Hey,

I hope you’re doing great! It’s 8:30am on Monday morning and we just left Alex’s home in Virginia. We’re on our way to New York City for one night as we’ve been invited to attend the third game of the World Series, but the first one of this series at the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY! Both of us are like kids, already wearing our caps and listening to our favorite New York bands like Sonic Youth, Swans, Beastie Boys, The Ramones, Velvet Underground, Public Enemy, Blonde Redhead, A Place to Bury Strangers, and, of course, Patti Smith to name a few! 

Forever thankful to Alex’s management, Jennie and Bill, for making this incredible dream come true! Alex and I both grew up being massive Montreal Expos fans (they left Montreal for Washington DC back in 2005 to become the Nationals), and both spent our summertime playing this beautiful sport called baseball. Growing up in a very humble environment, attending a regular season game already was something pretty much impossible, so we wouldn’t even dare dream of a World Series game. The Expos were never quite good, but this is another story! 

Here we are, not only leaving Virginia toward New York but also transitioning toward a new chapter of our journey. Alex’s first USA tour is now behind us, we’re slowly migrating toward Tangier, where we’ll be working on new music with the entire band together for a few months. Alex is leaving for Tokyo this Wednesday, while The Long Shadows will gather in our Church-Studio to make some noise prior to meeting in Tangier in mid-November! I truly can’t wait to bring you all with us during this incredible and unique musical journey, where it all started for Alex back in 2016!

But before getting there, I asked Alex a few questions about his first USA tour! Enjoy!!! 

Let’s be great for one another! 

Your Host and Friend, 
Jeff 

Q&A WITH ALEX

1. The tour A Heart Full of Colors is now behind you for a little more than a week now. After thinking, how did those 7 dates across the United States impact you?

It’s strange to say, but I feel like time goes by much faster than it used to before my surgery, so I don’t want it to pass me by without being part of the moment, without seizing the essence that defines every one of those moments. Since I have had major memory issues since leaving the hospital, barely alive, I quickly understood the imperative meaning there was for me to write about sensations, emotions, experiences, discoveries, and the little pieces of light of a journey I have the ultimate blessing to keep on unfolding. Therefore, I collected those most meaningful elements through my tour chronicles. Their impact is growing within me, but I never try to muse too much about them all. It’s still too fresh for me to do so anyway. I have the tendency to overanalyze the simplest beauty there is, but I have learned to appreciate simplicity — or what I call the primary colors — of my life. It’s not natural for me, as I want to explore the layers, the shades, the tints, the minuscule connections between the dots constituting the whole thing (it drives everyone crazy when I do that!) It’s actually instinctive for me to dive deeper, and deeper, and deeper, so it’s a fairly new type of approach to appreciate the “whole” without having to understand every possible ramification. There’s a massive let-go involved, but it is rewarding somehow. So I guess that question would make much more sense to me in a few months, or before my next American tour, maybe. As of right now, the happiness I am living after the tour not only suffices me, but I cherish its peaceful effect on my otherwise unsettled desire to have it all, all at once. I’m allowing myself to stop, contemplate, appreciate, and be grateful. At least, I’m trying to.            

2. You generously created a playlist aligned with every city you performed in. The diversity of genres, styles, and eras is phenomenal. Between Philippe Katerine, Swans, Jay Z, Nirvana, Wilco, Cindy Lauper, and Counting Crows, how would you describe what a great song is?

A great song is one that has the ability to move you in the most unexpected ways. Those songs encapsulate moments while growing and emancipating at the same time. It’s a song in which you discover new angles because there are other angles. Sometimes, those angles are within you and are triggered by the song.
 

3. You generously shared through daily tour blogs, inviting us in your mind, in your heart, on stage, in the van, in hotels, and even American culinary experiences throughout the tour. One thing came back in pretty much each and every one of your writings; you shared about the you before and the you now. Could you tell what happened in between and why things are different now?

Is it an attempt to get an answer to your first question? The “passive rephrasing strategy"... You’re good, brother, you’ve become a very dangerous interviewer! My counter reflective answer is... ;)

More seriously, the best way to illustrate my answer is directly linked to the fact that I’m not into entertainment. I’m not getting on stage to distract or amuse anyone in exchange for money or fame. I present myself to others with the hope of communing, disposed to be transformed through that collective moment. It’s about being inclined to live an experience. That’s my heart for every gathering, may it be through a shared uplift during the concert or a personal conversational connection afterwards. It’s about life, not artifices. Therefore, I allow myself to be deconstructed and reassembled, or to be metamorphosed entirely. Again, life creates life, and its current is in permanent evolution. Sometimes, it’s very subtle, as much as it could be an existential rebirth. I refer to a spiritual perspective, which for me is translated by the emotional involvement we can experiment with through our affective abandonment. Honest music has the ability to offer that canvas, but the rest is for us to define, to accept that the illustration or the expression involved will be revealed a little more every time we let go. That’s why things end up being different for me; the “before” aspect is a given by the construct of our nature, the time we feel stuck in between is the reflection of our minds holding up or resisting to what we want to believe is too important to lose if we move forwards, the now is what we decide to be regardless of what used to be and no matter what we may fear of becoming.

That’s the distinction I make regarding having and “experience” and being “entertained”. Even if people can find my point of view pretty “amusing”… and I can live with that as well! 
 

4. You also share a lot about community and family values, often related to the “why” you do all this and how the connection with the audience is key to you. When you leave the stage after this short 3-song/45-minute performance, what, in your heart and mind, defines if it was a good show or a great show?

If it’s about how “great” or “good” of a show we had performed, then my selfish tendency will be to primary focus on how close to perfection was my personal delivery, and my obsessive nature will immediately evaluate every single detail of our collective execution. But since I don’t care about “great” or “good”, my entire attention is dedicated to defining if it was a moment or not. This is defined by how fulfilling and meaningful our collective moment truly was. The purpose is about laying down whatever I may have to share during our communal instant. Sometimes it's not much, but it goes back to the honesty I have while contributing to a moment that is way greater than myself, the band, and the music we do. When I know I was a sincere element of that emancipative wave, I’m grateful I have been part of a unique motion... The rest of it is the rest for me, quite frankly.
 

5. Now that this first American tour is over, what do the few weeks left of 2024 have in store for you? Is resting part of it?

“Resting”… What an enigmatic concept!

I’m going to Japan in a few days, where I’ve been invited to attend the Tokyo International Film Festival. My presence is related to the movie title “Voyage à la Mer” that I wrote and produced, a personal project I started shooting all over Japan more than a decade ago already but finally had the opportunity to edit last year after I could capture additional footage in Tokyo. The movie incorporates my albums Kimiyo and A Measure of Shape and Sounds alongside a third unreleased record installment that will serve as its original soundtrack. While it’s an interesting new creative “universe” for me to dwell on, I found it to be a wonderful pretext to see some of my dear Japanese friends and family for the first time since I had my heart surgery. It’s a meaningful short trip for me...

After Japan, I will immediately head to my writing studio located in the old district of Tangier, Morocco, to isolate myself in order to begin working on what I foresee as a band-oriented album, of which I would like to start releasing excerpts sometime in 2025.

I have several other side projects going on in the meantime. I mean… People know me now. If 2024 was a transitory year dedicated to recovering from my health issues, 2025 should be interestingly creative. That’s the plan —  at least for now!