Fiddlers’ Sons celebrates 20 years

When musicians Eddy Quinn, Garth Matthews, Sheila MacKenzie and John B. Webster played the Hume Family Reunion in Brudenell on a summer’s day in 1997, they had no idea they were making P.E.I. music history.

It was their first gig as Fiddlers’ Sons.

But instead of celebrating their status as a newly formed band, the four musicians were “happy for just a chance to play music that we really loved.”

In fact, the goals were modest in the beginning.

“We thought we might play at the legion or a pub once a month. We had met in Garth’s basement to pull together enough material for this gig. And it worked perfectly,” says Quinn, front man for the band that features guitar, fiddle, bass and vocals.

Fiddlers’ Sons played several small shows that summer.

Then in the fall the band got its first big break – a regular Friday night gig at Myron’s Cabaret in Charlottetown. “People would come in for beers and wings after work and we would play our music. Things got livelier as the night wore on. These shows over the years got us in front of a lot of people.”

Live performances also increased the band’s profile and popularity, witnessed by the hundreds of enthusiastic fans who attended happy hour each week. In turn, this resulted in more gigs and work offers.

Eventually their ever-growing audiences inspired the band to produce a show of its own, the Close to the Ground concert series that is in its 14th season.