Alan Doyle remembers well the first time he performed in this city. It was September 1995. The upstart university in Prince George was holding its first Backyard Barbecue, an outdoor music festival to welcome students to the new school year. On the bill were groups like Barstool Prophets and the red hot Junkhouse. One band had to cancel, leaving organizers scrambling to find a replacement. A booking agent offered them an upstart Celtic-Canadian band out of Newfoundland that happened to be on their first tour of B.C. - a little act by the name of Great Big Sea.
The organizers took a chance on the power-acoustic foursome. Great Big Sea took a chance on Prince George. It was instant mutual love. Well, it took the duration of a concert, but the fans left knowing they had just witnessed an act about to blow like a North Atlantic humpback. And Great Big Sea knew they had just paraded into a heavy metal show with their fiddles and bouzoukis and not only lived to regale the tale but they converted the congregation.
"People always ask 'was there ever a gig where you thought you could really make it' and I say yes, but it's not what you think," said Doyle, referring to that UNBC show where they were forcibly interjected on the skeptical rock crowd. "And here comes this little band in shorts, with their accordion and fiddle, winking and singing happy Newfoundland songs. It was one of my first indications that maybe we were going to be able to pull this off. I really enjoyed it. That was nowhere we should have done well, but we did well, and I'm so grateful."
They packed up the van right after that show, drove through thick forest fire smoke, inched through 100 Mile House past the Gustafsen Lake standoff in full progress, and played The Town Pump in Vancouver the next night, opening for "a really great band" called She Stole My Beer. It was about as quintessential a first visit to B.C. as a Newfie band could hope for.
The band has been back several times since, but this is the first visit by Alan Doyle all on his own. As a show of good faith, he is bringing with him a couple of brand new projects.
One is his latest album, So Let's Go, the title track of which is steaming across the charts right now on the strength of a pounding pop melody, some infectious whistles, and a video co-starring film / TV stars Scott Grimes and Jess Macallan (good friends from past projects).
The other is his first book, the 2014 autobiography Where I Belong about growing up in Petty Harbour, about as far east as you can get in Canada.
"From my house I'm actually closer to Warsaw than I am to Prince George," he said.
It was there on the shores of Maddox Cove, while a small boy, that a film crew came to make the movie A Whale For The Killing based on the Farley Mowat novel. Little Alan was cast as Boy On Bridge and when he made his first solo record in 2009, that's what he named it. He has that material in his trove as well as he makes that continental journey to headline the Sunday show at the Canada Winter Games music festival.
So is the band ever upset when he writes a good song for a solo project instead of bringing it to the Great Big Sea table? Do they ever gripe hey, we could have used I've Seen A Little (the hit single from Boy On Bridge) for ourselves?
"That was one of the ones I had recorded, and when we put together a few new pieces for the XX record (the Great Big Sea greatest hits package), I brought it to the band. What do you think? Do you guys like it? But they thought it was too country-rock for the band," he said and explained their songwriting process is more specific. He doesn't stockpile songs in different files for different purposes. If Great Big Sea needs tunes, they all get to work writing tunes.
Of course it helps that they have such an affinity for their home province. They love to dip their net in the waters of centuries-old folk music that now defines modern Newfoundland and Labrador. That means they don't have to write as many songs, but it comes with another challenge.
"The traditional world is such a great comfort, to have that canon of songs, awesome songs, but that was one of the hardest part of writing for Great Big Sea because (the ones we write ourselves) have to stand up to some song that has stood up for 286 years. For example, the song Bob (Hallett, band co-founder) wrote called The Old Black Rum, it has that traditional ring, but he wrote it in 1993 or '94. I was there. It's served us so well and that's a compliment to him."
The strength of those songs is woven like golden thread into the tapestry of Canadian culture, which is a feat of confederation when you consider the distance, and yet people in the forested wilderness of northern B.C. have as much love for Drunken Sailor or Lukey's Boat or Mari-Mac or Donkey Riding as someone from the prairies, someone from the Great Lakes or someone from the far north.
"I was in a cab in the mid-90s in Toronto," said Doyle. "The radio station played a four-pack of songs. I paid attention because ours was the first one, so that's cool we're on the radio, and then the next song was Our Lady Peace, followed by Susan Aglukark and then Celine Dion. Find me another country on earth where that can happen - where the four of those people are considered music of the same country. That's four people who have never met - who barely speak the same language. I mean, I always joke with people that we don't speak Canadian English."
Their success has reached global proportions. It has propelled them to stardom across numerous borders, racked up album sales and concert sell-outs, and Doyle even wound up one of the co-stars of the Ridley Scott film Robin Hood where he played, of course, the fabled minstrel Alan-A-Dale.
Yet back home on his island, he's still just one of the folks. He is almost habitually humble.
"Kinda sucks, doesn't it? You'd think I'd have a villa by now," he deadpanned. "But I'm starting to prove my own story now. I said 20 years ago, I'm not going out playing concerts as a means to an end. I'm not in the music business so I can work my way out of the music business. I want to play concerts for a living, I don't want to play concerts so I can make a trillion dollars and be famous and move to Spain and not play concerts anymore. I want to play concerts because I want to play concerts. This is what I'm built for."
It's what all of Newfoundland and Labrador is built for, which plays a role in his humility. He knows he stands on the shoulders of thousands and is amongst thousands more who are also adept at the melodies and rhythms of his uniquely musical island. There isn't room for celebrity in a crowd of peers.
"There are certain communities in the world, and Newfoundland is not the only one, where the instinct is to entertain ourselves," said Doyle. "I've wondered about that over the years. My latest theory is, say a generation or two ago, every other part of North America, probably including Prince George and to the smallest farming community in Iowa, they had television and radio and on a Friday night a bus showed up at the local community hall with some travelling people to entertainment. Entertainment came to them. None of that ever happened in Newfoundland until very recently. You had to do it yourselves. That was the bloodline I was born into. Nobody was coming to play music so you had to play your own music."
On Sunday night, outside in Prince George as he did for his first concert here, Alan Doyle and a large band he's assembled, will crank out those tunes we all identify with no matter where in Canada we're from - and that crowd at Games Plaza will be from all corners of our country. He promised some traditional numbers, some Great Big Sea favourites, some of his solo material, and if the crowd demanded it he would even read a short chapter from his book. Ok, maybe not the book reading, but all the rest happens between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. along with Ben Caplan, Black Spruce Bog, DJ Ant and a fireworks show to close.
