GALO: I hear the band members have started making schnapps from the fruit in your garden, as well as Mama Rosin brand hot sauce and chilies. Can we get some of these delicious creations at one of your concerts? And what prompted this sudden foray into the culinary arts?

MR: At the early beginning of the band, we had more time, so we had some fruit trees in the garden and at my parent’s place too, and at some friends’ place too. I worked in a distillery for some months, like 10 years ago, and so the guy who distillates in Geneva, he’s a good friend of ours, and he proposed us like, “guys, let’s do that. Why don’t you sell little bottles at the end of the shows?” So we did that during the early years of the band, and we still distillate every year, the schnapps, but it’s more for ourselves than to sell it. So, I think, it belongs to the early days of the band, unfortunately. We travel more and more by plane. We play in bigger places and it’s really hard sometimes, they say you cannot sell that because it’s in conflict to the bar and customs. It belongs also to the old way, when we were touring in pubs and small places and that was really friendlier, more easygoing. And I could say the same thing about the chili sauce. We had to do it by ourselves, from our own garden. But now we don’t have really much time anymore, because summertime means a lot of festivals. It’s a shame, it really belongs to the story of the band, but we don’t do it anymore so much. But we really like keeping people going on like personal and small series of things, like selling the chilies or things like this. I’m sure it will come back, in a year or two, because we will be bored of just touring as a normal band.

GALO: Let’s talk a little bit about your current fan base. Do you find that people at your shows are already familiar with the Cajun sound, or are they more classic rock types who are in for something completely different than what they are accustomed to?

MR: I think it really depends on the country. I would say in England, where we play the most, people come from everywhere. So, in every country, we’ve always had like people from seven to 77-years-old, and some rock ‘n’ roll people, some folk people, some Cajun people; it has always been a big mix and we like it. We are not a part of a trend or a wave or anything like this. We don’t have from one day to the other like hype and hundreds of people coming and looking the same, and liking you for six months and then you disappear from their life. More and more we have our own crowd, but they come from everywhere. The only thing fans need to like us is to be open-minded enough, I guess. And so, specifically about England, people are more curious than suspicious, so I think it came faster to us, than in France. In France, maybe they are more suspicious, they don’t really understand the English language we sing in. We are really a bit strange [to them]. But I wouldn’t generalize it in France. For example, in the southwest of France, the whole rock ‘n’ roll family really loves us, so we have a feeling we are a rock ‘n’ roll band. Sometimes, when we go to Paris, they say, “hey, you’re a Cajun band.” So, it really depends. But I think more and more people understand we are doing something a bit different, not a specific music but a blend of a lot of music.

GALO: How has Mama Rosin worked on attracting fans from outside your own genre, especially younger generations who perhaps prefer something more along the lines of hip-hop, R&B, etc.? Do you feel like your music appeals to people who might normally disregard Cajun music?

MR: We’d love to have a lot of young people come to our shows. In Geneva, we have a lot, because we played in schools. Somewhere else, it really depends. The age is quite balanced, but I would love to have some other people. But, I think, when you’re really young, you’re really influenced by the hype and the wave. And I’m not angry about teenagers that like hip-hop or electro or things like this, I would just love it if we could be trendy enough to have a big batch of young people coming to our shows. It’s not the case yet, and I think one of our dreams is to have only young people making a party in front of us. That could be really great. We’ve never been part of a trend and we are kind of outsiders everywhere, but more and more we have our own, personal fan base. And sometimes we don’t know what to be. We have to be constantly running between Mama Rosin, our label, touring, taking care a bit of the Web site and the Facebook, and I don’t know what to do. We sometimes are like, “let’s do a video clip,” and then we make it and it’s going to be a buzz, but I don’t think it’s the best solution. Music has to be first, you know, not image.

GALO: Your live shows are immensely energetic — a lot of jumping around, and a lot of very enthusiastic playing on your parts. How does having a live audience influence the sound of your music?

MR: The basic answer is, [when you’re] playing a concert, you’re in front of people and there’s a lot of energy. On stage but also in the audience, and there is the change of this. When you’re in the studio, you can put a lot of yourself [into the music], but you’ll never have the same thing that is happening when you’re playing live [for an] audience, when they’re into your music and they decide, “OK, let’s have a good time.” They push you really up and up, up, up. And everybody goes up in something, like something transcendent. And this is unique to the culture. I like it. For us, it’s really different to be in the studio. Having this energy, but you cannot have exactly the same thing, so let’s try something else. And it’s really hard. You can record live, and even if you record live, you won’t have this. You know, there is something unique and that’s why concerts will never disappear from the face of the earth. You don’t have it when you see it on TV or on a video. You have to experience it. It’s real fucking amazing, thrilling stuff, like a good concert is something that shakes you forever, and you keep it for all your life. And this is really an important thing. So for us, [playing] live is sacred in a way, and [in the] studio we try to do the best we can and put a lot of new shit and also experiment; that we cannot really do live.

GALO: You’ve been spending a fair amount of time in New York lately, which is historically a place where artists have gone to test their creative chops in the “big city.” What was this experience like for Mama Rosin to go from your farmhouse, which is a considerably more isolated creative space, to the Big Apple?

MR: I think you can have this feeling on one of the songs, on the album called Black Samedi. There’s a real urban atmosphere, like a downtown atmosphere, and it was really exciting. And when we went to New York, we didn’t have the whole album written. A lot of the lyrics weren’t written before we got to New York. And we really found exciting aspects of New York. We loved to be there, and it was really fantastic. I think we are isolated in a farm but we are not so far out, as I said before, we organize shows in Geneva, and so we are really connected to this feeling of life. And so, we know what a city is. I mean, Geneva is not a big city, and New York is really like busy when you’re there. I don’t know if unconsciously we kept some work to do in New York, but that’s what happened. And maybe you can have this feeling when you listen to the record. There is a real downtown aspect of it that Jon wrote but also us writing lyrics and also finalizing the composition of the songs, so we’ve been influenced by this — like everything, sirens in the street and those huge buildings, etc. And we have a cool flat in Manhattan, and I think every morning we have a new idea because we’re waking up in the center of New York, that’s for sure.

GALO: Can you reveal a little bit about what you have planned for the near future?

MR: We still haven’t finished touring this new album, so I think we need some rest before thinking about anything else, besides what’s already happening. We really have a lot of projects going on, and I think that’s going to be all our lives. We just recorded with Moriarty, and we still have ideas like going up north of Europe to record a calypso album with a great band from Finland called 22 Piste Pirkko. There’s no time to rest, but we are not the only ones in this case who like it like this.

For the band’s latest tour information, please visit http://www.mamarosin.com.

Featured image: Mama Rosin in London. Photo Credit: Bartolomy.

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