DOMINIQUE FRICOT

Audiences have become accustomed to singer-songwriters who play the acoustic guitar and fit nicely into the folk genre. Armed most often with his electric guitar, a foot maneuvered electronic kick drum pad and smooth Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) meets Adam Duritz (Counting Crows) baritone vocals, Dominique Fricot refuses to be put in such a box. Hailing from Salmon Arm, BC, Fricot moved to Vancouver in 2002 to study history at the University of British Columbia but quickly shifted his focus to music.

Though Fricot enjoys appearing as the new face on the Vancouver scene, the singer-songwriter has been making his mark across the country for several years now. Budding as a songwriter in the electronic-post rock outfit Spark that Screams and, most recently, The Painted Birds, Fricot has toured Canada coast to coast on two occasions playing over a hundred shows and showcasing at numerous festivals including Canadian Music Week, North by North East, the Western Canadian Music Awards, Sled Island, Juno Fest and Austin Texas’ world famous South by South West.

Only playing solo a short while, Fricot explains that his new endeavour was a long time coming. “I kept writing songs that weren’t fitting into the mold of ‘The Painted Birds’, they were too jazzy or too mellow”. When the band broke up in January of 2010, Fricot promised himself that he would never put such tight restrictions on his artwork. Truly, the artist now explores the expanses between guitar cranked rockers to finger plucked jazzy numbers and foot stomping a cappella sing-alongs to heartbreaking piano ballads. The glue that fastens this concoction is Fricot’s powerful yet vulnerable vocals. In only a few short months Fricot has already started to silence audiences, captivating them with his raw and intense emotional performances.

Inspired by, while sounding nothing like, Xavier Rudd, Fricot is determined to go it alone, fleshing out his arrangements with the beat of his feet or the rubbing of his hands or wherever his imagination leads him.

Having yet to release a debut record, Dominique Fricot is currently writing and testing his new material at shows in and around Vancouver while searching for a producer who’ll push his expression to new heights.