Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie is typical of their early repertoire. Although it is a great traditional sing-along, they never surrender to pub heroics, and throughout the piece they find subtle nuances, nuances I am still finding now. The blend of their voices has changed little over the years, and unlike some of their more outré pop forays, this has held up well.
A year or so after I heard them for the first time, I went to Halifax, a city I had never visited before, for a student newspaper conference. Somehow I had heard that the Barras were playing at the Club Flamingo, and dragging a Newfoundland fiddle playing friend along, we pipped off the conference to go to the show. The Barras were, as I recall, brilliant. Lucy was there, up from college for the weekend, and the band was in fine form. They played all the ‘hits’, plus a number of Cape Breton sets. I had never heard one before, there is no equivalent in Newfoundland, and I was fascinated by the slow tempo and chromatic builds each set featured. Somewhere along the way I got to talking to this guy, who had noticed that I had a mandolin strapped to my back. In those days I carried it everywhere – just in case – like I was Captain America with his shield or something. He suggested I should join him at a party at someone’s house, which the band was slated to attend. It was all extremely casual. Being a fan of traditional music in that period was like joining a somewhat obscure religion. Enthusiasm was the only qualification, and if you had it, you were in.
Eventually, as the show wound down, we found a cab, and made off for the far distance suburbs where someone’s cousin was hosting the party. We got there at the same time as the band, and were quickly ushered into a house absolutely heaving with people. Instruments of all types were soon out, and the session began in earnest. Everyone knew each other, and my friend and I were welcomed, Newfoundland players being as exotic to them as the Cap Bretoners were to us. The tunes just seemed to get better and better. I felt like I had stepped into this alternate universe, where everyone around me was into the thing in the world I loved more than anything. It was if I had finally found my niche, my group, my place in the world. Eventually, the big pipes came out, and to the accompaniment of drummers bashing away on the kitchen table and whatever else they could find (to the horror of the cousin & host), two pipers led a drunken parade through the house, fiddles, and dancers going mad behind them. It was, bar none, the best party I had ever been to in my life, and I decided right there on the spot that I was done with the punk scene – this was the future, and I was going to seize it.
Eventually the party wound down. It took us hours to get back to our digs, as neither of us had a clue where (a) we were, or (b) where we were billeted, but it didn’t seem to matter. I was wrapped in a glow that took months to wear off. As soon as I got home, I sold my amps and bass, dug out my great-grandfather’s fiddle, and started practicing for real. The Barras had changed my life.
Some years later, we crossed paths with them professionally for the first time, when we supported them on a show in Cape Breton. Backstage, I sat down with Kyle. I figured you only get one chance to thank someone who had had such a huge impact on your life, and I was going to take it. I had spent years prior to that gig envying them, their ability to play music in such circumstances, the fact that they regularly enjoyed evenings like the one I had stumbled onto. My own desire to live in that amazing world had fueled my ambition, the ambition to start Rankin Street, learn all those tunes and instruments, suffer those tough years out in the pubs, and to ultimately move onto Great Big Sea and everything that had followed. If I had not gone to that party that night, I would probably have stayed at my government job, slowly sliding into despair, always wondering what I had missed. Like that girl in the Titanic, I had been saved.
To my astonishment, Kyle remembered the party just as well as I had; as, in fact, did the rest of the band. During their long career together, it was the only such party they had ever been too. I was absolutely amazed to discover that they recalled it with just as much nostalgia as me. They too remembered the pipers in the kitchen, the wild dancing, everything. And nothing like it had ever happened to them before or since.
Which just goes to show, sometimes you really do have to be in the right place at the right time.
The Barra MacNeils
A quick note about the recent death of our friend Dermot: Much has been said about his musical influence, some of it by me, and there is no point repeating it all here. Ryan’s Fancy loom large in the persistence of traditional music in Newfoundland, and for that we are all grateful. More important, Dermot was a true gentleman, one of the nicest people I have ever known. His enthusiasm and boundless energy for singing and playing, plus his wide-ranging mind and intellect were a gift to us all. He shall be much missed.
Ryan's Fancy