Emotions will be high on Saturday evening for The Boulay sisters, who will give the last show of their tour for Escape the night. Because they want to “disappear a little from the public eye as a duo”, the sisters are planning a long break of several years. “We feel free at the moment and we want to see where all this will take us,” says Stéphanie Boulay.
After having done more than fifty shows as a group and then as a duo, on this tour, Stéphanie and Mélanie want to “make the most of” their project for at least three years.
While Stéphanie is putting the final touches on a solo album, produced by Alex Martel, which will be released in 2025, Mélanie is working on the music for a TV series which will be announced soon.
“We’re a bit like in YOLO mode [une vie à vivre]said Melanie. We give ourselves time. Steph is doing her solo project, then I don’t know when we’re going to come back. I might want to go back to school during this time. I’m hesitating between doing my bacc in music or going into something else entirely, like remedial education. But it’s a minimum of four years of full-time study.”
Live music
Mother of two young children, Mélanie Boulay wonders about the sustainability of her profession as a singer. “Left as it is, I don’t know if in 15 years, there will still be artists in Quebec who will succeed in making a living from music,” she mentions. “I think about that a lot. Also, will I still want to tour full time at 60?
Listening to them speak, one wonders if The Boulay sisters are at a crossroads. “My God….! says Mélanie following our remark. We don’t see it the same way, because it would put too much pressure on things going forward. I don’t know, for real. Time will tell. But I still have the impression that music will never leave us, neither Steph nor me. How will it coexist with our lives and what we have put in place around it? I don’t know.”
Another break in 2020
This is not the first time that The Boulay sisters have announced that they are going to take a break. In the summer of 2020, in the middle of a pandemic and shortly after a wave of denunciations which had shaken the artistic community, Stéphanie and Mélanie no longer had the desire to continue.
“We were so down, then tired, then angry, then sad at that moment,” remembers Stéphanie. […] We were really at a time when we had a lot more negative emotions about the industry.”
Two years had passed and the two sisters had finally decided to return to work together to make the album Escape the night.
Saturday evening, at Gesù, they will put an end to the tour for this album. “It’s the first time we’ll do a show without knowing when we’ll come back on stage afterwards,” says Mélanie. […] We have a little of our family who will be there, a little of our friends, our lovers too. I think it’s going to be a celebration. We are going to celebrate ourselves, congratulate ourselves.”
The Boulay sisters will play Saturday evening at Gesù in Montreal. The show is presented as part of Coup de cœur francophone.
