1999-2001 ©
BY BRENDAN KELLY
Sky's first major-label single, the funky urban pop ditty Some Kinda Wonderful, has been in the Top 10 in Canada for the past few months, and the group's first album, Piece of Paradise, is a top priority for EMI Music Canada.
The 10-track collection of groove-tinged tunes hit stores across Canada yesterday. The British-owned multinational record company is set to launch the album throughout Southeast Asia at the end of the month, and Some Kinda Wonderful is already a No. 1 hit in Thailand.
The two musicians, both in their mid-20s, I know all too well that success doesn't come easily in the cutthroat music biz, which is why they're marveling at suddenly finding themselves on the industry fast-track.
Renald and Sicotte first met at a music-engineering school in Montreal seven years ago and, like every other budding pop outfit, they spent a good number of years penning tunes and jamming in their living room.
They finally decided to go it alone, creating their own record label (Phat Royale), and releas-ing a self-produced five-song EP. No one was more surprised than the folks in Sky when one of the tunes from the indie disc, America, nabbed heavy-duty radio and video rotation in Quebec. Before you could say "overnight sensation," EMI stepped-in and sioned Sky.
The major label, whisked Renald and Sicotte out of their Outremont digs and soon enough had them recording in Los Angeles with seasoned producer Peter Mokran, who has worked with R. Kelly and Michael Jackson, among others.
During the West Coast sessions, the young Montrealers Bumped into folks like Ray Charles, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Natalie Imbruglia, and sultry Ally McBeal songstress Vonda Shepard.
It was an even bigger thrill for these two avid music-lovers to be able to record a couple of tunes with legendary sidemen like Motown guitarist Wah Wah Watson, who played on Papa Was a Rolling Stone, and the famed Tower of Power horn section.
"It was really fun, especially after six years in the living room,"said Sicotte.
"To play with those guys was just ecstasy. It was totally mind-blowing. It sent shivers down my spine."
In Sky, Renald provides the soulful lead vocals, most of the melodies and virtually all of the lyrics, while Sicotte - a well-known figure on the St. Laurent Blvd. late-night club scene - chips-in with the chunky bass-and-drum rhythms. What sets Sky apart is the band's hip but not hip-hop melange of urban groove and melodic pop. It's accessible and mainstream without stoopimg to the lowest-common-radio-denominator.
"Our influences are very diverse,"said Renald, a francophone Quebecer who grew up in Vancouver.
"We wanted to take the best elements of all kinds of music and fuse them together. It's uncharted territory for the music industry to have a record that's so diverse. But just the fact that it all comes out of our heads, it somehow holds together. It was done back in the days of the Beatles, where you bid records that were just completely all over the board stylistically. So we thought: Why not?' We thought people will be able to see through those boundaries and see the quality of the songs.
The business has taken more control of the music but, at the end of the day, it's still the public that decides, said Sicotte, whose father is the wellknown Quebec actor Gilbert Sicotte.
"People don't like it when they,get to the sixth song on the record and they say: 'Damn, I've been listening to the same song six times in a row and the only thing that's different is the arrangement.'We didn't want to have that. We wanted to bring people into a different world in every song."
1999-2001 ©