Soldat Louis is a rock band from Lorient (Morbihan) that mixes traditional Breton music with classical instruments of rock - electric guitar as well as acoustic, drums, bass, etc. - the Scottish bagpipe (Biniou Braz in Breton), the Irish bagpipe and the bombarde with regard to the traditional music. The two founding members, still present in the group today, are Renaud Detressan (aka Gary Wicknam) and Serge Danet (aka Soldat Louis).
The group was born in 1987, the meeting of a Lorient (Renaud Detressan) aka Gary Wicknam, grandson of Theodore Botrel, and a Priziacois (Serge Danet) that his friends lined familiarly call Soldier Louis.
Serge, who is a guitarist, first accompanies Gary who knows the glory in the early 1980s with the song We are as we came out under his name. When Gary offers to sing one of his lyrics, they perform under his pseudonym. They feed on their influences to create their music, inevitably at the crossroads of highways, mixed with the harmonies of the bagpipe but urban by rock orchestration. Loïc Taillebrest, penn-soner of Lann-Bihoué's bagad, and Bruno Le Rouzic, ringer with bagad Kemper, blow for some time in their bagpipes with Private Louis.
Soldier Louis' first album, Première bordée, was released in 1988. The band, sponsored by Renaud, was welcomed in the first part of his concert series at the Zenith the following year. The first single from this album, rum, women, propels them to the forefront of the media scene. The title was taken by the Belgian Bart Kaell under the title Hey kapitein. The single is sold for 750,000 copies, and the album is double gold. In the Top 50, the counter songs are in fashion (Come and have a drink at home, etc.) and the band is considered to be in this category.
