Laurie Leblanc occupies a special place in the Canadian country music scene—he sings in both his native French and adopted English, and sometimes even Chiac, a regional amalgamation of the two. The bilingual singer-songwriter was born in 1968 in Shemogue, a community in New Brunswick’s particularly Acadian southeast corner, and originally opted to pursue civil engineering. But his love of singing proved too powerful—after forming a group called Zarico in 1999 and releasing a couple of records, he struck out on his own with La pitoune in 2010, establishing a sound that drew from both ‘90s country and the accordion-driven folk music of his heritage. Naturally, he’s become a staple in Canada’s francophone community thanks to his well-honed take on the genre’s classic tropes like gambling on love (2020s “All In”), good-timing (2022’s rollicking “La BBQ Dance”) and—of course—lobster fishing (2012’s “La pêche est finie”).