LYSE & THE HOT KITCHEN
by Léna & Carine
Come back a few years ago, at the time of Rockabilly, and you will discover a mysterious kitchen… Go up to it, enter… You will see Lyse, doing the cooking, bustling about, beating the eggs and the time on her cocktail drum, humming some melodies. Next to her, Arthur Cossette, his Gretsch on the shoulder, sprinkling his legendary surf solos. Turn to your left, a little bit more, yes, you can see Jérôme, simmering the music, equipped with his double bass.
Those who are nostalgic for Rockabilly, open up your ears! Lyse & the hot kitchen cover songs from the 30’s to the 60’s, from Boris Vian’s Alhambra rock to a Ghost riders medley, putting all styles together.
Lyse & The Hot Kitchen
Ingredients with mixed flavors
“The band is complementary, heterogeneous and I think “Fellinian”. Me and Arthur, we are like the cock and the horse. Arthur, his age, his bearing, his culture and the rockabilly sound, and me, my French language, my instrument and the look. Jérôme Hébert, part of the twenty-something generation, with more progressive roots, is our ear. He is the calm of the band, he moderates us”, explains Lyse when we met her with Arthur. The ingredients of this band are tuned on the same thermostat. “I was born on summer, I want it to be hot!”, sums up Arthur. Maybe you have already listened to him in the 60’s band Les Jaguars, or, later, in the Sinners.
Curious to learn more about the effects he uses to create that legendary surf sound, MEMOZ asks him the question. “It’s my way of playing, I make the sound. You can’t fake a move, it’s natural. Like a saxophonist would never sound like another. The skin, what you contain, the touch, that is the sound, it’s physical”.
Lyse’s instrument is remarkable too: a strange drum you play while standing, at the center of the stage, behind the singer’s mic. “I am a percussionist who denigrated her job, but when I realized I could sing at the same time, I said ‘Ok, welcome, we’re gonna beat the time’!”
Percussionist since the age of nine, she gradually played the majorette stick, the cymbal, the bongos, the bass drum and then the snare drum in the Ancienne-Lorette brass band, until 17, when she renounced to her percussionist past. “I came to Montreal, I wanted to be an ACTRESS”! She became aware of her voice and the stage at the age of 20 in the Pol Pelletier theater classes. Her collaborations with Ray Condo motivated her to have her own band.
A long time simmered baking
“Do you remember, Arthur, the first time?”, asks Lyse to Arthur, about their meeting. “My former double bass player, English-speaking, introduced me a sort of Asterix person, with dark hair, who didn’t talk very much, really shy, and told me he was looking for a drummer. I answered him in english, thinking he was English-speaking, “I don’t play rock”. One year later, Arthur had built up Les Jaguars again. I came to his show, he recognized me”. He asked me “Do you like my band?”Me, still ingenuous and ignorant, I told him I wanted a guitarist for my band!”
That is how Lyse & the Hot Kitchen was born; “we had to find a drummer, but the rhythm was already there and I had not realized it!” The order is sent: a cocktail drum is bought for Lyse. She precises, “I choose those “electrical domestics” all the same color”.
A DIY spirit decorated kitchen
“I sew my dresses, Arthur’s jacket for the shows, I find Jérôme’s pants”, Lyse hand craft is endless. Be curious, go up to the kitchen table during one of their shows…and you will probably leave with some “Tea for tomorrow” and some biscottis in a hand-made origami box!
