--- I recorded my first solo album at Valentine Recording Studios in Los Angeles three years ago. It's a legendary studio where the Beach Boys and Kenny Rogers had recorded. Amazing! For four days I recorded all the instruments for fourteen songs.
--- Wow! And when is that coming out?
--- The album will finally see the light of day in the autumn of this year for the Discos Antifaz label, after so much waiting with the pandemic's hiatus. I hope you like it!
In sharing this preview, multi-instrumentalist and composer Ian Kapoudjian cannot suppress the emotion ---nor does he need to--- of someone counting the days to see his dream come true.
"I am a French-Armenian based in Barcelona for six years. I was born in Lyon, city of the Lumière Brothers, and I come from a family of musicians who infected me with this, my great passion. My mother worked at Sony Music and my father was a composer, producer and professional drummer, playing for 35 years with the British punk band, Slaughter and the Dogs. Neither of them is in this world anymore. I started playing drums at 15 and have been in rock & roll, punk and 60s style bands. Now I'm involved in my solo project under the alias of Ian Kay, a diminutive that is a tribute to my father, Noël Kay," explains the musician, a fresh Coronita in hand and a cigarette case stuffed with blond tobacco on the bar while, in the background, Joe Bataan's neighborhood ode What good is a castle refreshes the atmosphere.
Finding a new family
"My father passed away just when I had settled here and that was an important turning point in my career that led me to be who I am today. We had always worked on my musical career hand in hand and it seems legitimate and necessary to continue what we had started. After his death I left everything, but I was lucky that a producer who had been his friend proposed that I work with him. That managed to motivate me and I went back to making music.Now I will never cross my arms because I have realized that doing something artistic honoring his legacy is what keeps me alive.My point of view is that you have to take anything negative from your past and transform it into something positive, that can be useful for your own future, to evolve. Things happen because they have to happen," he states."My father passed away just when I had settled here and that was an important turning point in my career that led me to be who I am today"--- It must have been a very difficult moment, being in a new city with all that weight on your shoulders.
--- I would say yes, that leaving my country to start a new adventure elsewhere has been an important transition in my life. Something that requires making concessions. Since I don't have much family left in France, for me it's like having found an adoptive family here.
--- And do you get along well with this new family?
--- In terms of mentality and attitude, there are many differences between the two countries. I feel closer to this joy that Spaniards have, but, at the same time, I am more akin to French or British education. I'm a bit of a hybrid, you see!
A pearl with different personalities
"I am here thanks to destiny, to the people I met, to the girls I fell in love with and to the friends who bring me happiness," says the regular, for whom "Barcelona is a pearl, filled with so many different personalities, that it never ceases to surprise you."Prey to that everlasting feeling of "having many things left to accomplish in life," everything indicates that many of these will take place in Barcelona: "I am very comfortable here. Also, I have the best musicians in the city working with me and accompanying me on this adventure. However, I don't feel very close to the politics here, independence and those things. I am in favor of progression, not regression. I like the idea that this is a metropolis and, at the same time, the multicultural heart of Catalonia," he argues after finishing his beer.
"Barcelona is a pearl, filled with so many different personalities, that it never ceases to surprise you"--- And something you don't like too much about the city?
--- The French tourists in the Gothic Quarter and on the Rambla, who come here to eat paella and drink sangria ---he laughs---... Oh, and the American cockroaches!
--- Well listen, there are no cockroaches here and the gastronomic offer is the best your palate could hope for!
Ian Kapoudjian then laughs with all his teeth and, after ordering another beer, says:
--- Well, I'll opt for the menu, but I just remembered when, newly arrived here, I discovered the calçotades...
--- Ugh, all out, right?
--- My goodness!--, he keeps laughing.
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