À l'Ombre des Sycomores

Description

Rod Barthet stands out completely from the French blues scene.
Once again, he manages to make the language of Molière resonate with the idiom of John Lee Hooker like no one before him.
To achieve such a result, the prodigious singer-guitarist enlists the services of lyricist Joseph D'Anvers, not forgetting Boris Bergman, a long-time collaborator with whom he has been composing for over 20 years. This new collaboration with Joseph D'Anvers unveils a universe where Bo Diddley, Christophe, Chuck Berry, Alain Bashung, and Hubert Felix Thiefaine seem to coexist.
With this new album, which is a succession of soundscapes unique to the fertile imagination of his accomplices, our singer-guitarist-songwriter takes another step forward. All the tracks compete in nuances and imagination, aiming to serve often burning themes that lament human wanderings and the forgetting of our fundamentals. After shaking the international blues stages for 2 decades, Rod Barthet is definitively establishing himself as an essential cog in beautiful French song. A few words from Joseph D'Anvers
"When I started my collaboration with Rod, I immediately imagined texts imbued with adventure, exile, travel, and lands at the ends of the world. I could already hear his voice singing these dusty landscapes, these distant islands, and I knew it would fit him perfectly. Then, I completely let him take my words into his territories filled with melancholic guitars, raging yet elegant riffs. From Bashung to Thiefaine, I enjoy collaborating with those who are raw, men whose voice, face, story, and inspiration bear the scars of full, tumultuous, chaotic lives, lives we love to tell. It is in this lineage that I place my collaboration with Rod."
• At 3 years old, he attends his first rock concert, at 12 he listens to punk and hardcore and locks himself in the family garage with a borrowed guitar, wasting the first years of his grandmother's retirement, and at 14, he creates his first band Final Blast (hardcore trend) and screams his indignation at the bourgeois consumer society.
• It is at 20, after a stint at the music school in Nancy, that he becomes professional. He then uses his guitar strings in all the pubs in the region. But his dream takes shape.
• 1991 marks his first trip to San Francisco where he discovers Tommy Castro, Johnny Nitro, Harvey Mandel (Canned Heat), Ron Thompson, and Jim Guyett (bassist of John Lee Hooker). He jams with all his new friends and circulates a demo of the band in the city that reaches John Lee Hooker himself, who calls him to offer him to be his opening act. Rod, invited to the master's house, was able to, dazzled, talk with "Mr. Boom Boom."
• It is in 1995 that he returns to San Francisco to record in the Alpha & Omega studio his first CD, Rod & The Shotgun’s "Mr. Alligator." In the meantime, he opens for Roy Rogers, Joe Louis Walker, Jimmy Johnson, Bo Diddley, Wilson Picket, Alvin Lee, and Mick Taylor!
• In 1998: he releases a second album, Rod & The Shotgun’s "Changer l’horizon." It is during this period that he crosses paths with Boris Bergman, with whom he composes 8 songs for his album Rod "Au bout d’ma ligne." The album has a more rock and sharper tone and finally finds access to the general public. Concerts begin to follow one another.
• 2003 - 2006: Rod delivers "Balconnet de France," gives guitar lessons for film needs, tours in Europe and South America.
• 2006 - 2010 he delivers 2 new albums "Je te promets" and "Sous une bonne Etoile."
• 2015 - 2018: New album "Les Elles à l’écoute" produced in San Francisco with the participation of Boris Bergman for the lyrics, followed by a tour.
Then in September 2019, the album "Ascendant Johnny Cash."
And finally today his new album. The 11th since his debut in 1993!