By Rosine Alleva – Rock At Night EU Editor
The French (and Irish ancestry) virtuoso guitarist and composer Pat O’May has always been involved in many projects. We wanted to find out a bit more about his actual and future activities after the release of his last album “Welcome to a New World” a few years ago, the Olympia in Paris and more. Pat O’May is actually touring with The Guitar Night Project.
Fred Chapellier, Pat O’May and Patrick Rondat are delivering an exceptional concert sharing their love of the guitar by paying a vibrant tribute to the guitarists who inspired them to devote their lives to music through this instrument.
Interview
RAN: I’d like to talk about many things. First of all, how is your solo project going on at the moment
Pat: At the moment the solo project is a little bit quieter as I’m on tour with 2 great friends of mine, Patrick Rondat and Fred Chapellier. as a guitar trio “The Guitar Night Project”. We all know the G3 from Stevie Vai and Jo Satriani. It’s this kind of reunion. But the main difference is that the three of us are our own backing bands and we share a lot of songs together. The goal for me, for example, is to hear Patrick, or Fred play the solos of my songs. So it’s more interesting than hearing myself with my own solos. It’s a real exchange at this point between our different repertoire. We also have a couple of cover songs like “Over the Hills” from Gary Moore or some songs from Jeff Beck at the end of the show. But the main part is the three of us playing on stage together. Sometimes we are only two, Patrick and I for example or Fred and Patrick or Fred and I. And for a couple of songs we’re just alone on stag
.RAN: So, you’re mainly touring with the Guitar Night project.
Pat: Yeah. Particularly this year. We have a live album, “Live Access”, from the first tour which has been on the market since the end of January. We start a new tour next May and a festival this summer, with another tour coming up in September/October.
RAN: Tell us about the French artists Fred Chapellier and Patrick Rondat you’re working with?
Pat: For the two of them the main thing is their solo career. They’ve shared their talent with different musicians. For Fred he has made a lot of experience with different American blues players, and big names. He has a really great reputation there too. In France he has worked with Jacques Dutronc and a project called Les Vieilles Canailles with Johnny Halliday and Eddy Mitchell. For Patrick Rondat the main thing he’s done is with Jean-Michel Jarre. He was his guitarist when Jean Michel Jarre played in China, or in Egypt or at the Eiffel Tower, where they played a concert in front of 2 million people. Do you believe it? He also played at Wembley. The two of them have an incredible career. It’s very rare in France to have musicians with this background.
RAN: How are you feeling and how is Fred feeling now? Without getting too much into details, you both, at different times between last year and this year, had to stop touring for a while…
Pat: Yeah, due to medical problems…all is ok now. Fortunately I had the opportunity to be operated by the “Steve Vai “ surgeon. This guy is absolutely incredible, he did a great job. I’m really fine, I have a heart problem, and Fred had the same operation 6 months later.
RAN: That was crazy! This was my first thought when I read about Fred Chapellier surgery, but I’m really pleased everything went well!
Pat: Yeah, not again!… That’s why we canceled a series of concerts before being back. But you know, working a lot, Fred and his career, and with everything I’ve done in the past…We really love life and with a lot of excess, at a certain point it’s sure you have to pay. And it was the time to pay last year and for Fred this year. But we’re really fine now.
RAN: What about the Guitar Camp? It will be the number 8 in July I think, right?
Pat: Yeah, the number 8 is this year! It’s really exciting to have this project because it’s a way of sharing all we have learned during our career. Always with great friends, great audience. It’s a really special place where we have three days with full guitars. We only speak about guitar but the most exciting thing is that we speak about music through the guitar. And this year we have Christophe Godin, who’s a great friend and fantastic guitar player, some axe builders, someone who builds pedal boards, we also have the guitarist Yan Pechin who’s an incredible guitarist who works a lot with sounds and effects. He was the main guitarist of Alain Baschung. For those who want to discover some French musicians, they absolutely have to hear the work of Alain Baschung and also a great rock prog band, Ange. I had the opportunity to work with them, tour and open for them on their last tour with Christian Decamps. He’s the main member of the original band. To give an idea about Ange, Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) is a great fan of Ange! He often says that if he didn’t discover the music of Ange he wouldn’t write music like he does now.
RAN: It must have been amazing for you to assist to Christian Decamps last concert with Ange at the famous Olympia in Paris. And you gave a concert yourself the day after his farewell.
Pat: Yes, absolutely! We had the great opportunity to finish the tour at the Olympia. There were 2 days and we opened the last day for Ange . It was so emotional because Christian finished his career at that concert. This is probably more than 50 years of the existence of Ange. They sold millions of albums all over the world, impressive!
RAN: Let’s get back to the beginnings of your career and retrace the long list of your accomplishments, like the opera rocks (Anne de Bretagne, Excalibur), the symphony orchestra in Sofia, your 23 years solo career celebration, which is 32 years now…
Pat: 32 now wow, I can’t believe it! We talked about that with Fred and Rondat. We are so fortunate to live our passion since almost more than 40 years now! Amazing, incredible we have that chance! And to get back to the beginnings, I started to play with bands when I was young. I had the chance to be in a hard rock band in the 80’s (Marienthal 1982), it wasn’t huge but with enough success to be professional at the age of 20, which was cool for me. And after that I played with different bands. At a certain point I wanted to play my music and not write music for a band. Playing in a band, a lot of things are interesting, I love that too, but when you’re writing for a band, you’re writing songs for the essence of the band and not always what you want to do yourself. So at a certain point I decided to start a solo career to explore what I really wanted to do. That’s the way I’ve taken. So I started to make my first album, searching where to go, and little by little I tried to add a way of working, mixing, heavy stuff, hard rock, Celtic stuff, Arabic stuff, world music in general, blues, prog music too. That’s how I tried to do my own landscape, what I’ve been trying to do for maybe 30 years now.
RAN: Your music is well known for blending diverse musical styles, it’s really interesting! Are you still doing music for television broadcasts?
Pat: Yes I’m still writing stuff for movies and that’s another thing I love to do. As you mentioned just earlier, playing in some rock operas like Excalibur, Anne de Bretagne and meeting a lot of people. That’s where I had the opportunity to meet Martin Barre from Jethro Tull with Excalibur. That was the time he stopped Jethro Tull and decided to start a solo career too and he asked me to join his band. WOW, what? Yes, of course I would love to. It was incredible to be involved in that. I remember we did a gig in London and I saw you there, you came at the sound check and then you had to go. Yes, these kinds of things I like to do too. And writing for television is an incredible experience. I’m sure that I wouldn’t have written music for me the way I do if I didn’t write music for television and movies, it really influenced me on writing music and sounds.
RAN: What about Savarez and your new guitar?
Pat: Savarez is an incredible collaboration. It’s a French strings company. They are really big all over the world. They’re making strings for classical instruments, all the orchestra, including violins and cellos. For the classical guitar strings, they are the first ones all over the world. I think the company started in the eighteen century and they started for electric guitars only since 10 years or so. It’s pretty new for them to do that.
We have the opportunity to work with them and they’re so cool with us. They support us very much, not only with their products but for the promotions, they record video clips for us. We’re really lucky to work with them.
RAN: I saw photos where you were representing them at the Paris Guitar Festival, I heard you met a lot of people and you have a big projet for 2027…Can you tell me about it or is it too early?
Pat: How do you know that? It’s incredible. I can explain you a bit what we plan with my manager in 2027. In fact what we want to do is a big show, with an orchestra, a choir, with celtic instruments and a band but a bigger band than I’m used to have on stage. We are going to play for a program called Thalassa (French documentary television series).
RAN: That’s really cool, thank you for that, looking forward to it!
Pat: We’re working on it very hard cause it’s a very big project, very expensive, as you can imagine. We will have it on video and projected with a big screen. We’re probably gonna play two and a half hours. It’s a huge project and we’ll try to make it possible.
RAN: Would this happen only once?
Pat: No, it’s a tour. We project to have 20 gigs in France, Belgium, probably Switzerland, maybe Canada. Maybe all the countries, because this program has been sold in something like 30 countries all over the world. People know about that program. Maybe it will be possible to play in Germany, east countries … in the States too they have this program.
RAN: Tell me about your new Marceau guitar.
Pat: The Marceau one, we’re working on it actually. The guitar will be on the market in October. It is really exciting. When I started to play guitar in the seventies, I couldn’t expect, I couldn’t imagine this to exist, having your own guitar. It’s really bizarre. It’s the second guitar I will have under my name. The first was a Lag, my first Pat O’May model. Now we work on this new guitar with Tom Marceau, a frame builder from Brittany too, like the amps. I’m also working with amps called Kelt “made in Bretagne”, close to Lorient.
RAN: Well, wow! I’m looking forward to have the chance to come to one of your concerts again! Thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule for this interview!
Pat: You’re always welcome. It’s my pleasure, a great moment.
We would like to pay tribute to a great artist, Moya Brennan, wonderful Irish singer and harpist, who passed away just a few days after this interview. Pat O’May had the privilege of sharing the stage with her in *Excalibur – The Celtic Rock Opera*, and she performed the beautiful duet ‘Homeland’ with Pat on his album *Celtic Wings*.
Guitar Night Project:
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From Belgian and Italian parents, I grew up with music, dance and big fun! I love singing since I'm a little girl, I still am, haha. When I was 14, I saw my first concert: T-Rex. Later it was FrankZappa, Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Fela, Canned Heat, Little Feat, Bonnie Raitt, Earth, Wind and Fire ....
I dreamed to have a chat with each of them 😀 Before interviewing bands, I used to sing (and still do) and met lots of great musicians. I had the chance to be the support band to Joe Cocker in 2007. I love to communicate and meet people (Italian blood).
Working for magazine, a few years ago, l met José Oliveira! We were working at the same festival in Colmar. 2 people from the South with the same passion just recognized each other...and we stayed in contact since then. Here I am! Enjoying concerts, covering interviews and articles with José for Rock at Night!!
- The Guitar Night Project and more, with Pat O’ May! - April 25, 2026
- “Sublime Tragédie” from Monaco to L.A.!!! - February 10, 2026
- Chatting with the Cinelli Brothers at the Yecla Jazz Festival in Spain - October 18, 2025
