'We're a Canadian band' — Great Big Sea — On The Town
Posted By BRIAN KELLY for "The Sault Star"
Turning things upside down in the recording studio paid off for Great Big Sea.
The Newfoundland folk-rock trio recruited singer-songwriter Hawksley Workman to produce their ninth studio album,Fortune's Favour. Workman
challenged Alan Doyle (vocals, guitar), Bob Hallet (vocals, numerous
instruments) and Sean McCann (vocals, guitar) in the band's studio in
St. John's.
"We came in and said, 'Alright man, we're your students. Off
you go. Let us know what you'd like us to do,'" said Doyle in a recent
telephone interview from his home in St. John's.
"It was great fun. It was excellent."
His assignments included writing a song with no guitar-- a task that's pretty much unheard of for folk musicians.
"But we taught ourselves to do it which is kind of cool," said Doyle.
The disc's lead track,Love Me Tonight,was one song on the 2008 release penned with those writing orders.
Workman proved such a hit in the studio that he came out on top
in a long-standing tradition the band has when recording a new album.
Starting with their first major offering (1995's Play),a quarter
would be given to a band or production member "whenever you did
something cool," said Doyle.
"It's just a very physical way of saying, 'Oh, that was good,' " he said.
Workman pocketed the most change during the fall of 2007 when Fortune's Favour was recorded.
"(He's) hard to beat in the quarter contest, I'll
tell you right now," said Doyle. "That kid's an idea factory. He's a
bomb. He's fantastic. We wanted someone to come in and do it their way.
We've done it our way a lot . . . We really like the way Hawksley
exaggerates music and overdoes things."
There's a couple of layers to the 14 songs onFortune's Favour.Many dwell on how one's fortune favours or curses people (England, Dream to Live).Doyle
suggests the tracks reflect the band's "good luck" making the huge leap
from playing Newfoundland bars to being Juno Award nominees that are
nearing 20 years of recording and touring.
The trio's good fortune was something the group didn't consider until a decade of experience in the music business.
"When you're younger, you feel like people owe you something," said Doyle.
"You feel like if you work hard, then you can earn a life as a
performer. The more experience you get at it, the more you realize you
can perform all you want. But a life and a career, as paying your
mortgage as a performer of any kind, is a gift that's given to you by
no one else except the fans because they're willing to have you there.
That's it. We've always felt very grateful about it."
That doesn't mean Great Big Sea is content to coast along with
audiences it has built up coast-to-coast. The band plays its fourth
show in 14 years in Sault Ste. Marie on Sept. 25 at Essar Centre.
McCann told The Canadian Press in a 2008 interview that the
band wants to be "huge, big stars, as big as we can be. We're not
satisfied yet."
Doyle agrees with the shoot-for- the-stars approach.
"We didn't do this to have the greatest summer of our lives and then go back to join the dart league on Wednesdays," he said.
"We got at this because we wanted to make music for our
lifetime. We wanted to be in this band for a career. The enemy to
making that happen is being complacent. It's a lot of work to keep it
going even at the level it's been."
Attendance numbers at two recent Great Big Sea concerts suggest Doyle, Hallett and Mc- Cann are headed in the right direction.
A British Columbia concert drew more than 4,000. A Buffalo, N.
Y., date attracted 5,000- plus making the concerts the two most
well-attended dates since forming in the early 1990s.
Great Big Sea wants to reward its die hard fans--several
hundred of whom Doyle expected to attend back-to-back shows in
Vancouver last weekend.
To reward their dedication, with the exception of several
songs, the band played two entirely different setlists. That's a total
of 51 tunes over two evenings. Material included Donkey Riding, Run
Runway, When I'm Up, Mari-Macand Ordinary Day.
"I'd like to encourage that (repeat attendance) rather than discourage it," said Doyle.
"Plus, maybe it's a bit of a vanity or ego thing. Is it? To go, 'Look at what we can do?' "
Fans who boughtFortune's Favourpicked up a bonus DVD. The nearly
hour-long disc features footage of Great Big Sea working with Workman
in the studio and, occasionally, stepping out on to the streets of St.
John's.
The DVD tradition started with 2005'sThe Hard and the Easy.
"It was so popular that we just decided to do it again," said
Doyle. "It's so easy for people to get the music from wherever now. If
you're going to ask people to walk into a store and buy a hard copy of
your record, I think you have to give them something that they can't
get anywhere else. If that's a piece of video, cool. I wouldn't be
surprised if, on our new record, we do the same thing, something
similar."
Doyle wrapped up work in August on Ridley Scott's Robin Hood film, slated for a May 14 release, marks Doyle's film debut. He appears
a minstrel in the latest film celebrating English folk hero.
Doyle and leading man Russell Crowe have been friends since 2004.
The rookie actor relished his time in England, but is reluctant
to say much about his work in the movie for fear of revealing important
plot details.
"I'm still struggling to find a way to describe it," said Doyle.
"The best I can come up with so far is it's just the coolest
mass artistic movement I've ever been involved in -- where so many
artistic departments strive to tell a cool story. It's amazing."
With next week's show, Great Big Sea will have played four
venues in the Sault. Their first performance was in the Ramada Inn
ballroom. The band played Roberta Bondar Pavilion in 2000 and shared
the bill with Jimmy Rankin at Kiwanis Community Theatre Centre as part
of Algoma Fall Festival in 2004.
For a Newfoundland band that once considered earning a
performance night in Halifax to be about as good as it gets, performing
shows in Northern Ontario cities, such as Sudbury and the Sault carries
additional significance.
"You come to realize how big Ontario is and you come to realize
that to make it to that part of Ontario, in the Sault or Thunder Bay,
when you finally get there I remember feeling like we're a Canadian
band now," said Doyle.
"We're not just some band from Newfoundland that had a gig in
Toronto. We're not just some band who made it to Halifax. We're playing
in Sault Ste. Marie on our way to Thunder Bay, coming from Sudbury.
We're a Canadian band."
Tickets for Great Big Sea's Sept. 25 show cost $35.50 or $45.50
plus service charges. They are on sale at the arena box office, by
calling 866-775- 9422 or online at www.essarcentre.ca
On the web: www.greatbigsea.com
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