“Realizing that we can lose everything so quickly, it pushed me”: Sylvain Duthu returns with his first solo album

Tarbais Sylvain Duthu, former figure of the successful group Boulevard des Airs, is back on the front of the musical scene. On September 6, the author, composer and performer released his very first solo album, “15h22”. This Friday, October 11, he was at home, at the town hall of Tarbes, to present it, in the company of Gérard Trémège and Michel Garnier, both very happy to see another Bigourdan crowned with success.

“This album is what I never said. I have always written for the group or for others. This is personal,” underlines Sylvain Duthu, leafing through the booklet inserted in a copy of 3:22 p.m. . An album resulting from three years of work but which, however, was not a personal objective at the start.

A solo, intimate and unexpected adventure

“The album is not at all premeditated. Initially, I wrote the song ‘The recipe for happiness’ but without knowing that I was going to make a solo album. I wrote, with my friend Vincha, by saying that I could offer it to someone and it’s the first time, leaving the studio, that I said to myself that I would like to keep it for myself. A few months later, I found my friend. who we work today, that’s often how we do it and he simply answers: for you, we continue”, remembers Sylvain, with a smile, before adding: “that day we. wrote the song that means the most to me, ‘Prologue’. There I understood that I was starting something solo.”

Also read:
TESTIMONY. Sylvain Duthu: from serious accident to solo album, two years of reconstruction and writing

Title of the album, the time calls. What happens at 3:22 p.m.? “You will certainly take me for a crazy person, warns the singer. For five years, every day, at 3:22 p.m. precisely, I take a photo of what I have in front of me. It had become a reflex. It doesn’t happen nothing at 3:22 p.m., it’s a bit of a rubbish hour, but it shows what you do every day, who you are with. There is often a computer screen on which I write. sees more personal things too, my dog, or also my grandfather, who we see and one day… we no longer see. I took around 2000 photos. Some are printed in the album cover. .”

A therapy that we present on stage

Writing this album happened naturally, and it almost imposed itself like therapy. In 2021, Sylvain and his family were victims of a road accident in Bordeaux, unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time. “I’m not talking about the accident, only in a song. But seeing that you can lose everything so quickly pushed me,” he emphasizes. “I always regretted not making a diary. And in the end, by mixing the album and the photos, I have it, my diary.”

Fifteen songs written or co-written, including two duets with the group MPL and his partner, which Bigourdan will defend from next March on tour, with a few dates at home to start, in Toulouse, Tarbes (at La Gespe on March 7 ) and Biarritz, before going on to festivals during the summer. On stage, it is not simply his album that Sylvain Duthu will sing, but his life. “It’s always special to confide so much. But the feedback is good, especially on very precise and very intimate points of the texts. I didn’t necessarily expect it. I think that when we do things with sincerity, it there is no bad reception.”