Damien Félix

Damien Félix is a French singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is known for his genre-blending approach to music, spanning rock, blues, electro, and soul. Originally from Haut-Jura, he first became locally popular as part of the duo Catfish. Félix was praised for his energetic blues-rock sound and later co-founded the bands Bigger, and Dead Chic, a heavy rock and soul project launched in 2022.

Biography Catfish (2012–2020) Originally from Haut-Jura, Damien Félix met Amandine Guinchard in high school and formed a rock band with three other musicians. In 2012, the band Catfish became a duo and released a debut EP that went unnoticed. In 2013, the EP blues rock Old Fellow was released, coinciding with their selection for the Inouis of Printemps de Bourges. The duo plays all the instruments: Guinchard (percussion, bass, keyboard, vocals) and Félix (vocals, guitar, harmonica, percussion). Influenced by Robert Johnson, Skip James, The Kills, The Black Keys, the Jurassians with an American look deliver a greasy, energetic, and effective rock (La Grosse Radio).

In 2014, the rock album Muddy Shivers won wider press acclaim and allowed Catfish to perform at major festivals such as Eurockéennes de Belfort, Paléo Festival Nyon, Brussels Summer Festival, in South America and Vietnam. The songs address human relationships and the ambivalence of feelings, inhabited by a voice that is sometimes soft and melancholic, sometimes passionate and feverish.

In 2016, with the album Dohyô, the band embraced electro and punk. and in 2019, the EP Morning Room was enhanced with a multifunction keyboard and live musicians. This small bouquet of five homogeneous tracks has blossomed in a blues-rock garden, "like a reminiscence of The Doors" (Rolling Stone). Catfish received the 2019 Cognac Passions Prize which aims to 'support the French scene that skillfully perpetuates the blues and its related music, between tradition and creation'.

Bigger (since 2016) In 2016, Félix created the band Bigger with Irish Kevin Twomey (Monsieur Pink). A first EP, Bones and Dust, was released, then three musicians joined the group: Mike Prenat (guitar), Antoine Passard (drums), and Benjamin Muller (keyboard). In 2018, the second EP Tightrope opened doors to the Rencontres Trans Musicales, Eurockéennes de Belfort, and Bataclan in Paris. Bigger presents a dark yet luminous universe, a delightful blend of grunge, britpop, rock, pop. and they blend as easily into the melancholy and darkness of Nick Cave or Anna Calvi as into the melodic rainbows of The Beatles (La Grosse Radio) with a cutting voice, a real rock voice, that of Kevin Twomey, from Dublin in Ireland.

In 2022, the album Les Myosotis was produced by Jim Spencer and recorded in Germany and England. An album elegant, sometimes brutal, serving alternative pop and rock enriched with oriental sounds and Latin percussion (Radio France).

Dead Chic (2022)

In 2022, he formed the band Dead Chic with British Andy Balcon (Heymoonshaker) and released the EP Bastion Session recorded in Besançon in a heavy rock and soul style. The two artists teamed up with Rémi Ferbus (drums, backing vocals) and Mathis Bouveret-Akengin (keyboards, backing vocals).

Discography Catfish 2012: Catfish (EP) 2013: Old Fellow (EP) 2014: Muddy Shivers 2016: Dohyô 2019: Morning Room (EP)

Bigger 2016: Bones and Dust (EP) 2018: Tightrope (EP) 2022: Les Myosotis

Dead Chic 2022: Bastion Session (EP) 2023: The Venus Ballroom (EP)

Collaboration 2019: Monster with Raizik