| Jardin Secret
We all have our own secret garden, and that’s often the place where we hide our favourite songs. Like Axelle Red, whose new album is called just that – Jardin Secret (secret garden) – a collection of 15 new songs that she has decided to share with us.
This new album – her fifth studio album since SANS PLUS ATTENDRE in 1993, which featured the single Sensualité – was recorded in Brussels and Tennessee. In Memphis of course, at Willie Mitchell’s legendary Royal Studio where the likes of Al Green and Ann Peebles have recorded. Where beautiful gospel and soul voices were gently warmed by the tube microphones of the 1970s. Where R’n’B and Rhythm & Blues were first conceived! Where Rod Stewart dropped by to record a few of the hits from his “Atlantic Crossing” album. That was back in 1975 and the place has changed little since. Crooked wooden partitions still divide up the rooms, faded wallpaper still sports funky posters from years back, vintage equipment is carelessly piled up all over the place, a piano sits in a corner, a microphone hangs from the ceiling, wrapped around a beam, and the red “On Air” sign stopped working years ago. We are in a temple of the Deep South, dedicated to Soul Music. The assassination of Martin Luther King could have happened yesterday.
But it’s December 2005 and the people around Axelle are like her family – American musicians, old friends: arranger and keyboard player Lester Snell (who worked with Isaac Hayes for Stax), drummer Steve Potts (Booker T. & The M.G’s), guitarist Michael Toles and bass player Jeff Anderson all play together with a kind of effortless harmony. A few string and brass arrangements will be laid down later on, but for now, the group records live and direct onto an old-fashioned analogue tape deck. Patrice Cramer is the engineer who meticulously hones and polishes the resulting sound at the mixing desk. The song is called Si tu savais and Axelle wrote it for her elder daughter, Janelle. “You’re so special to me… it’s so intense I could smother you… I want to see you fly, free in the sky…” Her eyes are closed as she sings in the booth, her voice steady and self-assured. At the end of the take, you can feel the emotion in the air. And a few months later, she’ll be at the Cramer studios in Miami where the whole track will be mixed.
Axelle first wrote these new songs at home on the piano. A wonderful simplicity underlies them, which is doubtless one of the main qualities of her song writing, and the art of pop music itself. The album is a collection of songs about the reality of her life as a woman: about people needing more time to love each other more (Temps pour nous), about the injustice that revolts us all and dreams of utopia (Utopie), about children as they go through life (Si tu savais), about sensuality (Romantique à mort) and about intimacy (Papillon, Jardin Secret). There is even a song inspired by Jeanne Moreau (Changer ma vie).
During the recording sessions we talked about her influences, about the wide range of American singer-songwriters, such as Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Carly Simon, Minnie Ripperton, Aretha Franklin and others that we admire, and about the soul music that we so love – be it black or white.
We talked about all the things that we can hear growing in Axelle Red’s secret garden.
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