Deep Cove Daze, Sunday Aug. 25, noon to 8 p.m. at Panorama Park. Featuring performances by LOMBOK, Old Man Canyon, JP Maurice and Dominique Fricot. Free admission.
Deep Cove is home to some wide variety: there’s freshly made donuts, kayaking, hiking trails and stand-up paddle boarding — which looks like a canoeist got confused and ended up on a surfboard and thought, “Well, I’m here now,” and paddled away.
On top of that unique resume is the end-of-summer celebration bash called Deep Cove Daze, a day crammed to the brim with fine festive food, concocted child capers, wild wonky wares, awesome arranged art, magnificently mixed music and boisterously bottled beer.
While many families can spend the day perusing and enjoying the grounds, there’s plenty of reasons to prepare a picnic basket, lay out a blanket, and watch the stage.
With a musical lineup featuring the Deep Cove Big Band, LOMBOK, Old Man Canyon, JP Maurice, various battle-of-the-band and singing competition winners and finalists, and Dominique Fricot, there’s plenty to be excited for.
Recently Fricot took time out of his schedule to speak with The North Shore News about his music.
Having just released a new video and single called “Our Last Song” on Tuesday, Aug. 13, Fricot is happy with the first days since its release.
“It’s been getting a lot of great responses. It had something like 2,000 views the first day it came out,” Fricot said.
The song itself is about a brutal break-up and the pain that follows, but ends with the inspiration to move on.
“So in love, so full of hope, before you stopped laughing at my jokes,” Fricot sings at the beginning of the tune. Even in the video he appears disheveled, wasting away on the couch listening to music for hours on end.
“I can finally say I can make it OK when you’re not here,” he adds later, finally cleaning himself up, bit by bit. And not just his appearance, but his apartment too, escaping his mind to a brighter day, you could say.
While heartbreak and lost love are not new themes to music, it’s Fricot’s genuine voice and lyrics that push his music above the myriad of pop-song clichés.
He was even awarded $10,000 by 102.7 The Peak for his song “Haunted by Love,” crafted when he first went through a painful breakup.
Now, more than a year later, the singer/guitar/keyboard player is taking a more positive direction with his music. While “Haunted by Love” was reflective of his life at the time, his new album, currently unnamed, offers a peek at the sun behind those dark clouds he lived under.
“I think my first record was quite sombre and dark,” he said. “And this one was more about emerging from darkness. A lot more lighter tones will be used I think.”
Performing has changed for Fricot as he grows over the years, but he still feels the same kind of nerves he did when he first went on stage in Grade 6.
“Me and three friends played the talent show, we played a Nirvana song,” Fricot recalls. “I just remember feeling excited. It’s kind of funny, before you go on you have a swell of nerves building up inside you, there’s all this fear, and it all sort of forms into this … it’s a transformation you would never expect to occur.”
Taking that fear and moulding it on stage into a part of his energy is something Fricot has done for the past decade, and it’s paying off.
In early August he was invited to perform at the Squamish Music Festival, which he says was one of the top five best performances of his life. It’s a far cry from when he first started recording and questioning every little bit of his work to now allowing himself to be open with people about his feelings.
He’s expecting to drop his next single in October with an album to follow by spring, 2014.
“It’s more in sound to be played in a seated venue, or a church or cathedral,” Fricot said. “Like larger reverberant halls. In terms of it being a dark record, that’s yet to be seen.”
Fricot will be playing the final set at Deep Cove Daze on Sunday, Aug. 25 from 7 to 8 p.m.
Other show information can be found at musart.ca.
To listen to Fricot’s songs or for more information about him visit dominiquefricot.com.
