The Ballad of the Ballet Llama

By Lucas Yarbrough. December 12, 2019.

What can be said about the once great band that is/was the Ballet Llama? Though this past Friday’s ‘secret’ show was appointed a Reunion, perhaps this question is best answered with a Retrospection. And what grand memories such a recollection shall comprise!

You will be happy to learn that this reporter has done his research:

The BL was formed in the spring of 2009 by long-time friends Michaud Dubois, Olivier Martine, and Alexandre Valliere, in the latter’s parents’ garage. Their first show was held in that same garage on the third of June—an unplanned organic response to the weather finally being nice enough to spend an evening outside. There was an audience of six.

I, dear readers, was twenty at the time, and had just moved to the city. I was one of those six. Not to brag or anything.

That summer saw the addition of seventeen-year-old guitar wizard Jo Connors and bassist Jake Lowes. With the full line up and a brand-new debut album recorded DIY-style in somebody’s basement, the band had found their sound—by autumn they were selling out Lo (a bar near the university that was the happening spot at the time, for those who don’t remember) to hordes of seething punks, and the record was an underground sensation across the country.

The band was unofficially governed by Dubois and Connors, who became close friends (and rumoured lovers, though I have confirmed with an inside source that these rumours are false, and may now be put to rest) over the band’s two-year existence. However, not everything was fun and games. The group contained strong personalities that didn’t always meld as well offstage as on.

It all came to a head in mid 2011, during a three-week tour to Quebec, where they had an especially high concentration of fans (as one might expect of a Franco-punk band). Too many drunken shows, unruly afterparties, and poorly planned sleeping arrangements had thrown the bandmates tempers (some of which were already famously fiery) into disarray.

Said Connors in a recent exclusive interview, “Yeah, bit of a shitshow.”

With the previously harmonious Connors and Dubois at each other’s throats over the slightest disagreement, it was unclear whether the band would last the three weeks. According to Connors, the performance quality had begun to deteriorate. As the only one who had actually learned an instrument before the band began, Connors became annoyed that the musicality came second to the band’s own enjoyment of the tour. Asked about her bandmates’ musicianship, Connors recalls, “Alexandre and Jake actually worked up some serious skills. The shows were still falling apart though.”

Somehow, they all made it home, and most even went on to make more music! So, where are they now?

Dubois’s debut solo album “Mon Nom” made Top Ten on the college charts last year, and the upcoming release show for his follow-up has sold out (not before yours truly managed to snag a spot on the guest list, though. Again, not bragging. Maybe a little).

Connors has done sidewoman duties for various groups over the years, and now plays with popular indie rockers The Bukowski Brothers (click to read my post about the BBBFB), who I suspect all learned to play their instruments before starting the band.

Olivier Martine and Alexandre Valliere formed Shifty Principals, though Valliere retired from music shortly after and was replaced on drums by Colin Kliewer, who recently did a stint in the Bukowskis… Funny little scene we live in, isn’t it? SP, who are strictly straight edge, still have a loyal following and perform occasionally, though Martine’s principal project is now The BMI Babies, who play Motown covers with an alt-rock twist.

But, dear readers, I promised reminiscences! Highlights of past local BL shows include:

The time Olivier Martine, a.k.a. Three Chord Oli, challenged Connors to an impromptu ‘guitar-off’ that consisted of Connors ripping some kind of angular, disjointed ingenious mayhem for about ten minutes and Martine playing the same drunken three-note lick repeatedly and not very well every time it was his turn, to the great amusement of the audience The time Michaud Dubois mosh-surfed all the way to the sound booth and accidentally knocked the sound guy out with a combat boot to the head (the difference in sound quality for the rest of the show was negligible, the BL’s main mixing request being “make it loud”) The time Jake the bass player got too inebriated to stand up, sat cross legged meditation-style on his massive bass amp, eventually fell off, and finished the set lying on his back on the floor The time Casio Jonny of scrunge-rock duo Gunt tottered onto the stage in a fit of incomprehensible plastered passion, tore the microphone from Dubois’s sweaty grip, unleashed a trilingual (English-French-Jibberish—and maybe some Mennonite Low German?) tirade against what could vaguely be referred to as “The Establishment,” and professed a heartwarming affection for his girlfriend Laura before losing steam and being escorted from the stage. Needless to say, the BL’s rhythm section provided an affecting soundtrack and Connors filled the gaps in his speech with arresting melodies The time I got home at 6 a.m. from a BL after-after party that I’m not even sure the band was present at and, lamenting that I’d never learned an instrument myself, took up pen and paper to proclaim the glory of the province’s punk scene—and so this blog was born. Fun fact!

The BL broke up before 2011 was over and left us with a one-album legacy and many fond memories. Let’s not sugar coat it: The Ballet Llama were a mess. But they gave us something that few bands can achieve: the embodiment of a feeling—robust, inflamed, very much alive, and very much an expression of this city. At risk of sounding like a punk rock preacher, it is this feeling that we need to hold onto in such uncertain times, when the experience of live music, once so life-giving, now brings with it the risk of violent death.

I urge you, everyone who lives and breathes and feels and especially everyone who loves local music, to take up the mantle left to us by our lost fellow show-goers, and to let the scene thrive, murderer or no. It’s what they would have wanted, and it’s what makes our lonely lives worth living.

Oh yeah, and this past Friday’s secret reunion show? Hell, I had a fun time. Before, during, and after. Especially after.

R.I.P. Alexandre Valliere