The General Manager of French rental company Dushow, Xavier Demay, called upon the expertise of his friends and colleagues to assist him with a D.I.Y recording of Never Ending Sunday – a tribute song to health workers and frontline workers in the wake of COVID-19.
The feat tested Demay’s musical, technical and multiplexing talents. In addition to writing the music and lyrics, he was the lead vocalist and guitarist and mixed sound and video. Posted on YouTube and Facebook, it’s been an instant success receiving over 6,000 shares so far.
All that time he’s continued with the music, playing in several different bands and writing material. He’d already written the basic rhythm sections of “Never Ending Sunday” around six months previously, then put it on ice as the winter season was mad busy for Dushow’s Paris HQ where he is based in Roissy, near CDC airport, with – normally – around 140 other colleagues. “I reached out to bass player Dom Escoffier initially,” he commented, “who thought it a great idea that we develop the tune, and before long, plenty more colleagues, friends and family were involved!”
Lovighi joined them on drums, percussion and backing vocals, which proved to be a popular choice with others lining up for BV duties including: Sylvain and Roxane Demay, MariLou, Manon, Arthur, Jules and Nawel, as well as Séverine Ferrier.
Demay sent everyone the music track and asked them all to record their parts – plus their own accompanying video – on their phones, laptops, or whatever recording devices they could lay their hands on. Gilles recorded his in his ‘cave’ and Demay cut his lead vocals and other parts in his own studio, over the course of two weeks. “There were some variations in quality and technical expertise, but I’d say that by the end of the exercise, everyone was quite adept at portable recording,” he recalled.
Demay utilised Logic Pro X, a digital audio workstation and MIDI sequencer application for Mac. To produce the video, he invested in new More AV software MOVAVI which enabled him to create the final multi-screen picture. Not having mixed a music video before, this was more of a challenge, but also a good learning curve, balancing a variety of different lighting and colour temperatures.
In the last couple of weeks, the lockdown in France has been lifted slightly to allow some businesses to start getting back to work – with social distancing and other precautions in place – and at Dushow they have been working on installation projects, including an audio one at Versailles and TV shows.
The Paris office has been working on a skeleton staff of 12 but for Demay it has been great to be back and talking about ‘horizon’ projects and dealing with a small trickle of work. The company is one of the largest rental operations in France and has over 2,000 Robe moving lights in stock, which normally would all be out constantly during May and June on hundreds of festivals, shows and tours.
Demay commented on just how many additional logistics will be involved in getting companies working again with the additional COVID-19 safe health and safety measures and with getting shows out of the door in the future. “Things like loading a truck – to do that with social distancing you can’t really have double-stacked flightcases as it involves people in close proximity manoeuvring these into place, so that means more trucks involved.”
When logistics like that really start to hit home, dealing with different sized and weighted cases, timescales for getting shows in and out will be impacted directly by having to maintain distance, etc., all of which will be production brainteasers for the future. However, for now, Demay is “super-excited just to be seeing some flightcases on the move again!”