Latest news with #Comeau
Hamilton Spectator
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Simple Plan didn't want to wait until they were ‘really old' to make a documentary
TORONTO - The problem with so many rock documentaries is they too often come out as the artist winds down their career — at least that's how pop-punk act Simple Plan see it. With their new career-spanning feature-length doc, which premiered this month on Prime Video, the Montreal pop-punk act says they didn't want to follow the pack and wait until the sunset of their lives to share the ups and downs. 'Sometimes bands ... wait until super late, until they're really old,' 45-year-old drummer Chuck Comeau explained in a recent video interview. 'Why not kick off a whole new chapter, look back on what we've accomplished, and use this to start the next part of the story?' Luckily, Simple Plan has plenty of fresh material to talk about. The band has recently been swept up by a resurgence in popularity for their early 2000s hits, thanks in part to TikTok clips that have introduced their pop-punk anthems 'I'm Just a Kid' and 'Perfect' to a new generation. The unexpected popularity has attracted bigger crowds than ever to their shows, just as the group passes their 25th anniversary. 'Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd,' from music video director Didier Charette of Hawkesbury, Ont., a town on the border of Ontario and Quebec, skirts much of the ugliness and complications of mainstream fame to focus on the band's rise and enduring appeal. Members recall the odds they overcame as French-Canadian suburbanites seeking stardom in the English music market without much of a blueprint to work from. 'There was nobody coming from Montreal, speaking French, that had done it,' Comeau said. 'The only reference point, I guess, was Celine Dion.' Charette's documentary feature debut relies heavily on archival footage in recounting the earliest days of Simple Plan's precursor band, Reset. They formed in the mid-1990s as a group of high schoolers that included Comeau and Simple Plan lead vocalist Pierre Bouvier. While that band found some success, Comeau and Bouvier left amid personal squabbles. The two made amends and joined forces with local musicians Jeff Stinco and Sébastien Lefebvre to form Simple Plan in 1999. They pursued a major label record deal, eventually landed one, and then jumped the typical hurdles of the music industry. Some critics derided the band as too soft for modern rock, often comparing them to their brattier Canadian counterparts Sum 41. One music magazine stung them with the most backhanded of praise, labelling them 'good guys, bad band.' Meanwhile, some audiences openly displayed their disdain, with festival concertgoers actually whipping water bottles at the band during their live sets. To Simple Plan, these experiences were obstacles to overcome. 'The process of going through this old footage ... was really a nice way to ... give ourselves a pat on the back and say, 'Hey, we're doing pretty good,'' Bouvier said. 'We don't do that enough,' Comeau agreed. Bouvier concedes those early negative incidents might've left the band with emotional battle scars and a drive to prove their worth. 'We had a chip on our shoulder,' he said. 'And a way for us to overcome those haters, so to speak, (was to say) we're going to give the best show ever and ... there's no way you're going to walk away saying that that wasn't a great show.' Avril Lavigne, Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray and Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 are among the band's contemporaries who come to their defence in new interviews. Other significant moments in Simple Plan's history are downplayed by the film, in particular, the departure of the longtime bassist David Desrosiers following allegations of sexual misconduct involving one of the band's fans. In 2020, Desrosiers left the band following accusations from an anonymous person on social media that alleged he made inappropriate 'jokes' with her when she was a minor and that they had consensual sex after she came of age. She also alleged he invited others for group sex without asking her, and threatened and demeaned her. At the time, Desrosiers acknowledged that 'some of the interactions I have had with women have caused them harm' and he pledged to seek professional help. The documentary spends little time on the allegations. While Desrosiers appears in archival footage, he is not interviewed in present day. Even the current band members only discuss the incident in the vaguest of ways, offering very little insight into how suddenly losing one of their members affected them as a unit. Comeau described Desrosiers' exit as 'one of the most challenging moments in our career.' 'It comes with a lot of pain,' he said. 'He was very important to the band. He had a huge contribution musically and personally … and we wanted to make sure the movie would reflect that.' While the band hasn't 'had tons of interactions' with Desrosiers since he left, Comeau said they consulted him during production and showed him a cut of the documentary. 'We felt like we couldn't avoid David because he was a big part of the story,' he added. 'He wasn't interviewed, but we really wanted his contribution to be shown.' Comeau said Simple Plan wanted to make clear in the documentary that their priority was 'to regain the trust of our fans and make sure that we could move forward as a band.' 'Now it's the four of us, and it's been five years,' he added. 'I think we feel like there's another 25 years in us.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 16, 2025.
Winnipeg Free Press
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Simple Plan didn't want to wait until they were ‘really old' to make a documentary
TORONTO – The problem with so many rock documentaries is they too often come out as the artist winds down their career — at least that's how pop-punk act Simple Plan see it. With their new career-spanning feature-length doc, which premiered this month on Prime Video, the Montreal pop-punk act says they didn't want to follow the pack and wait until the sunset of their lives to share the ups and downs. 'Sometimes bands … wait until super late, until they're really old,' 45-year-old drummer Chuck Comeau explained in a recent video interview. 'Why not kick off a whole new chapter, look back on what we've accomplished, and use this to start the next part of the story?' Luckily, Simple Plan has plenty of fresh material to talk about. The band has recently been swept up by a resurgence in popularity for their early 2000s hits, thanks in part to TikTok clips that have introduced their pop-punk anthems 'I'm Just a Kid' and 'Perfect' to a new generation. The unexpected popularity has attracted bigger crowds than ever to their shows, just as the group passes their 25th anniversary. 'Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd,' from music video director Didier Charette of Hawkesbury, Ont., a town on the border of Ontario and Quebec, skirts much of the ugliness and complications of mainstream fame to focus on the band's rise and enduring appeal. Members recall the odds they overcame as French-Canadian suburbanites seeking stardom in the English music market without much of a blueprint to work from. 'There was nobody coming from Montreal, speaking French, that had done it,' Comeau said. 'The only reference point, I guess, was Celine Dion.' Charette's documentary feature debut relies heavily on archival footage in recounting the earliest days of Simple Plan's precursor band, Reset. They formed in the mid-1990s as a group of high schoolers that included Comeau and Simple Plan lead vocalist Pierre Bouvier. While that band found some success, Comeau and Bouvier left amid personal squabbles. The two made amends and joined forces with local musicians Jeff Stinco and Sébastien Lefebvre to form Simple Plan in 1999. They pursued a major label record deal, eventually landed one, and then jumped the typical hurdles of the music industry. Some critics derided the band as too soft for modern rock, often comparing them to their brattier Canadian counterparts Sum 41. One music magazine stung them with the most backhanded of praise, labelling them 'good guys, bad band.' Meanwhile, some audiences openly displayed their disdain, with festival concertgoers actually whipping water bottles at the band during their live sets. To Simple Plan, these experiences were obstacles to overcome. 'The process of going through this old footage … was really a nice way to … give ourselves a pat on the back and say, 'Hey, we're doing pretty good,'' Bouvier said. 'We don't do that enough,' Comeau agreed. Bouvier concedes those early negative incidents might've left the band with emotional battle scars and a drive to prove their worth. 'We had a chip on our shoulder,' he said. 'And a way for us to overcome those haters, so to speak, (was to say) we're going to give the best show ever and … there's no way you're going to walk away saying that that wasn't a great show.' Avril Lavigne, Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray and Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 are among the band's contemporaries who come to their defence in new interviews. Other significant moments in Simple Plan's history are downplayed by the film, in particular, the departure of the longtime bassist David Desrosiers following allegations of sexual misconduct involving one of the band's fans. In 2020, Desrosiers left the band following accusations from an anonymous person on social media that alleged he made inappropriate 'jokes' with her when she was a minor and that they had consensual sex after she came of age. She also alleged he invited others for group sex without asking her, and threatened and demeaned her. At the time, Desrosiers acknowledged that 'some of the interactions I have had with women have caused them harm' and he pledged to seek professional help. The documentary spends little time on the allegations. While Desrosiers appears in archival footage, he is not interviewed in present day. Even the current band members only discuss the incident in the vaguest of ways, offering very little insight into how suddenly losing one of their members affected them as a unit. Comeau described Desrosiers' exit as 'one of the most challenging moments in our career.' 'It comes with a lot of pain,' he said. 'He was very important to the band. He had a huge contribution musically and personally … and we wanted to make sure the movie would reflect that.' While the band hasn't 'had tons of interactions' with Desrosiers since he left, Comeau said they consulted him during production and showed him a cut of the documentary. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. 'We felt like we couldn't avoid David because he was a big part of the story,' he added. 'He wasn't interviewed, but we really wanted his contribution to be shown.' Comeau said Simple Plan wanted to make clear in the documentary that their priority was 'to regain the trust of our fans and make sure that we could move forward as a band.' 'Now it's the four of us, and it's been five years,' he added. 'I think we feel like there's another 25 years in us.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 16, 2025.
Montreal Gazette
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
Simple Plan documentary is an emotional look at Montreal band's rise to the top
Music By Chuck Comeau is sitting in the cafeteria at the Maison de Radio-Canada marvelling at the good fortune of his band Simple Plan. Comeau and his bandmates don't take anything for granted, which is something all of them underline in the new Amazon Prime documentary on them, Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd. When they founded the band 25 years ago, they were a gang of teenage French-Canadian punk-rockers from Laval and the West Island whose ambitions were greater than their musical chops. Comeau in particular wanted to be a rock star and it was almost like he was going to will it to happen if need be. But he and the others — singer Pierre Bouvier, and guitarists Jeff Stinco and Sébastien Lefebvre — never forgot where they came from. A quarter century later, they've sold millions of albums, partly because when they started out selling albums was still a thing (it isn't any more in this age of streaming), and if anything they're becoming more popular now, thanks to a surprising renewal of interest in the punk-pop movement of the late '90s and early 2000s that they were part of. Simple Plan just played a show on the Plains of Abraham last Friday night along with Avril Lavigne, another bright light of that same punk-pop wave, as part of a joint North American tour. The Montreal band also recently wrapped a jaunt in Australia and Japan with The Offspring, another throwback band from that era, and now Simple Plan embark on their 25 th anniversary tour in the U.S. 'We feel remarkably grateful for the fact that we're still here,' said Comeau. 'Being able to have that kind of longevity in a career, it's what you dream of or hope for.' Their current renaissance was aided in part by a TikTok phenomenon in the thick of the COVID crisis in 2020 when people all over the world posted photos of themselves or their family as kids and then recreated the scene as adults, all to the soundtrack of the song I'm Just a Kid from Simple Plan's 2002 debut album, No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls. Suddenly Simple Plan were TikTok stars, through no work of their own. 'It landed on our laps without trying,' said Comeau. But the resurgence is not just about social media trends, he added. 'People are reconnecting with the band, they're rediscovering the music,' said Comeau. 'Maybe they were fans of the band in the early 2000s and all of a sudden they want to relive these teenage memories of our music being part of their lives. So all these people are coming back. 'Plus there's the hardcore who've been there since day one and they have kids. And now they're bringing their kids and their kids were raised on our music and Blink-182 and Green Day, all that. So we're seeing this convergence of people, which makes for an exciting time in our career where we're playing bigger shows than ever.' Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd isn't just a chronicle of the band's chart-topping successes. Produced by Montreal's Sphere Media and directed by Didier Charrette, it is a surprisingly moving film about a group of close friends who stuck together to pursue their dream. Comeau, in particular, fights back tears on a number of occasions during his interviews, like when he's talking about when he and Bouvier had a major falling out near the end of the run of their previous punk band Reset. It also includes some moving sequences with the band members' parents who, naturally enough, weren't sure initially that their kids were following the right career path. Comeau, for example, went to law school at McGill, but soon dropped out to focus on the band. 'I've watched this documentary more times than I can count and I still get choked up,' said Comeau. 'I get these moments where I get a little tear in my eye. I mean more than a little tear. I get really emotional because that's my life. Since I was 13 years old, this is what I wanted to do. This is my dream. I've never been the most talented musician at all. I know there are so many better drummers out there; so many better musicians than I am.' Comeau said he 'just wanted it so bad and there was nothing that was going to stop me.' 'So it was the sheer amount of effort, time, and then to see that it came through, and to see that 14-year-old version of myself,' he said. 'It's emotional to see how our families have supported us. But also how it was hard for them to understand, to grasp, to wrap their heads around what we were trying to do because we didn't have any reference points in Quebec. 'For French Canadians, there wasn't any band that had done what we did. For me and all of us and our families, to see that it panned out. Like my dad didn't want me to f--- up my life. Well I didn't f--- up my life. With that perseverance, with that resilience, we got through it. So I'm really proud of what we accomplished.' Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd debuted Tuesday on Amazon Prime.
Ottawa Citizen
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Ottawa Citizen
Simple Plan documentary is an emotional look at Montreal band's rise to the top
Article content Chuck Comeau is sitting in the cafeteria at the Maison de Radio-Canada marvelling at the good fortune of his band Simple Plan. Article content Comeau and his bandmates don't take anything for granted, which is something all of them underline in the new Amazon Prime documentary on them, Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd. When they founded the band 25 years ago, they were a gang of teenage French-Canadian punk-rockers from Laval and the West Island whose ambitions were greater than their musical chops. Article content Article content Comeau in particular wanted to be a rock star and it was almost like he was going to will it to happen if need be. But he and the others — singer Pierre Bouvier, and guitarists Jeff Stinco and Sébastien Lefebvre — never forgot where they came from. A quarter century later, they've sold millions of albums, partly because when they started out selling albums was still a thing (it isn't any more in this age of streaming), and if anything they're becoming more popular now, thanks to a surprising renewal of interest in the punk-pop movement of the late '90s and early 2000s that they were part of. Article content Article content Simple Plan just played a show on the Plains of Abraham last Friday night along with Avril Lavigne, another bright light of that same punk-pop wave, as part of a joint North American tour. The Montreal band also recently wrapped a jaunt in Australia and Japan with The Offspring, another throwback band from that era, and now Simple Plan embark on their 25 th anniversary tour in the U.S. Article content Article content 'We feel remarkably grateful for the fact that we're still here,' said Comeau. 'Being able to have that kind of longevity in a career, it's what you dream of or hope for.' Article content Their current renaissance was aided in part by a TikTok phenomenon in the thick of the COVID crisis in 2020 when people all over the world posted photos of themselves or their family as kids and then recreated the scene as adults, all to the soundtrack of the song I'm Just a Kid from Simple Plan's 2002 debut album, No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls. Suddenly Simple Plan were TikTok stars, through no work of their own. Article content 'It landed on our laps without trying,' said Comeau. Article content Article content 'People are reconnecting with the band, they're rediscovering the music,' said Comeau. 'Maybe they were fans of the band in the early 2000s and all of a sudden they want to relive these teenage memories of our music being part of their lives. So all these people are coming back.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
American tourism to Quebec may have dipped, but visitors are still coming — apologetically
In 25 years working at a Quebec hotel, Stephan Comeau says he's never seen so many Americans come in apologizing for "the political situation in their country." Comeau is the front desk manager at Ripplecove Hôtel & Spa in the Eastern Townships. He said some Americans even call ahead to ask if being from the United States will be a problem. But not everybody is worried. "I feel welcome and I want to support Canada," Daisy Benson told Radio-Canada while having a drink with her partner outside the Hovey Manor in North Hatley, Que., in late May. Border crossing data shows fewer Americans are coming to Canada, and some theorize tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump may be the problem: travellers may fear they won't be welcome north of the border. The number of trips Americans took to Canada by car declined 10.7 per cent in April and 8.4 per cent in May compared to the same months last year. Air travel was also down, with a 5.5 per cent drop in April and a slight 0.3 per cent decline in May, according to data from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Despite the dip compared to 2024, the number of American air travellers over the first three weeks of May remains nearly seven per cent higher than in 2023. Travel was at a near standstill in 2020 and 2021, and remained quite low in 2022. Looking back to 2019, about five per cent more U.S. travellers arrived by air than this year. Encouraging Americans to come visit At least one tourism association, Tourisme Cantons-de-l'Est in the Eastern Townships, has launched an ad campaign to reassure their neighbours they'll be warmly welcomed. It aims to dispel fears as the summer season gets underway. The ad is playing on YouTube and on TVs in northeastern United States. The organization's head, Shanny Hallé, said the exchange rate "is very favourable for Americans right now, so they can experience luxury vacations inexpensively." The campaign emphasizes affordability while "reaffirming our values of hospitality," she said, to help Americans feel welcome. Between January and April, she said, entries at the Quebec-U.S. border fell by a little more than four per cent. Montreal tourism expected to be around par Yves Lalumière, president and CEO of Tourisme Montréal, said the slower start wasn't unexpected given recent tensions, but he expects American travel to remain around average — plus or minus three to five per cent. "We're not looking at any decline that is drastic," Lalumière said, noting the Grand Prix is expected to bring in two million visitors. It's not going to be a record year, he said, but it won't be a bad one either. He called it a stable positive and said there are no signs of a significant slowdown. "We're still early in the game for the summer," he said. "August, September and October are good months for American clientele as well." With fewer Canadians travelling to the U.S., he said Canadian organizations and businesses are planning conventions and meetings in Montreal instead. At the same time, the city is working to attract more international visitors. The Montreal airport has continued diversifying its routes to reduce reliance on any one market. Lalumière said the city is now connected to 156 markets, with flights from places like India, Dubai and Tokyo. "We've added a lot of flights. A lot of countries," said Lalumière. Like Lalumière, Glenn Castanheira said there was a downturn in American travellers, but momentum is returning. He's the executive director of downtown Montreal's merchants' association, which grew concerned when the trade war began and Trump started threatening Canada's sovereignty. While he remains cautiously optimistic, Castanheira said efforts by groups like his — along with the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, Tourisme Montréal and others — suggest Americans aren't particularly worried about crossing into Canada. They know they're welcome, he said, but they're saying "sorry" so often that he jokes Americans may be becoming Canadian. "Add to the mix that the American dollar is to the advantage of the Americans, that's a huge player," said Castanheira, who studied at Harvard University. "What I am trying to say is, we're not that concerned because Americans know how welcome they are, especially here in Montreal."
