet Child o' Mine." I liked the vibe, I wondered where we could go with that. And that's where Paul Cargnello's magic worked, he managed to create beautiful atmospheres. Paul is hyper great at backing vocals. There is Mademoiselle Ruiz who did backings on it, but there are high voices that he does himself too.
(9:23) I find that it's one of his great strengths. Personally I do my backings in a harmony, but he does backings other than just in the lyrics. It's a sort of flourishes, a signature of Paul's that adds to the track. It's super well recorded and well mixed. He managed to create a beautiful universe around that.
(9:49) There are two schools of studio work. There is the school where it needs to be polished and you retake the track 25 times. But Paul is like me: everything must be used. Right here, we hear perhaps the fire truck passing in the back. Everything is there, and it's important to have those kinds of background noises. The take is as valid as having a take with microphones worth thousands of dollars. The important thing is the life there is in the take.
(10:40) It's something new in my solo career, none of my albums sound like that. Caliari Bang! Bang! had a rawer side because Pasquale was like me in that trip, but he did it with good microphones. This one has a lot of dictaphone takes.
Chapter 18: La clé
Hugo Lachance: (11:12) We continue with "La clé."
Marco Calliari: (12:36) I recorded that on a Mansfield, an acoustic guitar, in my basement. I had just watched a movie that I don't even remember, but I wrote "La clé." I had this riff, I went to record it immediately in the studio and I put it aside. When I sent it to Paul years later, he arrived with that magic.
(13:06) What's crazy is that he kept my acoustic guitar take and he followed my wave. At the beginning of the recording, there was a big storm in Montreal, a sort of flood. When he saw that from his window, he put microphones on the edge to capture the ambiance. When we finished the album, he told me: "Marco, 'La clé' is not a track, it's like a painting."
Chapter 19: Vibrer hey! hey!
Hugo Lachance: (13:55) We continue with "Vibrer."
Marco Calliari: (14:47) It's like a tribute to Charlebois because of the intonations. The whole vibe, he made plenty of noises with his sax, it was huge. Paul redid the guitar, he's a king of guitar sounds. The basics of the track, I had done it right here again a bit at the same time as "La clé," but I had missed things. I had added bass and guitar without too much knowing where it was heading. I gave some to Paul, he did the drums and the bass. We are elsewhere. I didn't have text at the beginning. I decided to talk about what I live: vibrating on the road, all the energy in shows. It's a gem to listen to, especially in stereo.
Chapter 20: Étincelle
Hugo Lachance: (16:11) We continue with "Étincelle."
Marco Calliari: (16:53) That starts from a keyboard riff by Sandy Belford. Sandy worked a lot with Paul a long time ago, he's a super keyboardist. At the time of Al Faro Est, we worked on my pre-production together and we had kept a few riffs in the bank. When Paul asked me if I had stuff, I sent that and we made the track out of it. It talks about the road again, about searching. The collaboration with Paul allowed to create a universe that wasn't common for me.
Chapter 21: La ligne d'arrivée
Hugo Lachance: (17:59) "La ligne d'arrivée." Cycling is a rather rare theme all the same.
Marco Calliari: (19:07) I talked about it earlier in relation to my cousin Gary Longhi. Paul had very clear ideas artistically, he already knew where he wanted to go with that. I didn't have a choice but to make him listen to the original version because we were looking for something.
(19:33) At the beginning, we hear a lot of noise. It's because during the pandemic, Alexandre Belliard wanted to invite me to a show via videoconference in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. He had written a song about my cousin and he wanted to have me there, so we set up the track with him. The piano is Valérie Lahaie. We took her piano take recorded on my dictaphone which was placed on my bass drum kick. We could hear Éric Goulet on bass and Valérie on piano. Paul then brought in all his own stuff. It's like a mashup. Mademoiselle Ruiz had free rein to write something in Spanish about life after death. It's truly beautiful.
Chapter 22: Avance r'cule
Hugo Lachance: (21:27) We pursue with "Avance r'cule."
Marco Calliari: (21:58) I wrote that on my veranda when my cousin was about to leave or had just left. "Avance r'cule" because he moved forward through huge obstacles. He took one step forward and two steps back until the fateful date. I had written that, and Alex called me. I hid a bit that I had already written a track because I wanted to see how far it could go. Finally, it gave two tracks and three tributes. Musically, Tim does a super violin solo in there.
(23:05) I find it has an old sound style Fred Fortin. We recorded that and I liked the slightly dirty side. It's the atmosphere we managed to create with Paul. It's fun to have guitars that sound trashy as hell sometimes too, those are the best.
Chapter 23: Y'a des hauts
Hugo Lachance: (23:29) "Y'a des hauts." That must be pretty cool live, that one.
Marco Calliari: (24:12) It's a track with which I long ignored what to do. At the beginning, it was a folk song with two simple chords. I wrote that in a microbrewery in the anglophone neighborhood in Montreal, at Brutopia. Nobody knew me over there. At one point, I even did a social work by booking three dates in the West to see. It's as if I was starting over. Finally, my public followed me there too.
(25:07) Pasquale and I, we tried plenty of things. The little piano riff, Pasquale found it. When I gave that to Paul, he opened up the track. We called John Furman on saxophone. We made a mix with Tim on sax too. Live, we did it only six times for the launches. When you have seven albums, you have to make choices, we can't play them all.
Chapter 24: Super 8
Hugo Lachance: Oh my god. A very good riff. Ah, I'm glad you like it.
Marco Calliari: It's the Spaghetti Western trip heating up the tip of my nose. It's there, starting from there, when the drums kick in, it's like a movie. The drumming is good, it's creative. It's simple but effective. For me, that's the thing I noticed right away—of course it starts with drums, but it sounds good, it sounds just the right amount of lo-fi. It's perfect. You have to see Paul's studio, you're gonna go: "OK, that's it." No choice but to talk about Paul, it's a must-see, there are truly extraordinary things to say.
Marco Calliari: In short, "Super 8" is a track of Pasquale's. Pasquale, he borrowed my classical guitar a long time ago. He made the foundations of it, then he sends me that and I wonder what I would do with it. And there, I wrote "Super 8." I thought of old Super 8 cameras. No idea what had inspired me exactly. Maybe the movie, I think there is a movie called Super 8. But it's memories, it was just fun to write from a slightly cinematic point of view. I like the atmosphere. At the beginning, I doubted my text, but no, it's just that, it's a cinematic trip. Paul and Pasquale went: "Wow OK, we're making cinema." There is a richness in Super 8 because it was the popular format, but it wasn't like now where you can film and see exactly where you stand. Everything was more precious, like developing photos at Direct Film. Personally, I archived Anonymus, we took photos of it and I did everything in quadruple to give to each. I have photo albums of everything, it's precious.
Chapter 25: Sakura
Marco Calliari: (Music) A soldier carried away by war, without friends, without family, alone on earth. Life or death, no matter your fate, it belongs to you, the world is yours, your weapon is within you, you hold it. Oh my god! In fact, it was just the end of the pandemic, I'm invited to my old elementary school in the neighborhood, the school where the guys from Anonymus and I went. I hadn't gone back since. My neighbor Jimmy, who is from Martinique, took a position as a music teacher over there, but there hadn't been music since my time. It took my Martinican friend to bring music back to the elementary school where we grew up.
Marco Calliari: He wanted to do a songwriting project in French with an artist and the students. Alexandre Belliard did the first year, I did the second. I had three groups and I decided to do one track per group. They brought out things—there were murders during the pandemic, a kind of cold cases in our neighborhood including a youth who got shot without anyone knowing why. Those are local turf war stories. The young man's little brother was in my class and he lived a dreadful mourning. Personally, I tried to bring joy. "Sakura" and "Chat sans ruelle" come from there, I wrote them with the help of the children. They gave me words, we worked on the melody and the rhythm. Since they were silent, I asked them to write five words each. It's a very multicultural neighborhood and I got magnificent words like "Sakura." I built the text with their help, it's a frozen moment. It's hope created with children who needed it.
Chapter 26: Chat sans ruelle
Hugo Lachance: We talk, by the way, about "Chat sans ruelle."
Marco Calliari: Yeah, that is pure hope in a bottle. We had them play marimbas and vibraphones, we even did a show with them. On the recording, it's Paul who redid them because it was too complicated to record the children, but originally, it was them. That's why I formed the "Petits Cœurs" (Little Hearts): they are friends of my daughter Milan and Jimmy's children. There is a symbolic connection.
Hugo Lachance: OK, wow! I expected a choir, I was looking a bit. It's collective, it's important that these themes go further. The song is quite childlike with the lyrics. I like your setup, it gives us keys.
Chapter 27: Salvami
Marco Calliari: (Music) Stai con me. Non so perché ho in me questa guerra. The original is "Save Us," the English version. I called Dario Brancato and we adapted the lyrics into Italian. We adapted it more than we translated it, but it goes in the same direction. I wrote it during the pandemic. When I recorded it—I don't want to proclaim myself David Bowie too much—but it sounded like Bowie, especially when I sang in English. Maybe because of the C minor chords, those are classics. I liked the vibe, it's not a rip-off, Nirvana did it too. I did the exercise in Italian and I kept both. It's a bit of a pandemic album, three-quarters of the tracks were created then.
Chapter 28: La cascata
Marco Calliari: (Music) It's an instrumental track. I'm the one playing the piano and I wrote the track right here. I called it "La cascata," which means the waterfall. My mother passed away, but she had a very rare illness, corticobasal syndrome; she slowly lost the use of everything. It was brutal to watch her waste away. She was in a wheelchair and had moments where she tried to stand up but couldn't. My ex-girlfriend, who was studying film, shot footage of my mother with my daughter Milan taking care of her grandmother. It was beautiful. I had just written this piece and we're going to release that video soon. Tim did the violins during the pandemic, and then Paul added the electric guitar and a magnificent bassline that blends right into the piano.
Chapter 29: La ligne d'arrivée
Hugo Lachance: La ligne d'arrivée.
Marco Calliari: (Music) "'83 wiped out on his motorcycle Gary. Come back to me bambino to get healthy. Everything for cycling, his great Olympic dream." I wish this song had broken through the media barrier because it pays tribute to someone truly important. I perform it at every show and I talk about my cousin. Collectively, I'm giving people one more name to remember because I've never understood why we only remember Chantal Petitclerc when there are hundreds of Paralympic athletes outperforming themselves. It fascinates me and tears me apart. That one wasn't produced by Paul, I produced it myself with Joémi Verdon. The piano is played by his son Zachary. I was looking for a solo instrument, I wanted a violin, but Tim suggested the flute and I found it magnificent. On the vinyl, there are two versions: one in English and one in Italian.
Hugo Lachance: Look, we've gone through the whole album, Marco. I think we just broke the record for the longest podcast episode.
Marco Calliari: I'm still waiting for my custom beer with my face on it!
Hugo Lachance: Thanks to the listeners and see you next time for another episode of L’Album Podcast!