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 at some point I moved to Berlin. I was subletting a nice apartment with a balcony, there was 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 write 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 a romantic song, 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 an interesting experience, 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 told him, “Ok let’s call this Appaloosa”. Finally we used a good mic and recorded the vocals, in his apartment, and then I went back to Paris because I had a job there.
A few months later, we were invited to tour with Cat Power whom I had met in NYC when I lived there; we were close friends, and we toured all over Europe, the USA (NYC, Chicago, Seattle … everywhere) and we were also invited in LA to play with Glass Candy and we also played in Australia. We put out a single on the Glass Candy label, Italians Do It Better years later. We also put out a single on the French label Kitsuné.
Recently I recorded some new songs with Julien Plaisir de France and we put out an EP with four songs, one of them ‘Moonlight in the Garden’ is inspired by Beethoven’s Sonate au Clair de Lune. I was listening to it, one night and came up with some lyrics for it.
