A walk on THE MILD SIDE
Former Great Big Sea frontman offers a mellower sound on new album
Alan Doyle loves a good singalong song. The former Great Big Sea lead singer has penned plenty of them on more than 20 albums released in the past three decades.
For the new record, Welcome Home, the Petty Harbour, Nfld., singer/songwriter decided to venture into new terrain.
Welcome Home features nine new songs celebrating life, love, and the sad and happy moments we all experience. The opening single, Yours and Mine, is a country-tinged mid-tempo weeper carried by a sweet piano trill more likely to inspire personal reflection than a reason to raise your pint glass.
It's a shift from a lot of the singer's raucous and upbeat earlier work.
“From the earliest days, and still to this day, I'm acutely aware that the musical instincts my songs are founded on are not common in North America,” said Doyle. “I'm not the child of Chicago blues or L.A. rock. I'm a kid of traditional Newfoundland and Celtic music with a bit of that inescapable' 80s hair metal tossed in. As soon as we began touring and recording with Great Big Sea, I began to realize the blessing and the curse of being in a band that featured an accordion and bodhran and tunes in 6/8 time.”
The blessing was the band's ability to find considerable success outside of Canada. The curse was a common expectation of a free pour of drinking ditties. Welcome Home has different roots.
“Songwriters tend to write first about the things that excite us the most, and for many, those are inward-looking things,” he said. “What I want so badly is a barnburner to play at the beer garden concert and liven the mood. This time around, the band that said they didn't want an album full of those and to accept people will listen to my more internal and personal insights.”
Welcome Home reflects what Doyle dubs “lower and slower” writing with great results. The 54-year-old's inner voice makes for good listening.
Among the standouts on the nine-track record is the romantic ballad You'll Still Be With Me. With its seafaring references and loping pace, the tune is ready-made to become a first dance at a wedding favourite.
For all of the maritime references that float into his lyrics, Doyle is no sea-weathered sailor.
“I grew up in a fishing town, spending much of my young life on the wharfs cutting cod tongues out and being on and off the boats, but I never earned a living fishing,” he said. “None of my family were fishermen either, but were a band instead, which was pretty weird. There was a hydroelectric project nearby town that my grandfather managed, so a lot of uncles and such worked for what we used to call Newfoundland Light and Power.”
While he may not have earned a paycheque from working on the water, island life was such that everyone was familiar with that life. Writing about it is fair game.
What Doyle could never do is pen smooth Pacific coast shanties.
“The first time Great Big Sea toured to Vancouver and went down at Granville Island is a moment I can never forget,” he said. “Someone went by in a kayak under the Burrard Bridge and it was the first time I had ever seen anyone on the ocean recreationally. On the Atlantic, a lot of people never even learn to swim because if you go in the water wearing your full working gear, you'll sink like a rock regardless.”
Doyle has always been comfortable bringing in collaborators.
His career is loaded with working on projects with everyone from actor Russell Crowe in the bands 30 Odd Foot of Grunts and The Ordinary Fear of God to co-writing with everyone from Jimmy Rankin to Donovan Woods. Star Wars star Oscar Isaacs even contributed to Welcome Home. These connections come from random meetings on tour to working in film and TV. Doyle's acting credits include everything from director Ridley Scott's Robin Hood to episodes of Murdoch Mysteries. His “other art stuff ” includes authoring bestselling books and a play.
“One of the reasons why when Great Big Sea broke up I made an even bigger band is because I'm a sucker for company, and I'd rather co-write a song any day,” he said. “Oscar and I met when he played King John in the Robin Hood movie and I was in the trailer next door always working on those little lute ditties that my character Alan A'Dayle performs in the film. We connected because he's also a great musician, and first worked together writing the song that formed the plot of a 2011 movie he was in called Ten Years. Now it's come full circle.”
For his coming cross-country tour, Doyle is backed by the Beautiful Band, which includes B.C. fiddle star Kendel Carson, whose credits range from John Prine and Elvis Costello to Spirit of the West and The Paperboys. Many dates are already sold out.