Nice-Premium let Flora D., our special correspondent, don the journalist’s cap for this friendly intermediary role.
Nice-Premium: Were you familiar with “Les Nuits Guitares” in Beaulieu-Sur-Mer?
Pascal Mono: Yes… I had opened for Stephan Eicher there in 2003…
N-P: And this year, being the headliner, how does it feel?
P.M.: Absolutely thrilling, as you can imagine! It also lets me see how far I’ve come…
I particularly want to thank the “Nuits Guitares” Festival for having faith in me even before I became more well-known…It’s like the friends from before the wave of 2005-2006, and the friends from after… There’s definitely a difference…
N-P: What will be the differences between the show on July 5 and your concert at Nikaïa?
P.M.: At Nikaïa, we played through the entire album, maintaining its Rock/Pop-Rock arrangements, a very electric concert, with sequences and all the “big show”… It was great, and “INTACT” was released just a year ago, time has flown by… I wanted to strip down the songs, to give them back their childlike soul, from when they were freshly emerging from my fingers… So I rearranged everything to play them acoustically. The band still consists of five members, but the bass player also switches to guitar/Sitar, the drummer switches to “Cajon”+percussion… Almost the entire album will be there, plus some new tracks I want to test for the currently in-progress second album, and new covers…
N-P: What will the format of this concert be?
P.M.: Format, did you say format? ! (laughs)
Five musicians, about 2 hours… The good thing about this setup is that we can allow for the unexpected, we can add songs, remove some, extend parts, improvise if the vibe is right, navigate by sight… And I love it!..
N-P: It’s the Nice-based band Chinaski that will open for you, do you know them?
P.M.: We met at the Nikaïa concert, in fact… I had heard of them before and only knew them through a great poster I had noticed… I was looking for a good studio for the new demos and today I work with their sound engineer on the demos for the second album, he plays keyboards and drums… He is bursting with talent!.. I really like their universe, a bit dark, and full of good ideas…
N-P: You will share the bill with Al Di Meola, who plays the second night, and Tété for the third. What do you think of these artists?
P.M.: The former needs no introduction, he’s a great master of the guitar… As for Tété, I’ve been hearing about him for years, and I recently came across a live video by chance… He has his own style, and doesn’t pretend… Respect.
N-P: What’s new with you?
P.M.: Preparing the next album, preparing the next album… More great collaborations, time and time again…
Official Website: www.pascal-mono.com/
Fan Site: https://pascal.mono.free.fr
