June 22, 2001 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Until her face turns blue

Lucie Blue Tremblay says she will sing until she is 90

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Lucie Blue Tremblay has been singing professionally for almost 20 years now, and she plans to continue till she's "eighty or even ninety."

Tremblay started in her native Canada in 1982 and made her entree into the United States in 1986. She spoke with this writer by phone from her

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Lucie Blue Tremblay

home in Eastern Township, about two hours east of Montreal in Quebec. She and her partner of two years moved to this new home in the country in August of 2000.

Tremblay's partner is the inspiration behind her most recent CD, Because Of You, all the songs of which she "wrote in ten days."

"I have never done that," explains Tremblay. The singer and songwriter met her current muse "when I was not looking at all."

"I met someone amazing," she continued, "at a time when I didn't feel that I wanted to be with anyone anymore." Tremblay asked that her partner not be named.

According to Tremblay, "relationships are wonderful things but they also hurt a lot," and she had reached a place where she felt that she needed a break.

"I thought that this relationship stuff wasn't for me."

In keeping with the age-old cliche about finding love when one is least looking for it, Tremblay believes that she is a perfect case in point. She had however, moved "from a place of hurt from an older relationship to a place of healing and letting go."

"My spirit was open," she exclaimed. One of the songs on the CD, titled "Letting You Go," was the "beginning of the rest," she

says.

That was about finding strength, finding courage and going on the journey of moving on. For Tremblay, this is her “strength song," that song which has allowed her to be com-

pletely open. In many ways this is "also my coming out song," she adds, because in it she talks about the heartbreak that forced her to take anti-depressants for a year and a half.

"I always try and write from a place of great honesty," said Tremblay, "and with this song I was writing about real life where I was honest enough to write from that place."

As a result, Tremblay has touched many people, people who have also dealt with the same issues.

"The bonus of such honesty is that you get to meet all these people with these amazing connections," she said. Even with her first album, where she wanted "everything to be really pretty," she included a song about incest which allowed some audience members to connect with this artist right from her debut. Tremblay's honesty is not just apparent in her music but also in her forthright and very open interview. She classifies herself as an "independent recording artist who is trying to establish

new rules by going against the music industry standards." Even though she's on tour currently to accompany the release of her new CD, she still sings material from her entire

ouevre.

"I have tremendous respect for the people that support me," she says with genuine appreciation in her voice. "Because I am not a big artist and don't get around that much, I always do requests at all my concerts."

Tremblay does this so that her fans get to hear "their song." She also says that her work "is not necessarily about the money," but rather about her "dedication to the music."

"I just do it because it's what I do." Tremblay knows that in some months money from her work flows in and at other times there's less. But she's very Zen about the whole thing believing that it all works out somehow. Her approach to religion and spirituality is also, in her own words, "very Zen."

"I am a very open person and believe that everything is good." She goes for whatever is "smart and healthy," which currently includes practicing meditation and taking up Tai Chi in the future, something her partner is "very into."

Even her dog Shanti, Sanskrit for peace, reflects her Zen philosophy. Shanti, who turned 11 in January, has been with Tremblay from the beginning.

"She's been with me through everything." Tremblay acquired her chocolate lab from Laura Berkson, a performer from Rhode Island, whom she met in Albany, New York at a concert. Shanti used to tour a lot with Tremblay, especially "during all the car tours where she would sit next to me and she was the one I would talk to."

Today hip dysplasia keeps Shanti more at home, where she is recently learning to get along with Pooh the cat, Tremblay's partner's feline friend.

Tremblay is a woman of simple pleasures, "being on the water with her girlfriend" being one of the things that brings her the most joy. Both women love to kayak and are trying to figure out what to do with the huge garden that they acquired with their new home in the country. "Good food and good wine" are also amongst Tremblay's sweet pleasures.

Her passion about her music and her loves is unabated as well when she gets to talking about politics.

Tremblay was dismayed by the most recent U.S. presidential election and she is even more dismayed by George W. Bush, "a guy who is willing to go digging in the pristine nature reserves for a little bit of oil that is not going to last very long while changing all the ecosystems."

"He really doesn't care what he screws up along the way," she says with great consternation in her voice, "and it's going to affect the Yukon in Canada as well where all the migrating caribou come from."

"My greatest concern is the political apathy," she adds, "and that scares me tremendously. If there is a time to be political it is now. The Republicans have spent a very long time to get to where they are now."

She also acknowledges that lesbian women have been around social and political causes for a very long time. Lesbians have been, in Tremblay's estimation, there for gender issues, race issues, health issues from AIDS to breast cancer, regardless of the demographic in concern.

On the Canadian political front, she believes, with a great deal of idealism, "that what the system really needs right now is a huge political clean-up. People are afraid of change; a clean up of the political arena would help people to do the real work that is necessary."

Tremblay's current plans include performing at the National Women's Music Festival, June 21 24 in Muncie, Indiana. “These are the groups that keep me alive," she says appreciatively. She's also working on Christmas songs for a holiday album she'd like to put out in the future. Her plans also include working on songs for children. "A lot of us are having children and so we need good children's songs."

During the first week of May, the FrankTremblay Safe Campus Scholarship began at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. The scholarship, "which is for GLBT students who lose emotional and financial support from their families when they come out," is named after the songwriter and openly gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Tremblay hopes that this unique scholarship will encourage other campuses to follow suit.

Whether as an independent musician or as a political activist, Tremblay seems to have a clarity of course and a perspicuity of political perspectives. She has a lot of love for her music and her ardent fans and her followers in turn have a lot of admiration for the artist and her work. She is as intelligent and articulate as she is passionate and emotional.

Tremblay's spirit, whether through her music or in person, is large, magnanimous and very comforting. If, as Shakespeare has said, "Music be the food of life," then Tremblay's songs are a luxurious banquet where love, life and longing abundantly overflow.

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