RFI Musique: How did you come to meet Fred Fortin, the multi-instrumentalist from Quebec you asked to produce Trois petits tours?
Thomas Fersen: Well, I actually discovered Fred through his early solo albums. They have a really strong folk feel to them. A friend of mine got me into them actually. And the minute I heard Fred's sound I knew he came from the same musical 'family' as me. I knew I'd found a relation - and I can't say that's happened to me very often in life! I met Fred in person when he came over to play in France in the spring of 2007 with the group Galaxie. And then I hooked up with him again in August. It was at that point that I asked him whether he'd be interested in producing my new album and doing the arrangements for it. I told him I wanted Trois petits tours to be in the same vein as his early recordings. 

There's certainly a very unusual style of orchestration on your new album. Is that your doing or Fred's?
Oh that's Fred Fortin, absolutely! What happened was I took him these very simple, pared-down versions of the songs I'd done on the ukulele and then basically gave him 'carte blanche' to do whatever he wanted as far as the arrangements were concerned. When you see Fred and his team at work, it's incredible, it's like they're putting on this non-stop show. They're all looking around trying to amuse themselves all the time, imagining whatever zany new thing they can come up with next. I know everyone always says that about studio albums, it sounds utterly banal. But with Fred and his team it's true! They come up with the most innovative things like playing drums with the cover on, sticking Sellotape all over the piano keyboard or playing a bag of ski boots filled with balls... And, believe me, playing a bag filled with balls in the studio is not an easy thing to do!

Over the years, your album covers appear to have got weirder and weirder…
It's true. I admit that with Jean-Baptiste Mondino (Ed.: the photographer) there's been a certain amount of upping the ante each time. It's like eating hot food. If you want to keep on enjoying it, you have to put a little more mustard on each time because otherwise your tongue gets used to it! I remember Mondino once told me he could imagine me wearing a dress and I happened to remind him of that this time round. I've always liked dressing up, in fact. My mother used to make me all sorts of dressing-up outfits when I was a kid. And maybe that's what gave me a taste for it! I think on the album cover with all the smoke, the party streamers and balloons going on, there's a bit of a conjurer theme. It's easy to imagine I'm about to whip off my top hat and pull a rabbit out. There's also that whole side to Trois petits tours, like I'm this mysterious magician who shows up, does his number with all his tricks and illusions, and then disappears into thin air.

You also happen to be holding a battered old suitcase in one hand. Is this the famous "Germaine" by any chance?
No, it's not. The suitcase you see on the album cover belonged to a great-aunt of mine who died a long time ago now. She actually brought up my Dad for part of his life and I liked the idea of including her case on an album cover. It's another way of recounting my family folklore. The real "Germaine" you refer to is another suitcase that my father pulled out of the back of a wardrobe when I started touring in 1993 and I needed something to carry my stage costumes around in. My father used to work in a bank so he had the typical kind of case civil servants use. I took that suitcase everywhere with me over the years and it really started to acquire its own personality.

Germaine was the first song I ever wrote and the amazing thing was as I wrote it, all these other ideas flooded into my mind. What I was doing, in fact, was not writing one song, but a whole stack of songs at the same time. When I finished I had to sort of separate them out and sort them by tone and then I realised I'd ended up with two thirds of an album. That's the way it often works with me. There's a sort of overriding theme that grips me for a couple of years and ends up becoming the focal point of an album. Le Pavillon des fous was about mad people. Pièce montée des grands jours was all about food… The new album's about suitcases and, believe me, I've managed to recount a lot of things using cases as my central theme. There are songs on the new album about me fetishising objects, how it feels to lead a solitary life, the process of going through customs…

Judging by one of your songs, going through customs seems to be a fairly traumatic experience for you…
Well, you have to admit, going through customs you get this very strong sense of being dehumanised. I experience it as a form of violence. You inevitably feel a bit sick and start clenching your buttocks. And when my case goes through the X-ray machine and they see there's a musical instrument inside, well, I systematically have to open it and explain what's going on. I know it's not done with bad intentions, but that's why I ended up writing Ukulélé. It's basically a song about travelling but where the journey is recounted from an interior point of view. I don't write about passing landscapes or final destinations or anything. It's just another way of talking about oneself, I guess.

And what about the suitcase? Did it end up like "Germaine" in the song, exploded to bits?
No, this particular case didn't have such a spectacular end! The zip broke last year so the song's a sort of epitaph really. The case has reached the end of its travelling days now. I've still got it, but it's completely battered out of shape. I'd feel a bit ashamed carrying it around now, in fact. So, you see, that proves that it's got a personality of its own!

In Maharajah (a collection of anecdotes compiled by the illustrator Joann Sfar) you describe your job as basically "lying in bed all day reading books and writing a couple of songs every now and then". Sounds like fun!
It's the fact of being a singer that gets me out of my lair and makes me go out there and face the world. The life of a songwriter and composer is basically that of a recluse. It's not unpleasant leading a life like that, but it can be a bit dangerous in the end because if you cut yourself off from the world, you find you can't write songs about it any more. Being a singer and performer - even if sometimes I feel that takes up too much of my time - is actually very healthy because it makes me feel frustrated enough to go back and write new songs. It pushes me to write about new things. I have to say, it's a very uncomfortable process, but that's just the way it works with me.