Hi All,

New music to share! I had a few free days while touring around the Atlantic Bubble in November. Nipped into Joel Plaskett’s amazing New Scotland Yard studio with Cory and Kendel. We recorded six songs in three days live-off-the-floor, directly into an old tape machine. Leave Her Johnny has been one of my fav shanties since I was a kid.

This shanty of a ship’s last day is one of the dozen or more I don’t remember learning. I realize this may seem odd to some, as in most parts of the world people have one or two songs they don’t remember learning, like Happy Birthday or Silent Night. But in Newfoundland we have so many songs that are just part of our language. I doubt many from around here could tell you when they learned I’se The B’y or Lukey’s Boat. We just know them.

Hope you like it. Full EP comes out in May, more to come!

Cheers,
Alan

Hi All,

So happy to have a few real live shows on the calendar, in a few places close to home. But if you can’t make it person, not to worry. We are STREAMING LIVE from St. John’s, Newfoundland on Friday and Saturday nights’ shows in November and you can grab a virtual ticket now!

I can’t wait to gather, responsibly of course, and celebrate the release of a new project. We’ve got a wonderful intimate setting planned at YellowBelly in the heart of George Street in St. John’s. We really wanted to accommodate everyone but COVID restrictions make the in-person capacities very small. The venue is a beautifully restored historic building and we’ll be on the second floor so with apologies, this is not the fully accessible show like we love to offer. Grateful we have a livestream so all can join. BONUS: all livestream tickets will include a code to get 20% off in the merch store. Deadly.

Now, are you wondering about this new project? Introducing a new EP which you can PRE-ORDER now, Songs From Home:

This EP is a special collaboration we created in isolation in the earliest days of the pandemic. By we I mean myself, Fortunate Ones, Ennis Sisters, The Once and Rachel Cousins. What a gang.
Songs From Home is really all about making and keeping connections at a time when it was so difficult to be connected. And I can’t wait to see you again, from the stage, through a computer or tablet or smart TV… however we need to do it.

Cheers,
Alan

Folks, today you can pre-order, pre-save and pre-add the Rough Side Out EP:

Anyone who pre-orders will receive my cover of John Mellencamp’s “Paper In Fire” as a download. Lonesome Jubilee by Mellencamp remains one of the most influential records of my life. When it came out in 1987, I was just 18 years old and had a pretty solid foundation in traditional music from my parents and Newfoundland heroes like the Wonderful Grand Band. I was a massive fan of Mellencamp, or Cougar Mellencamp’s more rock and roll tunes from the early 1980s, but when his new single Paper in Fire came on the radio and video stations, I saw and heard something that spoke to me like never before. I saw an internationally renowned singer-songwriter on international TV fusing rock and roll instruments with fiddles and mandolins and banjos and accordions. All the instruments I grew up with in my own Newfoundland fishing town, played on MTV in a song that fused rock and roll and folk music. I was entranced. I still am. I’ve been wanting to cover Paper in Fire my whole career, but you really can’t do a good job on that song live unless you have an ace fiddler, and a banjo player, and an accordion player standing next to each other. In the Beautiful Beautiful Band we finally had the right combination and we are stoked to play a song that so few have covered and so many have loved.