Great Bigger Sea
After bucking trends for about two decades, Maritime rockers have a secret: Americans love them, too
Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. Bob Hallett is concerned what might happen if it gets out. He’s seen other bands deal with it, and he’d rather not have to answer the questions, or even acknowledge it.
“Please don’t,” the musician says. “It would f—k it up. Tomorrow night there will be nobody.”
Well, because he and his merry band of travellers in Great Big Sea are now safely back in their own homeland, perhaps it’s safe to let the cat out of the bag and admit their secret shame: They actually do pretty well in the U.S.
“Somehow in a kind of Rodney Dangerfield way, without people even noticing, we became, not famous, but well known down here,” Hallett says while sitting in a parking lot outside of Angels Stadium in Anaheim, a few hours before performing a sold-out show in a 1,400-seat theatre. “By Canadian standards that’s an enormous success but somehow we’ve managed to do it without anybody outside of our management office noticing.”
He laughs. “You know what? It’s fun. ... That whole existential thing that I’m sure Gord Downie and Jim Cuddy get sick of talking about, for us, nah, actually the States are great. We do really well down here. The beauty of it was, there were no expectations. For Great Big Sea, the fact that we became successful in Canada was a surprise to most of our industry critics and no one expected us to do anything in the States so every success we’ve had is a triumph rather than a disappointment.”
The East Coast Canadian folk rock act are now in the midst of celebrating one non-regionally specific triumph, that of lasting two decades in the music industry, which they celebrated with the release of a career retrospective last year titled XX and, now, an extensive tour that brings them to the Jubilee Auditorium for a pair of shows Thursday and Friday.
They have, as Hallett says, defied the odds, thanks to a unique sound that somehow transcended the traditional Maritimes roots of the music and allowed them to be embraced by the entire nation (and, apparently, another), releasing 10 full-length studio albums, and building a rabid fan base ready for a rockin’ kitchen party wherever they go.
He actually still marvels at the fact that Great Big Sea — whose nucleus includes Hallett, Alan Doyle and Sean McCann — were one of the bands to come out of that great Canrock movement of the early ’90s, especially considering how unabashedly regional they seemed, albeit not in keeping with the temperament of the time.
“The message coming from the East Coast of Canada was not a happy one,” he says of those early days. “It was all doom and gloom, and economic ruin and loss of culture and what were we going to do?”
“There was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth, and Great Big Sea was the antithesis of that. We came out with a lot of pride and a lot of energy and really took the music and turned it on its head,” Hallett says, noting they weren’t alone in doing so, mentioning other acts such as The Rankin Family, Ashley MacIsaac and Natalie MacMaster. “The thing with us is that somehow we found the energy to keep it together.”
And now that they reached a milestone that very few Canadian rock bands can lay claim to —especially from that period, with many of those acts having disbanded only to now reform to cash in on the nostalgia for those days — is something that Great Big Sea are happy to celebrate but, from Hallett’s point of view, it’s not something they’re ready to acknowledge with what many might consider an allowable emotion.
“Proud?” he says. “I probably don’t think that way. I’m enormously pleased that we’ve managed to make it this far with our dignity somewhat intact. And I’m amazed at the body of work. When you’re doing it it’s in little tiny pieces. It’s like a guy who mows 10 feet of his lawn every day and he looks out one day and the whole thing is mowed. That’s kind of the way it feels.
“It was such a gradual process that we didn’t realize we were building this castle until it was done.”
It was only when he and his bandmates got together last year to sift through the material for XX — including for a book and DVD documentary that are included in a deluxe box set version of the collection — that it really hit home for Hallett.
And he admits it wasn’t a process he enjoyed, partially because the passage of time not only ran counter to the way he had always approached his life and the band, but because during that same time period he was being forced to deal with it in a very personal way that put it into the context of mortality.
“It’s no doubt it was an odd experience, because I never look back, I’m not made that way,” he says. “Being forced to do it, first of all, my mother passed away last summer and it was a long and painful demise, and combine that with meeting with the guys once a week going through all of these pictures of ourselves as teenagers it was very strange thing to do.
“I’m still a bit rattled by it, to be honest.”
Perhaps softening the blow, somewhat, is the fact that along with their past, XX also speaks of the future, containing among all of those hits and favourites six new studio songs, which to Hallett shows that despite its inherent connection to the past Great Big Sea will continue to move forward — not necessarily the same way as it had in the past, the traditional music industry cycle of recording albums, touring to support the albums, and doing it all again.
He figures that the band will continue to record a few songs when it feels the urge but will instead focus on the one thing that keeps him going and keeps Great Big Sea flowing into its third decade, which is performing live.
In fact, that’s the one thing he points to as having made the entire 20-year mindset even remotely bearable, the act of standing on the stage no matter country they’re in and performing live.
“All of the problems cease to be when you walk out there,” he says.