Jingle Bell Roch
Saturday, December 16, 2000
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The Halifax Herald Limited
Jingle Bell Roch Voisine adds own flavour to seasonal songs By Stephen Cooke / Entertainment Reporter Canadian pop star Roch Voisine has been more elusive than Santa Claus in his native land over the past few years. But instead of being sequestered at the North Pole, he's been spending most of his time in Europe, fostering his popularity overseas. So while it might seem odd that he'd pick a Christmas album, tour and TV special as his way of reacquainting himself with his fans, Voisine says devoting several months to crafting seasonal songs seemed like a perfectly natural project for sliding back into the spotlight. Tonight, the square-jawed pop matinee idol mixes familiar hits with Christmas classics at the Halifax Metro Centre, many of which appear on his new CD Christmas Is Calling. Contributed "After 12 years, you figure it's about time you made (a Christmas record), but there's no right Roch Voisine, the square-jawed pop matinee idol, mixes familiar hits with time or wrong time," says the Northern New Christmas classics at the Halifax Metro Brunswick native by cell phone, en route to a Centre tonight. concert in Laval, Que. "A few years ago on the Kissing Rain tour we put this Christmas medley together for the concert and it had a lot of impact. People loved it so much that years later they might run into me and tell me how much they liked it and ask me when I'd be doing a Christmas record.
"So I probably created a demand there that I should answer to. Plus it would allow me to go across country with a concert that would warm things up again, since I've been away for such a long time." Because it is Voisine's first new disc in three years, he didn't want to just slap together something seasonal that would get played for a month and then be forgotten. He says he tried to make sure Christmas is Calling was every bit as good as a regular Roch Voisine pop album, like the one he's currently working on for release next year. "It's a hard job. As a producer you want the record to be different, but not so fashionable http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2000/12/16/f154.raw.html (1 of 2) [19-1-2001 9:03:55]
Jingle Bell Roch
that no one will want to listen to it a year later because you had the bright idea to put the flavour of the moment on it," he says. "So we tried to change the songs as much as we could, and give the songs flavours I hadn't heard before. Doing O Christmas Tree as a bluegrass tune with fiddles, I hadn't heard it like that. On Little Drummer Boy, instead of marching drums we used African percussion to give it a cooler beat." Besides tonight's concert, Voisine's fans can also catch his special Roch Voisine: Christmas on the tube on Sunday at 7 p.m. on CBC-TV. Besides performing songs from Christmas Is Calling, Voisine also pays a visit to his hometown of St. Basile, N.B. and shows a few of his old home movies. "I had an aunt who had one of those Super 8mm cameras, with the big spotlight in front," he recalls. "Everyone would cringe when she'd show up with that thing and blind us, but the footage is great, and it works perfectly on the special. There's footage of me playing hockey on the pond when I was about three years old. "Shots of the family are interesting to see because my parents have been divorced since I was four or five years old, I didn't really remember that footage with my mom and the kids. It was nice to see." Back
http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2000/12/16/f154.raw.html (2 of 2) [19-1-2001 9:03:55]
