born somewhere is a “fundamental” black dog song. “I listened to it a lot as a child,” the 37-year-old artist tells us. It contains everything I aspire to: a powerful, universal message, more relevant than ever, and, musically, a lot of production work. Maxime Leforestier is a sound geek, he loves synths. »
Black Dog was born somewhere, in the South-West. He grew up in Bourg-sur-Gironde, a “town” of 2,200 inhabitants where, once a year, a funfair comes to sweep away the boredom. He talks about it in Juliaa song from his first album, Apollo, released at the end of October. This piece is, he confides, the one that says the most about him – “this posture of a man who looks, who observes, says a lot about me”.
Before being called black dog, he is, in the Civil Registry, Jean Grillet. Like all people who are born somewhere, he did not choose his parents, he did not choose his family. “I am the son of winegrowers. We lived in a castle in the middle of vineyards but it was all dilapidated. Part of my family was aristo, but I am the end of the race,” he laughs without cynicism.
“The wine world is extremely violent”
He has contrasting memories of this environment which was his environment for many years. “The wine world is fascinating but it is extremely violent towards workers. I worked in the vineyards, I grew up with people who worked in the vineyards and this violence traumatized me, shocked me, convinced me that it was not right. Every time I talk about freedom, I think of these moments. »
“We had no money, but we had a cultural heritage, we had a library,” continues the artist. Her love of music comes from her mother, “the daughter of modest Vendée peasants”. She played the piano, he sat next to her and imitated her. He was 6 years old. She enrolled him in a music school. “That’s how I started. I wrote my first songs at 12, when I took up the guitar,” he says.
At home, music was not playing in the background all the time. The songs were mostly listened to in the car, or during vacations. The black dog mother especially loved Leonard Cohen and gospel music. His cousin, as a teenager, mainly swore by Nirvana and Deftones. His musical culture was built like that. There was also Weezer, of whom he is “a big fan” and to whom he owes his “love for melodies”. Among these Anglo-Saxon references therefore emerges born somewhere by Maxime Leforestier, “a very great song” which “connects him to French song”. Because black dog writes and sings in French.
A nickname inspired by Stevenson, Vian and Churchill
Before devoting himself to music, the artist completed a diploma, a BTS in oenology. Then he entered the conservatory, studying electroacoustics and joined a theater company. On stage, for example, he played covers of Sonic Youth and Fugazi. Retrospectively, he says that this experience taught him “to be demanding about the meaning he puts into things”.
In 2016, however, it went dark. “I felt like I wasn’t living my life. I fell very low, I hurt myself and I hurt others,” he modestly confesses. He feels lost and writing allowed him to find himself. “Writing, talking about my fears, my doubts, saved me,” he says without grandiloquence.
This is where black dog was born. At this time, he sees these two words everywhere. In Treasure Island by Stevenson – where a pirate is nicknamed like this –, in the poem by Boris Vian, I don’t want to die (“before having known the black dogs of Mexico who sleep without dreaming”) or even in a documentary on Churchill. “He was cyclothymic and called his condition his ‘black dog.’ I found it beautiful that he turned this antagonism into a companion,” he emphasizes. Jean Grillet also decided to build his career as an artist under the aegis of a black dog, symbol of his personal ghosts.
A Victoires nomination after only five songs
His meeting with Mark Daumail from the group Cocoon was decisive: “He helped me produce my first EP. I started to realize what I wanted to do. » The extended play in question, released in 2021, is entitled True stories. The title song ended up in an ad from La Redoutedirected by Géraldine Nakache.
“For me, it wasn’t a consecration but it was life taking my hand and telling me that I was going to be able to live my life somewhat peacefully for a year, without asking myself any questions. I was able to pay the people who worked with me, I was happy to write a nice check to my eater who worked hard, rejoices the artist. It was blessed bread. Making this sincere, gentle, kind song with myself, allowed me to continue and find myself at the Victoires de la Musique. »
It was in 2022, black dog found himself in the running on the male revelations side alongside the brothers of the Terrenoire duo – who won the trophy – and Myd. “In truth, it was a little premature for me to be nominated, I had only released five songs, which is not a lot. But it happened like that, he notes. It’s a good memory, that first TV toughened me up. Since then, I have been less afraid of myself and of people. »
“With these songs, I rewrote my past”
The ceremony did not disrupt his career, but served as a trigger. It was at this moment that he thought about the sustainability of his project. “What the hell was I doing here?” I had to define it, I had to think about it. This contributed a lot to makingApollo the album that it is. The breath, which we find above, is the first song that I wrote, with P.R2B, after the Victoires. I sing there “One day, I was taught to jump in the waves”, this text allowed me to answer the questions “What do I want to be? What do I want to do ?” »
Among the other strong texts of the disc, there is that ofWhat was she thinking? “It was an outlet, I wrote it when my mother found out she was ill. I wanted to tell her that what I was was thanks to her,” explains Black Dog. The artist sums up: “By writing these songs, I rewrote my past. I fantasized it, I exaggerated it, I added to it, I made myself better than what I was and worse than what I could have been. » Proof that one can be born somewhere and reborn differently, elsewhere, without it being a coincidence.
chien noir will be in concert at La Cigale (Paris 18th), on February 6, 2024