Rowdy folkies La Patente finally point their van at the West Coast's Festival du Bois
The Francophone four-piece have fans in Europe and the States. Now it’s our turn
This is the opposite of getting in the van, La Patente. Photo by David Couturier
Festival du Bois presents La Patente on March 8 and 9
WHEN STIR REACHES La Patente, the Francophone band is hurtling to its next gig in Quebec, injecting adrenaline into a conversation that has to compete with the roar of an Econoline and the hoarse rush of passing traffic. We are therefore pleased to find that, in 2025, musicians are still climbing into the van and that a young band can still sound like La Patente, a Fredericton-based four-piece wielding such ancient things as guitars and drums, even a banjo.
Superficially you might describe La Patente as folk rock with a country edge. Their exceptional 2024 album Le Cirque des mal-aimés opens with the sweetly banjo-dappled “La Patente Song” followed by a furious double-speed shuffle called “Tasse toe d’mes jambes”. But their roots are really showing in “Le King du centre-ville”, which is like the Everly Brothers colliding with the New York Dolls, or in the growling spectres of Chuck Berry and Elmore James that animate “Manger d’la misery”. To put it another way: this is not the anodyne “folk” of the Lumineers or the smoothed over “country” of Old Crow Medicine Show.
“We all grew up with punk rock, grunge, metal,” says Mathieu Émond (vocals-banjo). “But there’s something in high school: at first you hate your parents’ music but after that you realize—oh, that’s kinda cool. I listen to a lot of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, [guitarist-vocalist] Marc [Colecchio] is a huge fan of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. We listen to all that kind of stuff. I don’t know if it’s just being more ‘mature’, in quotation marks, but we want to have those kinds of sounds in our music because it’s what we love, now.”
The band has amassed countless accolades and awards over on the other side of the country since forming in 2020. La Patente will be making its West Coast debut when it arrives in Maillardville, B.C. on March 8 for the first of two shows at this year’s Festival du Bois, which is astonishing when you consider the three European tours already under its belt. France loves La Patente—“But they don’t understand a friggin’ word we’re saying!” Émond says with a laugh—and the southern U.S. was no less charmed by La Patente’s French-Canadian exotica after a handful of shows in Louisiana, even if they’d never encountered a “banjo played like a guitar before”. Western Canada remains uncharted territory. But then, it sounds like Émond and his bandmates, including Marc-André Godin (double bass-vocals) and Chad Ritchie (drums-vocals), never really expected much out of a somewhat casual deal between four small-town guys who all happened to relocate for work in the New Brunswick capital.
“All we wanted to do at first was just get together and drink beer and play music, once in a while maybe do a local show here and there,” pleads Émond, who otherwise makes his living as a high-school teacher. “But before the first record even came out we had a record deal, so it’s kinda crazy.”
That debut, 2021’s L'Illusion d’la perfection, scored an East Coast Music Association nomination for country recording of the year. The followup EP, Le paradis des infidèles, was nominated for best Francophone recording. If there’s justice, Le cirque des mal-aimés should sweep both. Modern country has been autotuned and AI’d into something demonic and hideous, but take heart: La Patente’s new album was recorded live in Émond’s basement. You’ll be reminded of what a real drum sounds like.
“Thanks,” Émond says with a laugh. “And it is a real drum. There was very little editing or fixing on the album, and very little mixing as well because it was just going through the soundboard, and that’s basically what you hear with a little bit of tweaking.”
It’s a sweaty record with a dark vein of downbeat humour emerging from its upbeat setting. If this is how La Patente sounds in a basement, the band will kill in Maillardville as the raggedy-ass component to a festival that also features rapper LeFLOFRANCO and grandaddy of traditional Québécois music Yves Lambert (with Le Grande Orchestre) in headlining slots. Perhaps most significant, and in harmony with their determinedly casual origin story, Émond and his bandmates obviously still focus on the truly important things.
“We produced vinyl and CDs but also cassettes,” says frontman Colecchio, swiping the phone from his bandmate. “We do cassettes, not because they’re selling, they barely sell, but just, because, like—it looks rad! It’s just music. We’re not going to save the world and we’re all still working. At the end of the day it’s just for fun.” 
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