The appaloosa is an American horse breed. Originally they were developed by the Nez Percé people they were called “Palouse horses” then their name became “Appaloosa”. They are very well known for their spotted coat pattern.
Since I was a child, I have been obsessed with Appaloosa horses. When I was 12, something like this, I was in my garden, when all of the sudden I heard the sound of a horse galloping… “tagada, tagada, tagada”… I looked behind me, and saw a horse was galloping on the sidewalk on the other side of the road, the horse was white with little black dots, it was galloping very fast, it had no reins, no saddle, then the horse crossed the road, galloped along the garden, and penetrated the forest. Wow ! I thought I was hallucinating! It was like the most extreme dream, but it was real! Two minutes after, two adults came with a pony, a welsh pony probably, and they looked like they were looking for the horse, so I asked them “are you looking for an appaloosa?”; they looked at me with astonishment, and entered the forest. A few days after, I was with my mother, she was parking her car, we had just done some shopping, when we saw the mare (it was a mare) grazing the grass in the garden of our neighbors. I got out of the car, and wanted to touch the horse… I approached her very cautiously, but as I was getting really close to her impressive body, she looked at me, and softly trotted back to the forest, and trotted down the narrow path I used to walk on, almost everyday, and I never saw her again… she belonged an old hermit who was living in the forest, in a house he had made himself, and he had this horse, and the horse had left and I used to see him quite often on his bike, he had a long white beard and he was always laughing.
Years passed, I got my high school degree, and met my first boyfriend, and I went to university etc, and then I decided to move to New York. I arrived there, did not know anybody, walked alone at night, never had any problem, met some great people; stayed there for six years and then came back to Paris and moved to Berlin the way I had moved to NYC, did not know what to expect. I was subletting a nice apartment with a balcony, a piano in my bedroom, a large living room, a dishwasher, a washing machine another bedroom, in the center of Berlin. The rent was pretty cheap compared to Paris. One day, I went with a friend to a karaoke bar, and the day after, a musician asked me if I wanted to do a song with him. I was really not interested at first. He told me to write my own song; I sat on the balcony and started to write a song about a shooting star, a shooting star, I had seen a few days before from the same balcony. It was romantic, and I called it, ‘ Intimate’ and then the musician, Max, came to my apartment, he composed a melody on the piano, I came up with a vocal melody, didn’t know how to sing, but it did not matter, it was fun, and then we went to his apartment and he used his computer and handed me a mic, and we recorded a demo and then the next day we wrote another song, ‘Fantasy’, and then ‘Sinister’ and then some other songs and I said, Ok let’s call this Appaloosa. Finally we used a good mic and recorded the vocals, and then I went back to Paris because I had a job there.
A few months later, we were invited to tour; we toured all over Europe, the USA (NYC, Chicago, Seattle, everywhere, and we did a concert in LA and the DJ was in NWA ! ( yes !!!!!), and Australia. The first show was at Bataclan in Paris, I put a video that you can see below the other videos, and it was a bit a disaster cuz the computer crashed and half of the audience thought we had done this on purpose. I felt comfortable on stage, never stressed, I always had a couple of beers before, not too much, to be able to concentrate on the lyrics. We were invited to a lot of countries. It was nice to visit all these cities, meet some people, like some super nice people in Bosnia, very interesting people. To see that everywhere you go, you can get along with people, who usually have a great sense of humor … ALK
