IN CONCERT
Great Big Sea with Spirit of the West
When: Tonight, 8 p.m. (doors at 7)
Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre
Tickets: $59.50/$45.50 in person at the arena box office, by phone at 220-7777, or online at www.selectyourtickets.com
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The
music industry can be tough on those who get caught in the blustery
winds of a fad or trend. Here today could mean gone tomorrow. Or worse
-- absent forever.
Great Big Sea, long considered one of Canada's
finest Celtic bands, has been swept up in the tornado for 16 years. But
the St. John's, Nfld. group's three members are keeping their feet
firmly on the ground. Although the Celtic music fad that dominated
Canadian music during the late 1990s is no longer of the same size or
scale, the genre's top-tier groups continue to make a living at it.
"[Celtic
music] is not page one of the magazines anymore, but we still have a
page," said the band's charismatic frontman, Alan Doyle. "Signs are
good, knock on wood."
Great Big Sea will compete this weekend at
the Juno Awards for Group of the Year, its 10th career nomination at
the annual awards show. A win would be fitting, given that the band is
having its most successful tour to date.
Great Big Sea's current
nine-date trek through Canadian hockey arenas, which wraps tonight in
Victoria, is setting attendance records. For Doyle and bandmates Séan
McCann and Bob Hallett, it's a sweet victory.
Clearly, the death
of Celtic music has been greatly exaggerated. East Coast products the
Barra MacNeils, the Rankin Family and Natalie McMaster are still going,
while the West Coast's biggest Celtic act, Spirit of the West, is
currently opening all of Great Big Sea's arena dates.
Playing to
thousands of raucous fans each night is a treat for the Vancouver band,
whose pace has slowed to roughly 30 dates a year. After 26 years
together, the band earned some respite from the road. Drummer Vince
Ditrich, who also manages the group, says a reduced road schedule
enables Spirit of the West to maintain a high quality of performance,
which has always been the trademark of him and his bandmates John Mann,
Geoffrey Kelly, Hugh McMillan, and Tobin Frank.
"We wouldn't be
able to get up for it if it was really serious and precious," Ditrich
said from his home in Nanoose Bay. "We're too regular guy-ish to take
ourselves that seriously. We have wives and families that would call us
out instantly if we started getting precious about shit like that. In
some ways, it relegates us to a lack of superstardom because we don't
walk around asking people to touch the hem of our garments. We're real
guys with tax bills and groceries and dogs."
Years ago, Great Big
Sea opened shows for Spirit of the West. There's a huge amount of
mutual respect between the two groups, made even stronger by the type
of music both bands feel passionately about. Groups that continue to
play Celtic music are indebted to each other, Doyle said.
"In the
mid-'90s in Canada, the fad of the day was Atlantic Canadian bands --
fiddle music. It was great for us, because we got noticed at a time
when we normally would not have been."
Canadian
Celtic music that sprang from the kitchens of Newfoundland took nearly
everyone who played it to the top of the charts and back down again.
The fallout from the fad didn't stem from the music of Spirit of the
West or Great Big Sea. Fad-chasers were the culprits, according to
Doyle.
"Around that time, every punk band in Ontario or Alberta
was adding a mandolin player or a fiddle player. I used to joke, when
the fad ended, it was those same bands that then fired their mandolin
player and hired dudes in suits and a horn section and became a swing
band."
The passage of time is a big topic of discussion for both
Ditrich and Doyle. There is more than 42 years of professional
experience between the two groups, 15 Juno Award nominations and many
more hits. One of the biggest from either band is Home For a Rest,
which made Spirit of the West stars in the early '90s. Great Big Sea
has covered the song in concert for years, but is respectfully omitting
it from their current set so that Spirit of the West can get all the
glory.
"It's a bloody juggernaut," Ditrich said of the drinking
tune, which was voted one of the best Canadian songs of all-time by CBC
Radio One listeners. "I just cannot believe that this song has such a
life. People from everywhere on earth know this song."
Doyle
heads to England next week to shoot scenes with Russell Crowe and Cate
Blanchett for director Ridley Scott's upcoming Robin Hood film.
Brushing shoulders with three Oscar winners won't change Doyle. He has
discovered the secret to success as a Celtic musician -- a feat
hundreds of other musicians were unsuccessful at.
"We all went to
school and have had jobs -- we know what the real world is like. This
is a great job, man. So if there's a secret, that's it. 'Hold on boys,
we've got a good thing on the go here, how do we keep this going?' "
mdevlin@tc.canwest.com
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