SUMMONING COURAGE
Dion hits the road for new world tour
Life is beautiful.
That’s one of the first things Celine Dion said in a recent interview at a downtown Montreal hotel, neatly summing up her world view as she gets set to begin a new chapter in her life and career.
She ended her residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in June, having performed 1,141 concerts over a 16-year span there. When we chatted, she had been in her home province of Quebec for several weeks prepping her Courage tour — her first world tour in a decade.
The epic road trip began last week in Quebec City. She heads to Montreal for a series of concerts at the Bell Centre, Sept. 26, 27 and 30, and Oct. 1, 4 and 5. There are also dates at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa (Oct. 15 and 16) and the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto (Dec. 9 and 10). Concerts in Vancouver, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg are scheduled for April 2020.
Dion’s last large-scale tour was the Taking Chances World Tour in 2008-09, a 132-show affair that was seen by 2.3 million people and grossed $280 million.
Her run in Vegas is the top-earning residency there ever. The first show, A New Day, sold $385 million worth of tickets between 2003 and 2007, and her second stint on the Strip had grossed $245.5 million as of December 2018.
Dion is set to release a new album, Courage, on Nov. 15 — her first English-language collection since Loved Me Back to Life in 2013. Team Dion recently released three songs from the album: the title track, Imperfections and Lying Down.
So yes, change is in the air, and Dion, 51, is super upbeat about all that’s going on in her life.
“I feel great,” she said. “Do I look like I feel great?”
I say she does.
“Thank you so much. I will take that as a compliment,” she says, “and I will confirm to you that it has been an amazing journey in Las Vegas. It still is. I still live in Las Vegas.
“I (don’t) visit Quebec enough, because this is my home and I love to see my kids visiting my family, seeing my mom, and being able to go barefoot outside without burning themselves with 122 degrees.”
Dion has three children: René-Charles, 18, and eight-year-old twin boys Eddy and Nelson. Their father, René Angélil, Dion’s husband and longtime manager, died of complications from cancer in 2016.
This is the first tour she will perform while the kids stay home.
“It’s going to be very hard, but it’s what’s best for them and it’s not just about you in life,” Dion said. “I made that decision because it was the best decision that I could make as a mother for my children.
“They’re home-schooled. So they’re going to be at school. And the way that the rhythm of that tour will happen is different than the other tours ... I would say the last two tours. For example, when we’d be based in Paris for two or three months, I could take a couple of (hotel) rooms, make a school in one, a playroom in another one, a closet in another one.
“It would be our home. We’d make this place our home for a few months and I’d go to the airport, do the show, come back. Or sleep one night away from the base and come back. But now it’s going to be a more condensed tour where I’m going to be in and out more frequently.”
The title for the album and tour, Courage, is taken from a big ballad co-written by Canadian songwriter Stephan Moccio (who co-wrote Dion’s 2002 hit A New Day Has Come), and Erik Alcock and Liz Rodrigues from the hip-hop/rock songwriting and production collective The New Royales.
When Dion sings these lyrics, it’s impossible not to think of what she has lived through since the loss of her husband:
“Courage don’t you dare fail me now/ I’m staring in the face of something new/ ’cause it’s not easy when you’re not with me.”
She had recorded a bunch of songs and decided that was the song, and the word, that summed it all up.
Her entourage asked what the title should be and she said it had to be Courage.
“We all agreed that Courage represented the whole album, the whole tour, the whole ‘how do I feel?’” Dion said.
“Where am I standing right now? Am I just an artist going back into the studio again, singing songs, love songs?”
Dion has come out of her shell in many ways in the past couple of years, most notably via her wild fashion statements and with a couple of videos — one for Vogue, another announcing her departure from Vegas.
But her music hasn’t changed radically. Does she sometimes wish she could do something a little more different?
“I have to admit that I did think about that ... like to go back to small theatres, for example,” she said. “A tour bus, a Winnebago, whatever you call it, and just do small theatres, like 1,200 people, 2,000 people. And do acoustic.
“Or go in rooms where symphonic orchestras (play) because the whole place is made of wood because it resonates well, because every room is an instrument. And just do an unplugged show.
“I think that (the new album is) still me even though there are different collaborations on the album. But you’re right. I did think about it and I will make it happen. I don’t know when.”
Where am I standing right now? Am I just an artist going back into the studio again, singing songs, singing love songs?