How to be French when you’re not: on Clermont Ferrand’s magic bus By Mike Morgan

I have an important announcement to make. Clermont Ferrand, the founder and lead singer of Brooklyn’s catchy French pop and rock band Les Sans Culottes, is not who he says he is. His real name is Bill Carney, c/o 47 Railway Junction, Apartment 2E, Brooklyn, NY. It’s not easy pulling off the dual personality number, unless you have the experience. The French used to be quite good at this – remember how many were in the resistance during World War II? Just about everybody after it was eventually over, I believe. Admittedly, for the genuine underground fighters then, it was either pretend to be someone else or it was Gestapo time. Who wanted that? But let’s not waffle (crêpe) on about those days. Let’s get to the real meat and potatoes (the boeuf bourguignon).

Les Sans Culottes had its first gig at the old Brooklyn Freddy’s Bar in April, 1998. In human time, that means that the band is over 21 years of age, old enough to drink. In dog years, they would have a mere 150 or so behind them. They perform their own written brand of French yé yé music, heavily influenced by the tunes of characters like Serge Gainsbourg and Francoise Hardy (well-known ‘60s Parisian songsmiths). Serge Gainsbourg always had a way with words. His song Ford Mustang not only extolled the virtues and style of the American Pony car, but it also included a driving lesson, very utilitarian:

“Mus” à gauche, “Tang” à droite

Et à gauche à droite

Bob Newhart, him of the button-down mind and the classic “Driving Instructor” skit, would be proud.

The current Sans Culottes line-up is Clermont Ferrand (chef), Kit Kat Le Noir (chanteuse), Brigitte Bourdeaux (chanteuse), Benoit Bals (clavier, keys), Jacques Strappe (batterie, drums), M. Pomme Frite (basse), and Jean L’Effete (guitar, axe). The important thing to bear in mind here is that none of these people are French. The band, in different formations, has released nine albums so far, the latest being She is Tossed by the Waves, But Doesn’t Sink (2018). They are a serious working group, and they perform regularly all over Brooklyn, Manhattan and even the Bronx and Queens. They have toured across the length and breadth of this country, like the famous Michelin road map. They have played north of the border and they even made it to France in 2009, providing much needed relief to indigenous audiences there starved for French rock and roll.

If you haven’t seen a Sans Culottes show, you’re in for a real treat, visually and audio wise. The music is upbeat, energetic and well played (not for the weak of heart, definitely for the sturdy of mind), the lyrics are funny, and the patois in between the numbers is even more so. The band is all rigged out in their number-one dress uniforms, somewhere between the New York Dolls and the Ronettes. Going to a Sans Culottes concert is exciting, like sneaking out to a midnight movie at the drive-in when you weren’t even allowed to watch television past 10 pm. It sniffs a bit of tempting danger, akin to disobeying a “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” sign and climbing over the fence anyway. It seems like a foreign experience in that exotic, alluring way (try Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca). Above all, it almost feels like a subversive act of protest, the same way that dining at an Indian restaurant on Thanksgiving Day can be interpreted as not going along with the usual. That, or making sure that you are visiting the pissoir when America the Beautiful is blaring at Yankee stadium so you don’t have to take the flak from the regular boring punters for not standing during the 7th inning stretch (see, dangerous).

The whole project is Clermont’s (Bill’s) baby, his brainchild. I’m lucky enough to call Bill Carney and his wife Margie long-time friends and neighbors. Bill and I have been through the odd culture war or two together. We were both co-editors of Lurch Magazine, a saloon-driven writers’ and artists’ rag back in the 90s and early 2000s. We are old drinking mates, the kind of pals that would steady each other on our wobbly bicycles and would weave home together at the end of a session, except I don’t ride a bike.

Bill and I first met at the infamous O’Connor’s Bar on 5th Avenue, Brooklyn. Early on, Bill was promoting the idea of forming a French band. The rest of us just thought it was the whiskey talking. The proprietor Pat O’Connor, himself no stranger to conspiracy theories, was worried that this French band proposition might be anti-patriotic. George Miller, an old effete opinionated aristocratic drunk and an O’Connor’s denizen, even went so far as to suggest that Eisenhower trusted the French too much, raising a new concern for Pat that Dwight D. Eisenhower might have been a communist. After all, he suspected Bill and I were – why not Ike, whom he used to like? I am not making any of this up.

Lo and behold, Bill pulled it off. By later 1998, Les Sans Culottes was out of the gate and running. Within a few years, they were packing out bar venues. Bill penned his songwriting ass off, all in a different lingo. I saw his band perform at the top of the World Trade Center before it was vaporized. I attended a show in the hold of an abandoned tugboat that some entrepreneur had turned into a speakeasy on the west side of the Hudson River. I was there for their 21^st anniversary at the new Freddy’s Bar, also in Brooklyn. This was no mean feat what Bill (Clermont) had accomplished. Detroit son, public defender lawyer, and jug band leader makes good.

Perhaps one of the most entertaining aspects of being part of the Sans Culottes in-crowd is reading Bill’s emails announcing upcoming events. Now I can bullshit with the best of them, but these scripts are downright hilarious. I tip my hat here. If only the nightly news was this entertaining and insightful. See what I mean:

Salut! Well the Amerikan experiment in democracy is about to come to an

extreme angry and cross road tomorrow when the Amerikans

(or those allowed to vote) decide whether the Sinking City on

the Hill is worth saving. It is referendumb on the Lying Horror Clown

and to those who say well Trompe is a little like punk rock, well it

is true, some Anglais punks liked the swastika and the Stooges had an album called Raw Power. So, a little eh?…

These kind of screeds get pumped out regularly. This beats the Rachel Maddows and the Anderson Coopers of the official broadcast news world, hands down.

Indeed, Bill Carney created Clermont Ferrand, just like John Lydon made Johnny Rotten. And such an invention allows for this particular duality – the critic who sounds like he stands on the outside but meanwhile functions on the inside, your average homegrown American conservative’s bad dream come true. While these same reactionaries fret, stew and dither about their boggle-headed notions of barbarians at the gate, Bill has come up with a different kind of headache for them, the thinking opposition actor on this side of the borderline. He’s not Mexican, he’s not a member of a numbered gang, he’s not a dope dealer, and he’s definitely not French. Rather he is of their own stock, born and raised here. Bill Carney has done this with vision, imagination, humor and French rock and roll. And that’s what gave us Clermont Ferrand. Cool, n’est-ce pas?

Les Sans Culottes will be playing on Saturday, October 19, at Lucky Thirteen at 644 Sackett Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenues in Gowanus, Brooklyn.