Been listening to a lot of me lately, with a new album and a new Audio book in the works, so I’m excited to listen to someone else for a while this week. I’m in Halifax for a few days to record some new music for the Ennis Sisters. I feel so lucky to be a part of it all. I’ve been a fan of their singing and Maureen’s writing and guitar playing for over two decades. We’ve been writing and arranging new material over the summer and have descended on the Sonic Temple to lay it down with a killer band including Cory Tetford, Kris MacFarlane, Aaron Collis, and Ronald Hynes. Once again, I can’t believe my luck.

Back in my world, you can check out the newest track from the new album now—Fall. You can STREAM on my updated Spotify playlist, or PRE-ORDER the album on iTunes to download it for yourself now.

Fall is a song I wrote with two of my favourite writers in Newfoundland these days. Tim Baker has been the driving force and creative engine of Hey Rosetta! for many years. His versatility as a composer speaks for it self on every one of their beautiful and complex songs. Andrew James O’Brien could very well be the best lyricist in the province and you can hear his poetry on all the wonderful songs on the Fortunate Ones tunes.

I thought it would amazing to get them in one room to help me with a song. I had the idea for Fall for quite awhile. The central figure in the song is a person who has never really truly been in love, but desperately wants to be. The character in Tom Wait’s “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” has always fascinated me. Likewise, I studied The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in University and both characters struck me as people I’d want to write about myself. Not because they are like me, but because they are not.

Musically, I love slower songs in 6/8 time signature as they sound like powerful waltzes. It is quite common in Celtic music and when it occasionally crosses over into pop and rock, it can be brilliant. Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” might be the best example of this and has always been one of my fav songs.

When Tim and Andrew and I gathered, I sprung these two ideas and influences on them and we all ran with it. Trust me, they wrote all the good parts.

I hope you like Fall.

Cheers,
Alan

This morning, we released another of the tunes from the upcoming album A Week at The Warehouse. Just pre-order on iTunes and you’ll get Bully Boys along with the first single, Summer Summer Night. For those of you who have already pre-ordered, not to worry, you’ll get both songs as well.

I thought I should tell the story of the Bully Boys tune as it is a bit of an unusual one, especially for the folk minded among us.

Late in the Fall of last year, I met with Producer Bob Rock in Vancouver to review the stack of songs I had written for the project he’d agreed to produce for me and the band. He and I picked the ones we liked the most and considered if we had enough variety to make a well rounded album for a fella like me with influences and history from so many genres of music. A big fan of Folk and Celtic music, he asked if I had anything he’d not heard that came from that world.

I thought about it a minute and remembered the song Bully Boys. “Man, I have this song I wrote for a movie awhile back, but honestly can’t remember it all,” I said and sang him the chorus which he liked quite a lot, and continued, “I’ll go back to the hotel and see if I can dig up my verses and the tune and stuff. I’ll sing you the whole deal tomorrow.”

Back at the hotel I sat to remind myself what I had written seven or eight years ago in my trailer on the set of Robin Hood. There was a scene in the film where Robin, played by Russell Crowe, was joined in the hull of a ship by his Merry Men, played by Scott Grimes, Kevin Durand, and myself. The script called for the gents to be singing a song to celebrate, at long last, their leaving the wars in France and returning to their home in England. I wanted to be the one to write it, and successfully pestered the director and composer enough to give me a shot at it.

I figured it should have a sea shanty vibe as the boys were on a ship. I’d learned a bunch of Sea Shanties primarily from Sean, Bob, and Darrell in GBS and from masters like Fergus O’Byrne in St. John’s. I always loved the rhythm and call-and-answer of the song and especially the nautical terminology. One of my fav terms is “Bully Boys”, which in sailor terms means the group of loveable rogues one might share a ship with (perhaps I’ve always likened a tour bus to a ship, and touring musicians to roving sailors, but that’s for another chat). So I wrote:

Row Me Bully Boys
We’re in a Hurry Boys
We’ve got a long way to go
We’ll sing and we’ll dance
And bid Farewell to France
And it’s Row Me Bully Boys Row

I sat in the hotel and smiled recalling how much fun we had recording the demo on set in my trailer. I tried to recall the verses I had written, but honestly could not. I knew I had them on a drive back in St. John’s, but wanted to remember them quickly. I figured I could at least remind myself what parts of it made the film. I opened YouTube and typed in Row me Bu… By the time I got this far in the search bar, I was surprised to see several options pop up in the suggestions below. Some of them read, Robin Hood Bully Boys, others read Robin Hood Shanty, still more were Row me Bully Boys. I was intrigued.

I clicked on the first one and the scene from the film popped up. But I was somewhat shocked to see dozens of other videos of performances of the song. There were versions from English folk clubs, Scottish folk festivals, Croatian concerts, Serbian Shanty fests, American Medieval days, and on and on and on. I was honestly dumbfounded. How could there be so many versions of this song in the universe, when I, the fella who wrote it, could not even remember the words? Not to mention the fact that I suspected and confirmed after a quick look, that only the chorus and a couple of lines from two of the four verses made the cut of the movie.

I can only surmise that folks heard the song snippet in the film and liked it enough to add it to their repertoire. Since they did not know the full song, they adapted it and wrote extra verses and made it their own. For a fella like me, this is very exciting, because that is exactly how folk songs become folk songs. For hundreds, if not thousands of years, a person would hear and remember bits of a song and when get travelled or got back home, they might re-sing what they could recall and add a bunch of their own stuff to finish it up. Amazing that in this day and age of connectivity that this process is still alive and well.

I couldn’t have been more chuffed. I eventually found the four verses I wrote for the original submission to the film and recorded them and a bridge for the A Week at The Warehouse project, which comes out on October 13. As noted above though, you can hear this piece of modern folk music right now by preordering the album on iTunes, or streaming it here.

As ever, I’m grateful for you checking it all out.

Cheers,
Alan

I’ve had hotel rooms over looking the ocean, the lake, the city, the park, the mountains and the river. But I’m not sure I’ve ever had one over looking the gig.

I feel like I’ve had a private box to some great entertainment all day. I watched Cory Tetford light the place up with his amazing voice. I was as charmed as ever by The Fortunate Ones and their harmonies. I’m about to watch Meg Warren and Repartee heat the place even further with their pop wickedness. Feeling pretty lucky to have such a luxury to watch the gig before I walk over and play it myself.

But here’s a secret.

I don’t often spend this much time watching the gig and the concert grounds before I play my set. I do like to check out a few tunes if we have a new opening act or to wander the festival grounds to other stages, but sitting here all day watching the full sets of the other bands while the crowd slowly but surely grows, is not a thing I often do. Truth is, I find it kind of nerve wracking. I worry that the crowd is not growing quick enough and maybe there won’t be the audience we’d hoped for. I watch every cloud as it passes over the stage area and wonder if it will rain on the parade we’d been planning for months. I worry that the opening bands won’t be great and send casual wanderers away, or more likely today, that the opening acts will be so good that I won’t be able to live up to the build up of it all. That, I’ll be a let down after so much great stuff. I worry that I can’t sing as high as one fella, or play guitar as fast as another. And I worry that in a situation like this, on this beautiful day on a perfect stage with amazing sound and lights, in a perfect park where the audience gets in for free, that the one weak link will be me. And if it goes poorly, I won’t have a single thing to blame it on but me.

But somewhere, deep down, I know that these are just nerves. Butterflies that I should be able to turn into energy if I banish them to the right place. I remind myself that admitting it could go poorly is often the biggest reason it does not. In somewhat joking ramp up pre gig speeches to the band, I often say, “It will only be good if we make it good. It won’t be good because we are often good or because we were good last night or might be tomorrow night. It won’t be good if we expect it to get good by itself. It will only be good if we make it good. So let’s go make it good. For us and especially for everyone out there who gave us their night and trusted us to give a good one back to them.’

The crowd is growing beyond thousands now and Repartee are about to hit it hard, as they should. I’m gonna put on my boots and walk to the back stage area and enjoy their tunes as I try to turn these butterflies into something useful.

They say over 10,000 people will give us their night tonight. I say lets give them 10,000 great nights right back to them. And thank them for letting us do so.

It’s the magic hour in the middle of the park. When it’s not quite daylight and not quite dark.

Show time.

Cheers,
Alan