To sleep outside | Jeannot Bournival targets hearts to create links

A craftsman of the Shadow, Jeannot Bournival is best known as a close collaborator of Fred Pellerin. By making the catalyst of the show To sleep outsidewhich will be presented Sunday at the Trois-Rivières amphitheater for the second year, it attracts light to him, but with the aim of redirecting it to the people who live in the street.

Director, arranger, musician, producer: so far, Jeannot Bournival had very well accommodated his status as “support artist”. It was when he discovered that his knowledge of the environment could help a greater cause than him that he changed his idea.

“Even with my albums, I was not trying to unravel,” says the multitasking artist, who is also a songwriter-interpreter. I lived my life. But I have more and more things to say, and no one is going to do it for me. »»

Jeannot Bournival received us last week in his studio in Saint-Élie-de-Caxton, in Mauricie. Starter like his friend Fred, he undertakes to tell us about his journey. “With or without shortcuts?” He asks.

We had the semi-long version, but in summary, Jeannot Bournival was born in 1977 in Shawinigan, and was raised by a single and sick mother. “We lived poorly. I was experiencing bullying, a lot. “Until he moved to Saint-Elie, where” everyone was very croche “like him.

Music has always been part of his life, except a short period when he worked in the local garage.

Guitarist, bass player, saxophonist, he accompanied several groups until health problems force him to stop.

“But it may have proven to be the best thing in my life. Technically skillful, he turns to the realization, produced a first disc for the tirers of rocks, then the album of his “brothers” Fred and Nico Pellerin, which works quite well.

In 2009 arrived SilenceFred Pellerin’s first album which is very successful with more than 160,000 copies sold. “It was an atomic bomb!” Everyone then wanted to work with him, which allowed him to build his own studio in a “all stripped” building located behind his house in Saint-Elie.

After these rich and productive years, he feels that this cycle is coming to an end. “The environment and the market have changed, and me too. Everything goes faster. It’s correct, but working at full speed is not the same that I like to do that. In recent years, he has been more producer – he has his own box, a corner of a table, who is dedicated to social inclusion projects.

Social reconnection

Jeannot Bournival had long been sensitive about roaming, but it was after having passed through a depressed period, a few years ago, that he wondered what he could do concretely.

This is how it was born To sleep outsidewhich is not a “benefit show,” he said. Its objective is really to create a “social reconnection” between people who live in the street and the rest of society.

“It is overturned to feel that we are participating in something,” he said, wiping a tear, after telling us the story of Julie, a addictive mother whom he met on the occasion of the spectacle of last year. “She struggled hard, slept in her tank, her children were placed, her son is in rehabing. She was starting to get out of it a year ago. »»

At the end of the show, Julie went to see him with her two children, and they tightened him hard.

In this show which aims to “fight taboos, calm violence, help tolerance, remove the trenches and create tentactive links”, the guest artists and the chosen repertoire are there to “aim and open hearts”. But the binder, of which he is the narrator, is made up of the stories of these people “who sit on the ground all day and may no one ever looks”.

And each of these stories has registered in him. “I could tell you about it for a week, it turns backwards every time. His observation: not only do they make a difference in the lives of people in homelessness, but the message passes. “After the show, people said to me: I understood. I look at them in the eyes now. »»

Have a catch

Jeannot Bournival is currently working on a new album which should be released in the spring. He takes pictures, writes poems, has a youth book and a reading collection with publishers, and is working on a Dictionary of the poorwhich will be a “poetic collection” of life stories that he has heard for two years. He would like to transpose this on stage into a style of documentary theater.

Ah yes, and the project would be thatTo sleep outside Movers in other major centers in Quebec from next year.

“It’s big stock to organize. This is why we redo it this year in Trois-Rivières. To establish it all. Last year, a week before, I didn’t know what the show would be! It takes a lot of support to set up this, I have to go get allies in the other regions. »»

It is his way of having a catch, to “do your end” to a better world. “If I can help people, and these people help others, we will end up getting there. »»

To sleep outsideSunday August 24, 8:30 p.m., at the Cogeco amphitheater in Trois-Rivières

Consult the event page