Tag: instagram

“Like taking a sip of fire, or listening to the band,” says Dany Roy, 58, lead guitarist for the band Sippin Fire, a native-born French Canadian, now living in Margate, explaining how the band got its name.

The South Florida-based rock, party and cover band plays a mix of 70s and 80s rock and roll, with their high energy, signature mix of guitar riffs, bass lines and down-home drum beats, accompanied by the soulful sounds of lead vocalist, Jade Fecteau-tasse, 33, daughter, of the band’s bass guitarist and promoter, Rejean (“Reggie”) Fecteau, 61.

Roy and Fecteau, also from Canada, met here in Florida when Fecteau was part of the Eagles Tribute Band, The Long Run.  The two decided to join forces and the rest is history.

“When I came to Fort Lauderdale and South Florida, it was love at first sight,” remembers Fecteau.  “I wouldn’t go back (to Canada) for anything – except maybe in the summer.”

“Together, we have phenomenal chemistry,” he says, noting that that the band is booked 3-4 times each week and has a full calendar through 2024 and into 2025.

More than a musical experience, their shows are a visual spectacle of lights, smoke and special effects, all designed to enhance the experience.

Two of their biggest fans and loyal followers are Boca Raton resident Wayne Belfer, 66, executive director of DOB Parkinson’s Charity, a non-profit based in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton and Keith Richard Kraft, 62, a retired car dealer manager from New York.

Kraft, 62, who moved to Tamarac from Brooklyn four years ago, went with a friend to hear Sippin Fire perform in Fort Lauderdale.

Growing up he listened to the Beatles, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and got into the Bee Gees and disco in the 70s.

“I fell in love with Sippin Fire, both musically and personally,” he says. “After a set, they come out and schmooze with the audience. Jade has a personality to knock your socks off.”

Belfer, who went often to hear the band, became friends with the musicians.

“The band is impressive, dynamic and together on stage,” he says.  “Their vocals are brilliant, with furious guitar solos and non-stop rhythm romps.”

Both are looking forward to the band’s next venture, “Her Majesty the Queen,” a full theatrical tribute production that will reproduce Queen’s Freddie Mercury’s stage, complete with lights, props, costumes and videos.

Vocalist Fecteau-tasse will reprise the role of lead vocalist, Freddie Mercury.

“There’s no question, I’ll be first in line,” says Kraft, admitting that while he wasn’t the biggest Queen fan, he’s a huge Sippin Fire fan.

“Besides being high-powered, they’re easy to watch,” he says.  “And, they’re super hard workers.”

Locally, the group plays at Sharkey’s in Coral Springs, the Margaritaville Bandshell on the Hollywood Broadwalk and Mickey’s Tiki Bar in Pompano Beach, as well as throughout the country, including gigs in Illinois, Las Vegas, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and California.

Playing drums since the age of five when his parents bought him a drum set, Fecteau was on-track to become a semi-professional hockey player, until the music bug struck.

“Once I found music, I never looked back,” says Fecteau, who is also married to Nathalie Tasse, a keyboardist who plays with the group’s Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) Tribute Band, The Ticket to the Moon, playing hits such as Strange Magic, Evil Woman and Telephone Line.

An accomplished musician, playing seven instruments, Fecteau has been featured on many gold records and performed in Canada with well-known French artists Joey Tardif, Joel Denis, Pierre Lalonde, Michel Louvain, Michel Stax and Patrick Bourgeois.

He toured the world with The Long Run and in the mid-1990s played with the tribute band, “Yesterday Les Beatles,” a mega production in Montreal, a full-circle moment for Fecteau who fell in love with the Beatles and their 1967 hit, “All you need is Love” as a child.

Although the native French speaker didn’t understand the English lyrics, he was so taken with the Beatles and the song, he made it his mission to understand the lyrics.

Likewise, he says, his daughter, Jade, fell in love with Shania Twain as a child and would mimic her singing on key, although she also spoke French and didn’t understand the English lyrics.

Opera-trained by the age of eight and headed to Broadway by the age of 12, Fecteau-tasse was trained by renowned voice coach Arron Hagen, who worked with Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez and Meghan Trainor.  At the age of 16, she had a number one hit single titled, “My Destination,” in Japan for six months.

“Her voice is deeper and more colorful than other singers,” says her dad.

Lead guitarist Roy, was exposed to music at an early age.  Most of his family were musicians and he began playing professionally at the age of 17 at local bars, weddings, corporate events and music festivals in and around Québec.

A child of the 1970s and 80s, he loved classic rock bands such as Bon Jovi, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen and Heart.  While Fecteau is also influenced by traditional rock-and-roll bands, he also admits to a fondness for Dean Martin.

When the two met Spanish-born musician, David Carrica Martincorena, 45, (aka “The Beast”) last year, they knew they had found their drummer.

“David is the perfect drummer for us,” says Fecteau.  “The energy and camaraderie we have as a group are unbelievable.”

Growing up in Pamplona, Spain, Martincorena  began playing drums at a young age after hearing Metallica’s 1986 album, “Master of Puppets.”

He toured the world with the Spanish heavy metal band Tierra Santa, with which he recorded six albums and toured Europe with Diabulus in Musica, a symphonic metal band.

He came to Miami in 2019 and taught music at Sounds of Excellence School of Music.

“With Sippin Fire, we’re all on the same page,” Fecteau says.  “We’re all professional musicians, don’t drink or smoke or do drugs.”

“We take pride in what we do,” he says.

A highlight for the group is playing at the Margaritaville Hollywood Bandshell and in their ELO tribute band, The Ticket to the Moon, playing to more than 7,000 fans in Chicago.

Currently, they are shooting a promotional video for the Queen production and looking for large venues in which to mount the show.

“It’s more than a concert,” says Fecteau.  “It’s a full-blown theatrical performance.”

The production will reprise the glamour, theatrics and rock-and-roll style that defined Freddie Mercury and Queen, says Fecteau.

With attention to detail and Fecteau-tasse as the iconic Queen lead singer, he says audiences will feel as if “they are witnessing Queen in their prime.”

“Anybody can get on stage and play songs,” says Fecteau, “but not everyone can make it a show.”

“We give it absolutely everything we’ve got,” he says.

“People are playing money to come see us and we had better give them a good show,” he says.  “That’s what we do best.”

Sippin Fire will perform at Sharkey’s Bar and Grill, 10365 Royal Palm Blvd., Coral Springs, on March 15 at 8:00 p.m.

Visit them on Facebook or at https://sippinfire.com.

Who remembers the GI Bill? It was a range of benefits provided by the U.S. government for World War II veterans returning home after the war. Through it, Harold Garde received his initial art education at the University of Wyoming. Seven decades later, the artist’s education engages and challenges us in his works across the decades.

Garde, “the rebellious provocateur” as GrowingBolder.com has put it, was born in New York City in 1923 to Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents. He joined the U.S. Air Force and served in the Philippines and World War II from 1943 to 1945. He was exposed to Abstract Expressionism during his educational years, which clung a bit to his early career.

Garde’s prolific art career began in the later generation of Abstract Expressionists during the 1950s and ’60s. Early influences of Surrealism and Figurative painting in his educational years also seem to have held a motif to his later work. As his career matured, he seemed to grasp an individual gestural abstraction into the figurative forms of art. His works withheld hints of influence driven by the period of Neo-Expressionists between the 1980s and ’90s.

In 1984, Garde and his wife moved to Belfast, Maine, where many of his earlier works are represented. Garde was able to find his place as an artist in Belfast, where he remained an influential contemporary American artist making his mark on the world. In 1993, it was on to New Smyrna, where he then split time between Maine and his Florida home. Garde died Oct. 11, 2022, in Florida, just shy of 100 years old.

Garde invented Strappo printmaking in the mid-1980s as Neo-Expressionists were busy affecting conceptual and minimal art with their intense subjectivity. He developed this technique by combining printmaking and painting as an artistic ambivalence of originality worth mentioning. It is a transference of acrylic paint layers from smooth surfaces, such as glass, onto paper. The technique gives a reversal image of the layered medium, and a “Strappo Monotype.” His famous 2005 “Self-Portrait,” not at all shy by use of line, was acrylic Strappo mounted on paper. Garde taught his technique in workshops nationwide.

Garde challenges us to look back to the post-war movement in a new depth of today’s reality. His work transcends generations; to view it is to feel the past as an offset to emotional provocation. In the art industry, it is well identified that successful art is a work that provokes emotion, or which provokes a distinctive reaction. It is a work that defends itself while connecting points of view within the psychological stratosphere of others. It is a movement with time, as Garde proves to us, in shadows of color and thick use of strokes.

For example, “Nude Woman 2” is a geometrical offset between spatial relationships, and it is fortified with contrasts of color. It can be a reminder of the short-lived Fauvism even before his time. In one way, Nude Woman 2 appears to be divided into four separate sections. When we look deeper, the form absorbs its colorful depth, and into a minimized picture as a whole. It is then a man hiding behind the door where Nude Woman 2 is, and here we can see the desperate yearning for his helpless passions. These passions are further emphasized on the door that his back is against, where thought-provoking consciousness holds to his ear. Then we have a still life that decorates the room. What better color to use to paint a flower and what the flower sits in? The geometrical usage surpasses cleverness; it is where we see emotion as Garde shares it with us. It is the emotion that brings the painting to life.

Garde composes the figurative landscape into a two-dimensional acrylic on canvas in “Lady with a Cape” (2005). The passivity is here and is to be revealed within the autonomy of his subject, as Garde seemingly avoids any further depth away from her arm. The flattened background seems less important than the figure, and yet somehow a part of her, while the colors are geometrically atoned to emotion. Here, he develops a synchronicity of it that is held by her expression.

“Harold Garde at 100: The Unseen Works in Two Acts” features 100 never-before-exhibited artworks. This exhibition will unfold over the course of 2024, with selected paintings and works on paper from Maine, New York, and Florida. These works highlight the continuity of Garde’s clear vision and his unwavering symbolic hierarchy across decades.