Nagui, the host of the popular French musical variety show Taratata, which airs across Europe on TV5 Monde Europe on Saturday nights, has experienced some extraordinary artists and performances since the program debuted in 1993.  But, at a taping of the show one fine spring day in 2010 in Paris, it was obvious from the reaction of both studio audience and host alike that they were witnessing something particularly special – perhaps even a small piece of contemporary music history – unfolding in their presence.

That’s not to say there hadn’t already been a mighty buzz in the air about one of the week’s featured guests: a young singer/songwriter from Québec by the name of Bobby Bazini, a tall, lanky 20-year-old dressed on that day in shades of grey – jeans, vest and un-tucked shirt over striped T-shirt. Bazini opened with a performance of the Stealer’s Wheel classic Stuck in the Middle With You,  and closed with the self-penned I Wonder, the song that had started things rolling for him a few months earlier.

As those who viewed his appearance on Taratata discovered, Bazini is a talented songwriter and already a confident and personable performer. He was born and raised in the Upper-Laurentians, a few hours due north of Montréal, but sings with the compelling voice and poignant soulfulness of one whose affinity for the iconic performers of the roots music of the Deep South runs soul deep. His music hath charms, as the saying goes.

Better in Time, Bazini’s debut album, has topped the English album chart in Québec for seven weeks and counting, even holding off challenges for chart supremacy by teen phenom, Justin Bieber and fellow Québecker, Rufus Wainwright. His debut single, I Wonder, held down the number one position on the charts in Québec for nine straight weeks. Better in Time, the album from which the single was taken, was released by Montréal-based Mungo Park Records and subsequently picked up by Warner Music in Europe for distribution in 28 countries. Other countries have been calling wanting to get in on the action swirling around the artist that MusiqueMag.com has called “The Musical Revelation of the Year.” The venerable French publication Paris Match had not missed the signs either and remarkably dispatched a reporting team to Montréal to meet Bazini and to see him in concert for a feature article that subsequently appeared in the May 2010 edition of the magazine. It has been, to put it mildly, a dizzying start to Bazini’s career.

Bobby Bazini was born and raised in Mont-Laurier, a small town  north of Montrealal in the Upper Laurentian Mountains. Bazini, who characterizes the area in which he grew up as simply “a woodsy place… and mountainous,” notes that music had always been a part of family life. “Even my grandfather used to play guitar and harmonica,” he recalls. “My parents listened mainly to New Country stuff like Garth Brooks as well as some classic country artists like Hank Williams. My father is a guitarist and a singer and, when I was 15, he taught me how to play guitar. He used to do some duets with my mother at family parties and at Christmas. They played mostly country music.”

There was another member of Bazini’s family who would become an unwitting catalyst in setting his feet on its current musical path following a rather traumatic period of his young life. Following the family’s move from Mont-Laurier to Montréal, his parents broke up.  “I decided to go back to Mont Laurier to get away from all the turmoil and just be alone,” he explains. “It’s a small town and I had so much time to think. The people are nice and the mountains and the woods are inspiring. My grandmother offered me the chance to live with her and I decided to do that. She had lived through the ‘60s and was a big fan of Elvis and Johnny Cash and she introduced me to these guys. I immediately fell in love with that music, particularly the authenticity of Johnny Cash.  I had started playing music at this point and I decided to practice and improve my guitar skills. I started by covering stuff like Johnny Cash. I learned a few of his songs and then came soul music and blues and The Doors and more artists of that era.”

Bazini really got into soul music after seeing a TV documentary about the late Otis Redding. “I was amazed by him,” he says. “He had so much soul and so much energy and it really got me. He was the best of all the Stax artists to me.”

With all these different musical influences – country and blues and soul – rattling around inside his head, Bazini was determined to incorporate them into a style that was uniquely his own starting initially with lyrics. “I had always written poems and I have always been a big, big fan of Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison.  So, I started by writing lyrics and then I tried some melodies and then melded them both together. I showed them to my grandmother and she really pushed me to keep going, to keep writing, to keep playing because she thought I was good. It was very encouraging for me because she really helped me. She gave me a lot of confidence.”

In talking to Bazini, the word “authenticity” comes up a lot, particularly when the topic turns to the instrumentation of his band and the temptation to use all of the technology now to be found in a recording studio. “We’re using a Hammond B3 organ and a brass section. Right from the start, I wanted real instruments; I wanted the music to be authentic like it was back in that era. They wouldn’t have used computers and synthesizers; they didn’t have that technology. I wanted to capture the original sounds of those artists I listened to like Otis Redding.”

So how did Bazini emerge from the bucolic setting of his hometown to take on the tumultuous world of contemporary music? “There’s a festival in my hometown that happened when I was 18 years old and I decided to be a part of it by just playing in the street for people,” Bazini remembers. “There was a guy in the crowd who saw me play and he said, ‘Hey man, can I bring my drums and we’ll play together?’ and I said, ‘Of course! I’m alone with my guitar; come on!’ We played together and, as it turns out, he was a deejay at the local radio station. We started working together and wrote a song called Turn Me On, which is the first song on my album. We also recorded one of the first songs I had ever written at his home studio, which is not on the album. He played it for someone at the radio station and one of the people who heard it was a radio tracker so he sent it to a promo guy in Montreal and that guy introduced me to the company I have signed with. It went very fast.

“It’s ironic in a way because I wanted to be different from what we usually hear on the radio. The only thing I wanted to do was be like these old guys in the ‘60s. Sometimes I wish I was born in that era. With my music, I have a chance to bring it back; all the authentic sounds of these instruments that we kind of lost in the music that we have today. I remember at school, my friends didn’t even know who Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash were. I couldn’t believe it. For me they were heroes.”

Following the release of his debut album, Better in Time, and its subsequent acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic, he sometimes wonders, as do most songwriters, whether he has any more good songs in him. “I’m still trying to find some new melodies,” he laughs. “I like to sit on the balcony and try to write some new songs. Anything is a potential melody; anything is an inspiration. You always have to be heedful of everything you see. I’m always carrying a pad so I can write down any ideas I have. I could be walking down the street and think of a good line and I don’t want to lose it.”

As the whirlwind schedule of touring, performing and promotion continues unabated, there are some things to be savoured for the present and others to be dreamed of for the future. “I’m going to Belgium on Sunday and then Paris and Lyon,” says Bazini. “I’m glad I can go to Europe and sing there but I can’t wait to go to the U.S. and places like Nashville and Memphis; I’m really looking forward to that.”

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