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John Van de Mergel

Sounds | Dylan LeBlanc - Coyote


Een heel knap staaltje americana (country/folk) van deze introverte bard. Coyote vertelt het verhaal van een man die een risicovol leven leidt in de criminele onderwereld van Mexico. en is deels autobiografisch. LeBlanc bewijst met deze lead single opnieuw zijn grote klasse als muzikant en verteller.


Coyote verschijnt op 20 oktober via ATO Records.


Luister ook naar: No Promises Broken

Lees


Throughout indigenous North American folklores the coyote has been a mythical character that symbolised the fine line between good and evil. He manifests benevolence and compassion towards human beings, even helping them and protecting them, at the same time as being a trickster, a master of disguise and an imitator of the gods.

In Navajo mythology, the coyote is a shadowy figure that can be funny or fearsome, always traveling, sometimes awful, often outrageous, greedy, vain, foolish, cunning and able to test the bounds of possibility and order.


When the coyote resurfaced as an anti-hero in post-World War II writing, especially with beat writers like Gary Snyder and William S. Burroughs, for whom it encapsulated a rejection of the establishment, it made its way back into contemporary cultural folklore.

Finding his way towards redemption and freedom, the Coyote at the centre of Dylan LeBlanc’s concept album is confronted by the essence of human nature, materialism, and the inherent desire for more. Though far removed from a perilous life like Coyote’s, LeBlanc admits he still feels as if he is “dancing on a razor’s edge” all the same.


LeBlanc says he has always related to the insatiable, scavenging nature of the wily coyote. Much like the animal, LeBlanc is a wanderer who knows when to trust his instincts, musically and otherwise. It is a spiritual kinship that runs deep, but he credits one particularly hair-raising face-to-face instance with solidifying his bond with the animal.

LeBlanc was in Austin, Texas, climbing the face of a 100-foot cliff, gambling with Mother Nature’s good graces as he pulled himself up by tree branches. Once he reached the top, all that laid ahead of him was a lush treeline. There was a breath of stillness, then the sound of a thunderous rustling that drew closer and closer to him. In a blink, LeBlanc watched as a frenzied raccoon came speeding out of the treeline, trailed by an animal that stopped and stared at him with striking intensity: a coyote.


“We’re looking at each other dead in the eyes… and I’m saying - out loud - ‘If it’s you or me, I am going to kick you off the side of this cliff. I’m not going down.’ It was intense, this human-animal moment,” LeBlanc recalls. “I’ve never forgotten that… he was just trying to survive and so was I.”


(Bron: Holler.)



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