Interview by Anne-Cécile L.
Photo credit: Paul Harries

Clique ici pour la version Française.

Two years after my last interview, I moved to the UK and decided to get back to DYWD. So here we go again – in French for the first one because it’s much easier for me.

Saturday evening, 6.45 pm in the streets of Northern Quarter, it’s cold as fuck and I am about to walk for the first time through the doors of Soup Kitchen, one of Manchester‘s famous underground clubs. The bar is full, I meet Mathieu Jourdain, one of the two Rock Farmers of The Inspector Cluzo for a « Rendez-Vous » between French Bastards…

You were in Birmingham last night, how was it?
Mathieu: It was great! We played in a club, The Actress and Bishop, with stairs, of course, as in every English club. It was awesome, it is our first headline tour in the UK. We hadn’t been here for a while. We didn’t know what to expect at all, we opened for Clutch a year and a half ago. The audience that had seen us then is there.
The audience understands the lyrics, is also very « educated » to Rock’n Roll so yeah, it was really great! We’re delighted to be doing this tour.

So, tonight, Manchester! I think it’s a perfect match. I feel like you are as punk as this city…
Mathieu: That’s it! And Soup Kitchen is a mythical venue… You see, when you go downstairs, as we would say in French, it smells like Rock’n Roll! So it should be great tonight too. We’ve already played here, in Manchester, with Clutch but it was at the Academy.

I’ve been living here for several months now. There must be some French bands who came to play, I haven’t seen any…
I know that you are your own managers/producers and you also work at your farm in France. How did you organise this UK tour?Mathieu: Following our tour with Clutch, the producer who saw us opening for them offered us to do some concerts, he told us to think about it… So we were like « Well, we should take this opportunity, bounce back on this and do our first headlining tour in the UK…» We couldn’t do it before, it took us more than a year because of each other’s schedules. We were also touring a lot… We were only able to do it now. It’s been a long time since our last shows here, but the producers are very happy with how it’s going, so everything is awesome!

I listened to some of your interviews, in one of them you have said that the music scene is more and more exclusive/closed in France, that there is no space for Rock Music anymore. You’ve bee. told that without a bass player, it wouldn’t work… But you now have your own label Fuck The Bass Player…
Mathieu: It’s not even that it’s exclusive /closed, it’s just that Rock Music has never really existed in France. There have always been small bands, but they never had a big audience, whereas in countries where we tour a lot, like in the United States, where Rock Music is coming from… When we do concerts there, we have a connection with the audience… Even if in the United States, the proportion of people who listen to Rock Music in comparison to Urban Music is decreasing. But when we look at England and the United States or even other countries, there’s no surprise, even if now, we have our own audience in France. We think it’s the forgotten people from concerts and festivals who don’t know where to go and who find themselves in us because we do music that is not for the mainstream audience.

How do you explain that you, who are a bit on the edge of this system, are one of the French bands that tour the most abroad? And we’re talking about real « international tours », not just one date in the UK and one date in Belgium… You’ve played in more than one hundred countries…
Mathieu: We’ve always been touring around the world, even in Japan, that’s where it first started. We used these Japanese shows to develop the band: then we came back to France, we kept working and get known in Europe and other countries.
From the beginning, we have been doing worldwide tours. The French market started to wake up very late compared to other places where we often went like Asia, etc. We were very happy to be able to do so. But as we live in France, in Gascony, we’ve also been able to get known locally with some promotion…
Since our album Rock Farmers, we’ve managed to take a step forward in terms of media coverage… The problem in France is that medias don’t talk about this type of music or just a little bit.
Now we’ve taken a big step forward, we had some TV coverage, a bit with the overall movement of the society that wants to eat better, pays attention to the climate and the impact we have on the planet… They have found another resonance with us: we are farmers, we make our own food at home. These values, like good food, that we convey and the adequacy between Rock is completely atypical. Some medias jumped on that atypical aspect of us and focused on it, so they didn’t have to talk too much about music – once again because we were playing rock music. The radio station France Inter, for example, played our music, it was really difficult to get them to do it but they finally did. And now we have released an acoustic album last January, which could fit very well in their Programmation but they don’t play our music. We’re still a rock band and as said before Rock Music is a very small part of the Music Industry. We are happy that this acoustic tour was a success and that people still came to our concerts. We played sold-out shows, it’s great! If medias don’t talk about it, well…

When I described who you were to some English friends I told them « They are two rock farmers », and then I’ve explained the story behind The Inspector Cluzo. They were all amazed. I remember welcoming you at the festival Le Bout Du Monde in Crozon in Brittany, and I remember you told me « Come and sit with us, we don’t feel comfortable if you don’t stay with us. » I think your way of being, of doing things also plays a lot on your success. You break the codes to which people are used to…
Mathieu: We do it spontaneously because that’s the way we are, we’re not rock stars. From the beginning, we’ve started to make music to meet people, to be with the audience, etc. And also to exchange ideas. At every concert, we make sure to meet people, to go to the merchandising, to talk with them as much as we can… It’s funny because we do an hour and a half show and then we spend two hours at the merchandising but we like it! And it’s part of the thing. For us it’s important.

Back to your music, how would you define it in a few words?
Mathieu: Ouh… In tough words, it’s basically blues-rock with a touch of soul.

You released Brothers in Ideals, an unplugged version of We The People Of The Soil last month. I read that this album wasn’t really planned. What has motivated this release?
Mathieu: We recorded this album at the end of an American tour with the band Eels. We opened for Clutch before that, during winter, we played in a few festivals like Lollapalooza in South America… Then after Eels has invited us, because of that tour with Clutch, he heard about it. At the end of that tour, when we came back to Nashville, a studio was available for four days and our producer, Vance Powell, told us « Well guys if you have something to spit out, come and record… » We didn’t want to rack our brains. We’ve been recording some acoustic bits and pieces, we’ve invited some friends that are musicians… And the result of it was Brothers In Ideals. They told us «You guys have to release it, it’s your label… » Anyway, we didn’t have any pressure… The record is there and it’s great. It’s true that it was pretty well mixed, so we were like « Let’s release it! » We have been told « It’s commercial suicide to release an acoustic record » but it’s interesting, it’s another face of us that exists, and we thought that it could be good for our fans to hear it. In the end, people also think it’s great. We did fourteen shows in France, with the American musicians, it went really well. People came. They loved it. It’s another part of our music and it worked. So maybe we’re going to continue and do a tour like that again. We don’t know when cause we have to find time to get the musicians and all that, but why not? People seem to like it and the album is very well received. The bet has been won.

You are from Gascony, you claim it as much as I claim to come from Brittany, but you sing in English… Why don’t you sing in French?
Mathieu: Because we do rock’n roll, blues rock, and this music comes from the United States. We actually sing in American, not in English, not in British. That’s important. We sing it that way because it carries a certain weight, musically, in American.

Does it allow you to be freer or to express yourself more easily? I say that because since I’ve been living here, strangely enough, I find it much easier to express myself, to say how I feel, because words don’t really resonate for me. I guess because it’s not my native language… So when I say something, I don’t overthink it, I say it and that’s it cause words strangely don’t have the same meaning than in French. I don’t know if it makes any sense…
Mathieu: It’s not because it’s not our language… Actually, we have more difficulties because it’s not our native language, but once we manage to find the right way of saying something, it’s easier to sing because it has more punch. We are lucky because we work on our lyrics with an American friend who lives in Mont de Marsan, we exchange together and it works really great. Then we throw ourselves into it. Last year, we did three tours of more than a month each, so we totally immerse ourselves in this way of thinking which is completely different from the French or Gascon way of thinking. In the end, it looks more like the Gascon way of thinking because Gascon is a rural language like American. You have to find pictures, go straight to the point. That’s similar. And it works very well for rock’n roll.

Of all the places you’ve played in the world, in which place/country would you like to play again?
Mathieu: Well, in all of them! I don’t have one in particular but several like Scotland… We’re going to open for Clutch in July in Ireland. We’ve never played there! It will be great, one more country to add to our list. In all these countries where there’s this pure rock side, whether it’s the United States or even South America, a big connection happens with the crowd, like in Chile, or even Brazil.

When I started a few years ago, I always had randoms questions, that’s what I prefer so, well…

Your hero?
Mathieu: Neil Young for his commitment and his exceptional musical career.

You have US influences, are there any UK bands that have strongly influenced you?
Mathieu: Not many! There have been a few… Well, Led Zep and not so much else… Black Sabbath but it’s always old bands… From now on, not too much… Even if we like Radiohead and those things.

Your favourite album?
Mathieu: I don’t have « one » favourite, we love music too much, in general.

If I ask you to choose one right now?
Mathieu: Are You Experienced, Jimi Hendrix

A featuring with any artist of your choice – dead or alive?
Mathieu: Well… With Neil Young or Eddie Vedder.

Which artists do you like currently?
Mathieu: All Them Witches, an American band from Nashville. It is a really great band with bass, drums, guitar, violin and keyboards.

A concert that impressed you a lot?
Mathieu: The last concert that would have left a mark on me… uh… The last one that comes to my mind was System Of A Down in Arras when we played there. I was really pleasantly surprised. And another one I can think of was The Raconteurs, a long time ago, at least 8 or even 10 years ago, it was impressive!

You play in London tomorrow, do you have some pressure?
Mathieu: Not really, I mean we’re going to be under pressure because it’s London, there will be professionals who will come and we’ll be like « We can’t fuck it up!» So we can’t have only one guitar, we need our two guitars that why we’re going to get it tomorrow*! (*One of their two guitars had been forgotten the day before in Birmingham.)