Alan Doyle and Bob Hallett did this fantastic interview with Karen Bliss in Canadian Musician Magazine published in the June issue of 1997.
This is a totally brilliant article for all those Great Big Sea fans interested in their early years. Alan Doyle and Bob Hallett speak articulately and from the heart about being a Newfoundlander, Newfoundland and traditional music in Canada. I found it totally fascinating.
I found this article on a site in which fans transcribed and collected material. I have not seen the original article. The site is called Great Big Sea Articles and Interviews and is available at greatbigsea.tripod.com. The article was edited for copyright reasons. No copyright infringement intended.
I also found this absolutely drop dead gorgeous photograph of Great Big Sea from the early years on the Internet. I couldn't find any details about when the photograph was taken. But I just love it. No copyright infringement intended.
'Great Big Sea –Keeping With Tradition.' in Canadian Musician Magazine, June '97, volume XIX, number 3, pages 38-41. By Karen Bliss.
The acoustic-driven Celtic group does its ancestors proud, keeping Newfoundland expressions alive and well on its new Warner album, Play. The band members, all dyed in the wool Newfoundlanders - guitarist Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour, bodhran player Sean McCann from Carbonear, bassist Darrell Power from Outer Cove and multi-instrumentalist Bob Hallett from the capital city of St. John's - gladly give history lessons to foreigners (that includes mainland Canadians), explaining the origins of the traditional songs, the stories behind them, and the meanings of the dialect.
You'll discover that the "donkey" in the shanty "Donkey Riding" isn't a four-legged long-eared ass, but a winch for hoisting a sail or dropping an anchor, and that the phrase "she got seagulls in her eyes" in the original "Seagulls" means she's restless, constantly looking for something better. In talking about "Recruiting Sargeant", you'll learn that Newfoundland was a self-governing country up until 1949, with its own army and navy. And they'll tell you that traditional Celtic music is just as prevalent in a Maritime teen's life as Marilyn Manson and No Doubt - and it's not uncool to like it.
"It's not uncool because in that part of Atlantic Canada, Newfoundland, Cape Breton and PEI, traditional music is to some degree, popular music," explains Hallett. "Even mainstream radio stations would often play traditional-influenced music. The Rankin Family plays hockey arenas in Atlantic Canada. That's the sort of performance venues that we use. We're not obscure folkies playing in a university lecture hall in front of 30-year old hippies. We've been allowed to become mainstream performers.
"When we were kids, there was a band called The Wonderful Grand Band (Ron Hynes' early project). They were extremely popular, as a top 10 Friday night dance slot, and myself and Alan and Sean and Darrell were all 13, 14 years old. So, for a lot of kids growing up in Newfoundland at that point in time, we were lucky enough to see traditional music as acceptable as mainstream music and it saved us from that whole idea that you have to do one, or the other. When you hear it on the radio, then it becomes legitimized. It is cool," recalls Hallett, joking that it was his first bodhran, not a shiny, red Stratocaster, for which he scrimped and saved.
"I looked at that tin whistle for months sitting in the window," quips Doyle, adding more seriously, "we all have our Stratocasters tucked under our beds somewhere. At different
points, about all of us played in rock 'n' roll bands. When you're 15, you want to be Eddie Van Halen, you want to be Motley Crue."
"I don't know about Motley Crue, " Hallett quickly rejects.
"Or the Sex Pistols," Doyle corrects. "A lot of the traditional songs we play, we can't remember learning. I don't remember learning 'I'se The B'y'. I don't remember ever sitting down and figuring out how to play it on guitar. It came with the birth certificate and the lyrics were on the back (laughs). It was the kind of thing where, when it came time to start playing traditional music, it was the '80s, the hard rock era, and we ended up singing 'I'se The B'y' the same way Kiss sings 'I Wanna Rock 'N' Roll All Night' ".
Doyle and Hallett are sitting in Café on the Green, one of the restaurants at the Toronto SkyDome Hotel overlooking the "vista of blue seats", the empty playing field and spectator stands of the massive sports venue. It's the day after the Juno Awards in Hamilton, Ontario and Doyle mentions he was particularly bothered by the telling of a Newfie joke onstage during the untelevised portion of the presentations - even thought the perpetrator was singer/ pre-award host Kim Stockwood, a fellow Newfoundlander and fun-in-a-5'4" frame, who said it was her birth right to tell them but others shouldn't.
"I was looking around for a rock to throw at her," Doyle jokes.
"Kim is great and I really admire her and she's really ambitious, but there's a million ways for Newfoundlanders to internationally become known as being able to laugh at themselves and having a huge sense of humour, but the easiest way is we're all drunk dummies. Yeah, Newfoundlanders enjoy celebrating, but they work just as hard as they play. Because of Newfie jokes, you have to start at minus-four instead of at 0"
Great Big Sea constantly debunks the stereotype wherever it goes. Doyle even had a conversation once with actor George Wendt about the Pulitzer Prize-winning American book The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx.
"Ninety percent of the Newfoundland characters in the book are alcoholics or incestuous or lazy, so this was his impression of Newfound-land," says Doyle. "I spent at least an hour talking to him, saying, 'Look, rural communities tend to be filled with strange characters and God love it. It is fair to say, it's 20 years behind the times in some places, and it is fair to say that they love to celebrate. It's not fair to say that they're all incestuous and they're all alcoholics'."
Between them, the members of Great Big Sea have over a half-dozen university degrees. But with seagulls in their eyes, they all left so-called legit careers to perform their party mix of jugs, reels, singles and shanties, and contemporary pop-rock. Power was a teacher, Doyle worked at the Newfoundland Museum as the educational coordinator, Hallett was the editor of a provincial magazine and McCann was in the middle of his Masters in folklore. "That's the situation with Great Big Sea, we all do it because we love it, not because we have to pay our mortgages," says Doyle.
The four members, who all sing and play a variety of instruments, formed Great Big Sea in St. John's in 1992 and, a year later, recorded their eponymous independent debut with Pat Janes at Piper Stock Studios, in Torbay, Newfoundland. A mix of traditional and original repertoire, the album appropriately kicks off with the sound of crashing waves on "Great Big Sea/Gone By The Board", a traditional song about a tidal wave followed by an original reel
by Hallett. It also includes faves like "Drunken Sailor" and "I'se The B'y", done Great Big Sea style.
"There's a lot of traditional songs, but not as many traditional Great Big Sea songs," explains Hallett. "For us, traditional songs need to work in a live format and they need to sound good on an album. Some traditional songs have 95 verses in D minor about the great Fin Famine of 1933, which are excellent songs but I can't really see a place for them in a Great Big Sea show."
The next two years were spent performing at kitchen parties, universities, folk festivals and clubs, and when all was played and done, they had sold some 20, 000 units. With such impressive indie sales, and after an equally impressive live performance at 1994's East Coast Music Awards, the band signed a major record deal with Warner Music Canada and re-released the indie album, resulting in a further 15,000 units sold.
Considering themselves first and foremost performers, the band took just three weeks out of the hectic touring schedule at the end of last November to record the follow-up. Greenspoon was once again called in to produce it in the abandoned wing of The Battery, a hotel in St. John's, with some overdubs done at The Nickel and Toronto's CBC Studio 211, where it was mixed.
"There's a lot of great pop producers and a lot of great folk producers, but Danny can combine the two," says Hallett of their choice to work with him again. "It's really hard to mix acoustic guitars, electric bass and make the acoustic guitars sound fat and full, and the bodhran sound like a bodhran, instead of a floor tom. Danny can do this." (Greenspoon and Ross Murray engineered the album.)
"He had the task of trying to make two acoustic guitars and a tin whistle sound as big in a CD player as Gordie (Johnson) from Big Sugar's guitar, not teeny and small and AM-y," says Doyle, who sings, plays guitar, keyboards, bouzouki and mandolin. "It's tough, but he's a very good engineer as well as being a good producer. He knows how to mic guitars so it sounds big and knows how to sit it in the mix so they sound huge."
"A lot of it is choice of mics," adds Hallett, who also sings and plays a whack of stuff, including accordion, fiddle, mandolin, mandola and concertina. "Standard studio mics don't work as well for these instruments."
Once again, the album is a diverse collection of traditional shanties ("Jolly Roving Tar", "General Taylor", "Donkey Riding"), drink-in-death celebrations ("The Night Pat Murphy Died", "Jakey's Gin"), original numbers ("Seagulls", "How Did We Get From Saying I Love You...", "My Apology", "Something I Should Know") and contemporary covers (REM's "End of the World" and Colin Hay's "Haven't Seen You In A Long Time"). There's even a hidden song called "Little Beggar Man" which was fashioned into a Celtic rap of sorts and could very well be made into a dance remix.
"It was a Friday night when we all went into the studio too late and it turned into a big party. The tape machine was on and the next thing you know, the bouzouki's been plugged into wah pedals and this is what happened," Doyle laughs.
The uplifting lead single, "When I'm Up (I Can't Get Down)", which begins with a slew of clichés, was written by three members of OysterBand, an on-again-off-again UK project. "We thought they'd written the song especially for us. Even though it was written a long time ago, it summed up our philosophy," says Hallett. "The basic arrangement was very
appealing for us, because of the kind of instruments we play. It was a song that wasn't like anything we'd written ourselves, but still had all the core values of our own music."
When it comes to picking the material, not surprisingly, there are hundreds of traditional songs in the collective minds of Great Big Sea.
"Everybody has their top 25 which they don't understand why the rest of the band doesn't like that much," Hallett chuckles. "And when it's time to do an album, there's ones that we've forgotten about that someone has sung at a party."
To make them a Great Big Sea song, instead of 50 verses and no choruses, essentially they'll take one verse and make it a chorus, and arrange it so that it fits into a three-minute and twenty second format. "What we do in the arrangement process is we actually try them all," says Hallett. "I can play quite a few, as well as Sean and Alan. We just play around. 'Let's try this a capella. No, this doesn't sound right, let's try a tin whistle instead of a guitar line. Nah, let's combine this with something else.' And we just play with it until we have something unique, that has the elements of Great Big Sea, but is still fresh. You can't make the same album, over and over again."
Unlike in Cape Breton, where Ashley MacIsaac has been accused of desecrating a respected and imitated tradition, Newfoundland traditionalists are far more easy-going. "Most people in Newfoundland are so delighted that one band is making songs that last for another generation," says Hallett. "It's less orthodox than Cape Breton and more a family tradition. Every family has its own songs and instrumentals, and there's no real set way to play or perform. The fact that you're doing Newfoundland songs is what's important, not how you approach them or how you arrange them. You can even change the words, the titles, and the melodies. Things like that don't seem to rattle people in Newfoundland as much."
Of the traditionals on Play, there are reasons Great Big Sea chose the raucous drink-in-death tale of "The Night Pat Murphy Died" and a capella "General Taylor", because they had memorable choruses and powerful melodies, "the elements of any good pop song". And, similar to the Second Line Brass in New Orleans, which performs at funeral processions, both songs celebrate the life of someone dead.
"There's a huge tradition in Newfoundland of singing jovial-type songs about deaths," says Doyle. "They've had hard times for centuries and this is a way to shrug your shoulders and keep going."
"Irony is at the core of all good Newfoundland songs," adds Hallett, "the contrast between the possible bleakness or tragedy that's inherent in Newfoundland history and also the sense of humour and the love of life and dependence that Newfoundlanders value in each other. That's typical of Newfoundland songs. The melody and the lyrics just totally belie what's actually going on between the lines."
"Recruiting Sargeant" is another such song. Based on the impact World War I had on St. John's, an up chorus prepares the young men to die.
"Newfoundland's army was wiped off the face of the earth in one morning, half-way through World War I, and the country never really recovered from it," explains Hallett, who wrote the song using part of a melody from an old Scottish war song. "It was one of the things that helped plunge it into the depression which led to Newfoundland joining Canada."
The irony continues, says Hallett, with Great Big Sea's joyous version of REM's "End of the World" as opposed to "the bleak and cynical approach REM took to it."
"The REM traditionalists will get very upset with us," teases Doyle. Great Big Sea's original material ranges from the unbridles optimism of "Ordinary Day" (written by Doyle and McCann) to the awkwardness of a break-up in "How Did We Get From Saying I Love You..." (by Doyle) to the more complicated lyrical structure of "My Apology" (by McCann), and shows the band members' individual writing preferences. "Alan tends to write closer to pop mainstream and starts from the melody and the hook; Sean tends to work hard on the lines. His is personal and often traditional, and I tend to make the story work first," capsules Hallett.
Of the variety on the new album, Doyle says, "We would like our records and our shows to reflect the kind of music we would sing if we sat around the living room. That's another thing I love about Newfoundland - the kitchen parties. You'd hear a Hank Williams song, then you'd hear a 7,000-year old traditional song, then a song that somebody wrote last week, and then someone would do a recitation, and everything would have equal value. And I liked the way our kind of music was applicable. I don't think we'll ever do a record that's all originals because that's not what Great Big Sea's about. Great Big Sea's about the songs."
Hallett's Glossary:
REEL: a dance tune that's in 4/4 time. It should sound like the running of a horse.
JIG: in 6/8, it's more of a rolling rhythm.
WALTZ: is in quarter-time, unlike the popular Viennese version, which is very structured. Most Canadian waltzes are a lot looser.
STRATHSPEY: slower, also in 4/4 time; very difficult to play. It's more of a Scottish form.
SINGLE: (as opposed to a double, which would be a reel): we use this form quite a lot. A single is in cut time, which is 2/4 time - same as 4/4, but you count to the beats in double time. It's very, very fast. The only thing that's remotely similar is a polka, but not much.
SHANTY: they were songs that were originally to coordinate work efforts on sailing ships and sailing docks.
GREAT BIG GEAR
Bob Hallett plays:
-Barcus Berry electric violin with LR Baggs pickup
-Hohner button accordiona; Erica & Sonata models with ATM clip-on mic
-Flatiron mandola with Fishman pickup
-Sausado, Chieftan and Feadog tin whistles
Darrell Power plays:
-Guild acoustic bass with Fishman system
-1973 Fender Precision bass
-1991 Fender Jazz bass
-Trace Elliot bass preamp
-Paddy Power 1993 Spruce Bones (custom made)
Sean McCann plays:
-Takamine EN10 acoustic guitar
-Fred Halpen and Brendan Glass custom built bodhrans
-Sausado tin whistles
-Audio-Technica wireless systems
Alan Doyle plays:
-Takamine NP25C acoustic guitar
-Takamine EN10C acoustic guitar
-Trinity College shortneck bouzouki with Fishman system
-Audio-Technica wireless system
All use Klark active direct boxes, Shure Beta 58 mics and Garwood
wireless monitors.
Karen Bliss is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
The acoustic-driven Celtic group does its ancestors proud, keeping Newfoundland expressions alive and well on its new Warner album, Play. The band members, all dyed in the wool Newfoundlanders - guitarist Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour, bodhran player Sean McCann from Carbonear, bassist Darrell Power from Outer Cove and multi-instrumentalist Bob Hallett from the capital city of St. John's - gladly give history lessons to foreigners (that includes mainland Canadians), explaining the origins of the traditional songs, the stories behind them, and the meanings of the dialect.
You'll discover that the "donkey" in the shanty "Donkey Riding" isn't a four-legged long-eared ass, but a winch for hoisting a sail or dropping an anchor, and that the phrase "she got seagulls in her eyes" in the original "Seagulls" means she's restless, constantly looking for something better. In talking about "Recruiting Sargeant", you'll learn that Newfoundland was a self-governing country up until 1949, with its own army and navy. And they'll tell you that traditional Celtic music is just as prevalent in a Maritime teen's life as Marilyn Manson and No Doubt - and it's not uncool to like it.
"It's not uncool because in that part of Atlantic Canada, Newfoundland, Cape Breton and PEI, traditional music is to some degree, popular music," explains Hallett. "Even mainstream radio stations would often play traditional-influenced music. The Rankin Family plays hockey arenas in Atlantic Canada. That's the sort of performance venues that we use. We're not obscure folkies playing in a university lecture hall in front of 30-year old hippies. We've been allowed to become mainstream performers.
"When we were kids, there was a band called The Wonderful Grand Band (Ron Hynes' early project). They were extremely popular, as a top 10 Friday night dance slot, and myself and Alan and Sean and Darrell were all 13, 14 years old. So, for a lot of kids growing up in Newfoundland at that point in time, we were lucky enough to see traditional music as acceptable as mainstream music and it saved us from that whole idea that you have to do one, or the other. When you hear it on the radio, then it becomes legitimized. It is cool," recalls Hallett, joking that it was his first bodhran, not a shiny, red Stratocaster, for which he scrimped and saved.
"I looked at that tin whistle for months sitting in the window," quips Doyle, adding more seriously, "we all have our Stratocasters tucked under our beds somewhere. At different
points, about all of us played in rock 'n' roll bands. When you're 15, you want to be Eddie Van Halen, you want to be Motley Crue."
"I don't know about Motley Crue, " Hallett quickly rejects.
"Or the Sex Pistols," Doyle corrects. "A lot of the traditional songs we play, we can't remember learning. I don't remember learning 'I'se The B'y'. I don't remember ever sitting down and figuring out how to play it on guitar. It came with the birth certificate and the lyrics were on the back (laughs). It was the kind of thing where, when it came time to start playing traditional music, it was the '80s, the hard rock era, and we ended up singing 'I'se The B'y' the same way Kiss sings 'I Wanna Rock 'N' Roll All Night' ".
Doyle and Hallett are sitting in Café on the Green, one of the restaurants at the Toronto SkyDome Hotel overlooking the "vista of blue seats", the empty playing field and spectator stands of the massive sports venue. It's the day after the Juno Awards in Hamilton, Ontario and Doyle mentions he was particularly bothered by the telling of a Newfie joke onstage during the untelevised portion of the presentations - even thought the perpetrator was singer/ pre-award host Kim Stockwood, a fellow Newfoundlander and fun-in-a-5'4" frame, who said it was her birth right to tell them but others shouldn't.
"I was looking around for a rock to throw at her," Doyle jokes.
"Kim is great and I really admire her and she's really ambitious, but there's a million ways for Newfoundlanders to internationally become known as being able to laugh at themselves and having a huge sense of humour, but the easiest way is we're all drunk dummies. Yeah, Newfoundlanders enjoy celebrating, but they work just as hard as they play. Because of Newfie jokes, you have to start at minus-four instead of at 0"
Great Big Sea constantly debunks the stereotype wherever it goes. Doyle even had a conversation once with actor George Wendt about the Pulitzer Prize-winning American book The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx.
"Ninety percent of the Newfoundland characters in the book are alcoholics or incestuous or lazy, so this was his impression of Newfound-land," says Doyle. "I spent at least an hour talking to him, saying, 'Look, rural communities tend to be filled with strange characters and God love it. It is fair to say, it's 20 years behind the times in some places, and it is fair to say that they love to celebrate. It's not fair to say that they're all incestuous and they're all alcoholics'."
Between them, the members of Great Big Sea have over a half-dozen university degrees. But with seagulls in their eyes, they all left so-called legit careers to perform their party mix of jugs, reels, singles and shanties, and contemporary pop-rock. Power was a teacher, Doyle worked at the Newfoundland Museum as the educational coordinator, Hallett was the editor of a provincial magazine and McCann was in the middle of his Masters in folklore. "That's the situation with Great Big Sea, we all do it because we love it, not because we have to pay our mortgages," says Doyle.
The four members, who all sing and play a variety of instruments, formed Great Big Sea in St. John's in 1992 and, a year later, recorded their eponymous independent debut with Pat Janes at Piper Stock Studios, in Torbay, Newfoundland. A mix of traditional and original repertoire, the album appropriately kicks off with the sound of crashing waves on "Great Big Sea/Gone By The Board", a traditional song about a tidal wave followed by an original reel
by Hallett. It also includes faves like "Drunken Sailor" and "I'se The B'y", done Great Big Sea style.
"There's a lot of traditional songs, but not as many traditional Great Big Sea songs," explains Hallett. "For us, traditional songs need to work in a live format and they need to sound good on an album. Some traditional songs have 95 verses in D minor about the great Fin Famine of 1933, which are excellent songs but I can't really see a place for them in a Great Big Sea show."
The next two years were spent performing at kitchen parties, universities, folk festivals and clubs, and when all was played and done, they had sold some 20, 000 units. With such impressive indie sales, and after an equally impressive live performance at 1994's East Coast Music Awards, the band signed a major record deal with Warner Music Canada and re-released the indie album, resulting in a further 15,000 units sold.
Considering themselves first and foremost performers, the band took just three weeks out of the hectic touring schedule at the end of last November to record the follow-up. Greenspoon was once again called in to produce it in the abandoned wing of The Battery, a hotel in St. John's, with some overdubs done at The Nickel and Toronto's CBC Studio 211, where it was mixed.
"There's a lot of great pop producers and a lot of great folk producers, but Danny can combine the two," says Hallett of their choice to work with him again. "It's really hard to mix acoustic guitars, electric bass and make the acoustic guitars sound fat and full, and the bodhran sound like a bodhran, instead of a floor tom. Danny can do this." (Greenspoon and Ross Murray engineered the album.)
"He had the task of trying to make two acoustic guitars and a tin whistle sound as big in a CD player as Gordie (Johnson) from Big Sugar's guitar, not teeny and small and AM-y," says Doyle, who sings, plays guitar, keyboards, bouzouki and mandolin. "It's tough, but he's a very good engineer as well as being a good producer. He knows how to mic guitars so it sounds big and knows how to sit it in the mix so they sound huge."
"A lot of it is choice of mics," adds Hallett, who also sings and plays a whack of stuff, including accordion, fiddle, mandolin, mandola and concertina. "Standard studio mics don't work as well for these instruments."
Once again, the album is a diverse collection of traditional shanties ("Jolly Roving Tar", "General Taylor", "Donkey Riding"), drink-in-death celebrations ("The Night Pat Murphy Died", "Jakey's Gin"), original numbers ("Seagulls", "How Did We Get From Saying I Love You...", "My Apology", "Something I Should Know") and contemporary covers (REM's "End of the World" and Colin Hay's "Haven't Seen You In A Long Time"). There's even a hidden song called "Little Beggar Man" which was fashioned into a Celtic rap of sorts and could very well be made into a dance remix.
"It was a Friday night when we all went into the studio too late and it turned into a big party. The tape machine was on and the next thing you know, the bouzouki's been plugged into wah pedals and this is what happened," Doyle laughs.
The uplifting lead single, "When I'm Up (I Can't Get Down)", which begins with a slew of clichés, was written by three members of OysterBand, an on-again-off-again UK project. "We thought they'd written the song especially for us. Even though it was written a long time ago, it summed up our philosophy," says Hallett. "The basic arrangement was very
appealing for us, because of the kind of instruments we play. It was a song that wasn't like anything we'd written ourselves, but still had all the core values of our own music."
When it comes to picking the material, not surprisingly, there are hundreds of traditional songs in the collective minds of Great Big Sea.
"Everybody has their top 25 which they don't understand why the rest of the band doesn't like that much," Hallett chuckles. "And when it's time to do an album, there's ones that we've forgotten about that someone has sung at a party."
To make them a Great Big Sea song, instead of 50 verses and no choruses, essentially they'll take one verse and make it a chorus, and arrange it so that it fits into a three-minute and twenty second format. "What we do in the arrangement process is we actually try them all," says Hallett. "I can play quite a few, as well as Sean and Alan. We just play around. 'Let's try this a capella. No, this doesn't sound right, let's try a tin whistle instead of a guitar line. Nah, let's combine this with something else.' And we just play with it until we have something unique, that has the elements of Great Big Sea, but is still fresh. You can't make the same album, over and over again."
Unlike in Cape Breton, where Ashley MacIsaac has been accused of desecrating a respected and imitated tradition, Newfoundland traditionalists are far more easy-going. "Most people in Newfoundland are so delighted that one band is making songs that last for another generation," says Hallett. "It's less orthodox than Cape Breton and more a family tradition. Every family has its own songs and instrumentals, and there's no real set way to play or perform. The fact that you're doing Newfoundland songs is what's important, not how you approach them or how you arrange them. You can even change the words, the titles, and the melodies. Things like that don't seem to rattle people in Newfoundland as much."
Of the traditionals on Play, there are reasons Great Big Sea chose the raucous drink-in-death tale of "The Night Pat Murphy Died" and a capella "General Taylor", because they had memorable choruses and powerful melodies, "the elements of any good pop song". And, similar to the Second Line Brass in New Orleans, which performs at funeral processions, both songs celebrate the life of someone dead.
"There's a huge tradition in Newfoundland of singing jovial-type songs about deaths," says Doyle. "They've had hard times for centuries and this is a way to shrug your shoulders and keep going."
"Irony is at the core of all good Newfoundland songs," adds Hallett, "the contrast between the possible bleakness or tragedy that's inherent in Newfoundland history and also the sense of humour and the love of life and dependence that Newfoundlanders value in each other. That's typical of Newfoundland songs. The melody and the lyrics just totally belie what's actually going on between the lines."
"Recruiting Sargeant" is another such song. Based on the impact World War I had on St. John's, an up chorus prepares the young men to die.
"Newfoundland's army was wiped off the face of the earth in one morning, half-way through World War I, and the country never really recovered from it," explains Hallett, who wrote the song using part of a melody from an old Scottish war song. "It was one of the things that helped plunge it into the depression which led to Newfoundland joining Canada."
The irony continues, says Hallett, with Great Big Sea's joyous version of REM's "End of the World" as opposed to "the bleak and cynical approach REM took to it."
"The REM traditionalists will get very upset with us," teases Doyle. Great Big Sea's original material ranges from the unbridles optimism of "Ordinary Day" (written by Doyle and McCann) to the awkwardness of a break-up in "How Did We Get From Saying I Love You..." (by Doyle) to the more complicated lyrical structure of "My Apology" (by McCann), and shows the band members' individual writing preferences. "Alan tends to write closer to pop mainstream and starts from the melody and the hook; Sean tends to work hard on the lines. His is personal and often traditional, and I tend to make the story work first," capsules Hallett.
Of the variety on the new album, Doyle says, "We would like our records and our shows to reflect the kind of music we would sing if we sat around the living room. That's another thing I love about Newfoundland - the kitchen parties. You'd hear a Hank Williams song, then you'd hear a 7,000-year old traditional song, then a song that somebody wrote last week, and then someone would do a recitation, and everything would have equal value. And I liked the way our kind of music was applicable. I don't think we'll ever do a record that's all originals because that's not what Great Big Sea's about. Great Big Sea's about the songs."
Hallett's Glossary:
REEL: a dance tune that's in 4/4 time. It should sound like the running of a horse.
JIG: in 6/8, it's more of a rolling rhythm.
WALTZ: is in quarter-time, unlike the popular Viennese version, which is very structured. Most Canadian waltzes are a lot looser.
STRATHSPEY: slower, also in 4/4 time; very difficult to play. It's more of a Scottish form.
SINGLE: (as opposed to a double, which would be a reel): we use this form quite a lot. A single is in cut time, which is 2/4 time - same as 4/4, but you count to the beats in double time. It's very, very fast. The only thing that's remotely similar is a polka, but not much.
SHANTY: they were songs that were originally to coordinate work efforts on sailing ships and sailing docks.
GREAT BIG GEAR
Bob Hallett plays:
-Barcus Berry electric violin with LR Baggs pickup
-Hohner button accordiona; Erica & Sonata models with ATM clip-on mic
-Flatiron mandola with Fishman pickup
-Sausado, Chieftan and Feadog tin whistles
Darrell Power plays:
-Guild acoustic bass with Fishman system
-1973 Fender Precision bass
-1991 Fender Jazz bass
-Trace Elliot bass preamp
-Paddy Power 1993 Spruce Bones (custom made)
Sean McCann plays:
-Takamine EN10 acoustic guitar
-Fred Halpen and Brendan Glass custom built bodhrans
-Sausado tin whistles
-Audio-Technica wireless systems
Alan Doyle plays:
-Takamine NP25C acoustic guitar
-Takamine EN10C acoustic guitar
-Trinity College shortneck bouzouki with Fishman system
-Audio-Technica wireless system
All use Klark active direct boxes, Shure Beta 58 mics and Garwood
wireless monitors.
Karen Bliss is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
