Ariane Roy and Lou-Adriane Cassidy, a story of music and friendship

Ariane Roy and Lou-Adriane Cassidy

A few months apart, childhood friends Lou-Adriane Cassidy and Ariane Roy each released an album to critical and public acclaim. Since then, their careers have experienced a meteoric rise. Through this buzz of music, concert and recognition, they can count on each other to understand and support each other.

The two musicians in their twenties, who will play one after the other at the Santa Teresa Festival this weekend, have known each other since they were nine years old. They always went to the same school and learned to make music together. Over the years, they have never let go. And now, they can live from their art as they dreamed of since childhood.

“That’s crazy! It's so unlikely to experience this, marvels Ariane Roy in an interview with Métro. What are the odds? There is something improbable, even impossible, that makes it all the more precious to be able to accompany yourself in this. » 

Stay Together 

The accompaniment they can offer each other is a blessing for them. “Sometimes it's hard to talk to people and feel like we're in the same place, but me and Ari, that's it. It's exceptional to have someone who understands us,” says Lou-Adriane Cassidy.  

Feeling shared by her best friend: “Lou is the person who is going exactly understand what I feel through my life, in my job, my inner struggles, my questioning, my ups and downs. We can understand each other because we are going through the same thing”. 

This proximity can be confrontational in an environment where ego, insecurities or anxieties take up space, underlines Lou-Adriane Cassidy. But no question of competition between the two friends.  

“People compare us, but we don't want to fall into that. We are proud of each other and we want to rise to the top. It is not because two girls make music that they should be put in opposition”, raises Ariane Roy.  

Although today they each have their respective musical project that they are advancing individually, the two friends like to find ways to make music together. If their ultimate dream would be to release a duo album in twenty years, we can already hear one of them singing the backing vocals on some of her sister's songs, and vice versa.  

< p>In the same spirit, they sometimes invite each other to sing in concert. As they will perform one after the other on the main stage of Santa Teresa this weekend, perhaps we will be able to see them sharing the microphone for a song!  

Lou-Adriane Cassidy on stage for the Montreal return of her second album.

Tours marked by pleasure 

Santa Teresa will mark for each of them the beginning of the end of the tour, a final festival season before moving on to a new project, they who have toured extensively across the province, and even Europe, over the past year.   

“I'm really happy with this tour. I'm doing what I've always wanted to do, having fun from start to finish,” shares Lou-Adriane Cassidy, who had already experienced the tour with her first album. 

The artist has felt “on [his] X creatively” for the past few years. “I'm able to channel what I didn't necessarily think I could do and I've surprised myself having a bigger range than I thought”.  

The key? Pleasure. “I understood that having fun makes you better. Before, I thought pleasure was secondary, but no. For me, it helps me go further. » 

Fun, Ariane Roy also plans to experience a lot of it this summer. “These are the last shows of the tour, we just want to have some fun”, she confides.  

The singer believes that she and her group now offer a more successful concert than last year. “There are songs that had to be tweaked for months to become the way I wanted them to be on show. »  

Now, therefore, she allows herself to have even more pleasure on stage, because she feels her songs more assumed and embodied, as if they were “integrated into [her] body when [she] sings them”. 

Ariane Roy at the FME.

But the end of these tours will mark the beginning of another. This fall, with their friend and fellow musician Thierry Larose, they will present the show Le Roy, La Rose et Le Lou(p)in different cities of the province. This show is made up of songs from their three repertoires, performed together, as a gang, with all their musicians.  

It was the former Francos programmer, Laurent Saulnier, who had the idea of ​​bringing them together at the festival last year, after seeing the trio on stage during a launch at Esco. This participation in the Francos is a remarkable and unforgettable spectacle for the three artists. “The best of my life”, goes so far as to say Lou-Adriane, who could not refuse to renew the experience.  

New albums 

Apart from the shows, Lou-Adriane and Ariane want to start “quietly, but surely”, each working on a new album, although they don't yet know precisely where they want to go.  

“I leave myself a lot of doors open to allow myself more things. I don't want to lock myself in the box of what others think I am or what I myself think I am,” says Ariane Roy 

Idea shared by Lou-Adriane Cassidy, who does not necessarily want to go where expected or repeat what she has already done.  

No matter where all this takes them, they assure that they have always done music together and will always continue to do so. 

Ariane Roy and Lou-Adriane Cassidy will be performing at Santa Teresa this Sunday, May 14.