Moriarty (band)

Moriarty (band)
Moriarty members at the Eurockéennes de Belfort 2011
Background information
Origin	France, United States, Switzerland
Genres	Country, Blues, Rock, Folk
Years active	1995 – present
Labels	Air Rytmo
Website	www.moriartyland.net
Members	Charles Carmignac Arthur Gillette Thomas Puéchavy Rosemary Standley Stephan Zimmerli
Past members	Charlène Dupuy Médéric de Vanssay Davide Woods

Moriarty is a French-American musical group formed in 1995.

Moriarty is a musical collective made up of five artists of French, American, Swiss and Vietnamese origin. The members were mainly born in France to American parents. The group was named Moriarty in reference to Dean Moriarty, the hero of On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

Initially, the group consisted of eight members: singer Charlène Dupuy, drummer Médéric de Vanssay, and saxophonist Davide Woods have since left the group. Rosemary Standley joined in 1999. Moriarty went from performing traditional blues to rock'n'roll. Successive departures from the group reduced them to five members (Rosemary, Arthur, Thomas, Charles and Stephan), and forced them to play acoustically.

This radical change opened up new musical territories for the band, giving them greater freedom in sound experimentation, and allowing them straightforward, stripped-down performances in places such as a prison in Normandy, a mental institution in central France, a ruined castle in Tuscany, and the streets of Paris and Dublin.

In 2007, they released their first album, "Gee Whiz But This Is a Lonesome Town", recorded in 8 days by American producer Bob Coke in the attic of a farmhouse in Brittany (France), near the tomb of Merlin the sorcerer. Driven by the opening song "Jimmy", the album encountered success in France, and was released in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Canada, Japan, Hong-Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Australia. The group then began a long French tour which started in April 2008, followed by concerts in Switzerland, Canada, Spain, Germany and England.

In 2008, Moriarty played for a second time at the Solidays music festival where they had already played three years before thanks to the City of Paris emerging talents prize. That same year, they also gave concerts at the Eurockéennes music festival in Belfort, Francofolies de La Rochelle, Montreux Jazz Festival, Festival Internacional de Benicassim and the Festival of the Humanities. They also performed in October 2008 at the Olympia theatre in Paris, to a sold-out audience.

In March 2008, Moriarty recorded a cover of Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence for a compilation. Moriarty had previously recorded a cover of this song and performed it while on tour. Moriarty's urgent performance of the song, simple and stripped down, was played shortly after its release on French independent Radio Nova.