![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
If you read much round here, you know I'm big on anniversary remembrances. I've got one coming up next weekend that I didn't even realize until just now was upon me. It'll be eight years next Sunday since I saw Great Big Sea perform live for the last time.
I forget how I discovered this Canadian trio-in-my-time. Probably CFNY or something coming over the border, and it was a cover of REM's "End of the World" that first caught my ear before the not-dulcet opening tones of "Ordinary Day" worked their way into my repertoire. I saw them for the first time outside at a free Buffalo concert series then known as Thursday at the Square. It's no longer free, no longer just Thursdays, and long gone from Lafayette Square. Then I saw them play indoors at UB, but the final was July 18, 2013, at a still-active Rochester series called Party at the Park, then hosted next to the War Memorial. I picked up five VIP tickets for five bucks a pop, and was joined by Emily and Cameron who were in their first Rochester summer then, and longtime LJ friend Rachel and her dad who came in from Buffalo.
Carbon Leaf opened, and for ten bucks I scored a combination flash drive/beer bottle opener containing an .mp3 of their entire show. But the headliners who followed were the three remaining members of the Newfoundlanders I'd been following for years: Alan Doyle, Sean McCann and Bob Hallett. They were touring in support of what would be their final album, titled XX in honour of their 20th year together. No beer opener from that performance, but we do have their final live album from 2006, Courage, Patience and Grit which includes a DVD of a pretty comprehensive set of their music from up to that point. There's a focus on their lives and musical traditions as Maritimers. Their catalogue includes at least two songs about horses falling through not-quite frozen ice, and two more odes to the boats of the harbour to which they all aspired: one belonging to "Gideon Brown," and another to, and this will be important later, "Lukey."
Sean announced his departure near the end of that tour. He's recorded several solo albums since then; Bob's biggest success has been consulting on the music for the international Broadway hit Come from Away; but Alan has remained the frontman face of the GBS great days and I just acquired his most recent EP, called Back to the Harbour.
It's very different material. None of the rockin'-on anthems of "Shine Right Through Me" from GBS days or "Summer Summer Night" from his last full solo CD, and not the very traditional spins on shanties that both he and the band have also done. These are heartfelt trips back to the province, town and island that were separate from "the Mainland" in more ways than one. The first track came on in my car, more or less on its own, when I was driving home from errands yesterday, and although I've listened to it all the way through several times, I got a chance to really listen to "Back Home on the Island," and caught for the first time that there's a callback to their previous boat tribute song:
♫Back home on the island
people are watching the sun go down,
It used to be a mighty good fishing ground,
Twill never be the same again;
'Cause all the trawlers came, picked it clean,
What was left of the pickings was a little too lean,
Now Lukey's old boat is just a pale shade of green,
She's laying upon the sand.
And if you think that's a joke,
well let me tell you, brother,
That I don't see nothing to laugh about,
You better get out while you think still can;
I hear they got a few jobs left on the mainland.♫
I thought it was cool that Alan would homage his own material in this new song, but it turned out he didn't write either.
----
"Lukey's Boat" dates to at least the 1930s. The boys recorded it on the 1995 album we have a compiled version of, and that was the first version I ever heard. They joined the Chieftains for a version of it a few years later, and others have recorded and used it since. But the sadder reference in "Back Home on the Island," where the boat is upturned and out of the water, turns out to be part of a newer musical legacy. Alan acknowledges and praises it on his website (there's no link to the specific piece):
I first heard this song on TV sung by the most influential band I have ever known, Wonderful Grand Band. The voice singing was that of the legendary Ron Hynes though the words he spoke could have been directly from the mouth of any one of my father’s generation in Petty Harbour. They spoke with weary heartbreak to see the way of life their parents lived, with happy, busy days on the waters and in the kitchens, supplanted by shrinking fisheries and one household after the other emptying to flee to the mainland for work in faceless crowds in nameless factories. I hope you love Cody’s short film to accompany Back Home on the Island as much as I do. My hometown, like so many on the coast of our Province is hoping to hold onto some of the best of our traditions and remind everyone, including ourselves, that we come from a rich and beautiful time and place.
The Ron Hynes version he probably saw can be seen here and is also Something Beautiful:)
I forget how I discovered this Canadian trio-in-my-time. Probably CFNY or something coming over the border, and it was a cover of REM's "End of the World" that first caught my ear before the not-dulcet opening tones of "Ordinary Day" worked their way into my repertoire. I saw them for the first time outside at a free Buffalo concert series then known as Thursday at the Square. It's no longer free, no longer just Thursdays, and long gone from Lafayette Square. Then I saw them play indoors at UB, but the final was July 18, 2013, at a still-active Rochester series called Party at the Park, then hosted next to the War Memorial. I picked up five VIP tickets for five bucks a pop, and was joined by Emily and Cameron who were in their first Rochester summer then, and longtime LJ friend Rachel and her dad who came in from Buffalo.
Carbon Leaf opened, and for ten bucks I scored a combination flash drive/beer bottle opener containing an .mp3 of their entire show. But the headliners who followed were the three remaining members of the Newfoundlanders I'd been following for years: Alan Doyle, Sean McCann and Bob Hallett. They were touring in support of what would be their final album, titled XX in honour of their 20th year together. No beer opener from that performance, but we do have their final live album from 2006, Courage, Patience and Grit which includes a DVD of a pretty comprehensive set of their music from up to that point. There's a focus on their lives and musical traditions as Maritimers. Their catalogue includes at least two songs about horses falling through not-quite frozen ice, and two more odes to the boats of the harbour to which they all aspired: one belonging to "Gideon Brown," and another to, and this will be important later, "Lukey."
Sean announced his departure near the end of that tour. He's recorded several solo albums since then; Bob's biggest success has been consulting on the music for the international Broadway hit Come from Away; but Alan has remained the frontman face of the GBS great days and I just acquired his most recent EP, called Back to the Harbour.
It's very different material. None of the rockin'-on anthems of "Shine Right Through Me" from GBS days or "Summer Summer Night" from his last full solo CD, and not the very traditional spins on shanties that both he and the band have also done. These are heartfelt trips back to the province, town and island that were separate from "the Mainland" in more ways than one. The first track came on in my car, more or less on its own, when I was driving home from errands yesterday, and although I've listened to it all the way through several times, I got a chance to really listen to "Back Home on the Island," and caught for the first time that there's a callback to their previous boat tribute song:
♫Back home on the island
people are watching the sun go down,
It used to be a mighty good fishing ground,
Twill never be the same again;
'Cause all the trawlers came, picked it clean,
What was left of the pickings was a little too lean,
Now Lukey's old boat is just a pale shade of green,
She's laying upon the sand.
And if you think that's a joke,
well let me tell you, brother,
That I don't see nothing to laugh about,
You better get out while you think still can;
I hear they got a few jobs left on the mainland.♫
I thought it was cool that Alan would homage his own material in this new song, but it turned out he didn't write either.
----
"Lukey's Boat" dates to at least the 1930s. The boys recorded it on the 1995 album we have a compiled version of, and that was the first version I ever heard. They joined the Chieftains for a version of it a few years later, and others have recorded and used it since. But the sadder reference in "Back Home on the Island," where the boat is upturned and out of the water, turns out to be part of a newer musical legacy. Alan acknowledges and praises it on his website (there's no link to the specific piece):
I first heard this song on TV sung by the most influential band I have ever known, Wonderful Grand Band. The voice singing was that of the legendary Ron Hynes though the words he spoke could have been directly from the mouth of any one of my father’s generation in Petty Harbour. They spoke with weary heartbreak to see the way of life their parents lived, with happy, busy days on the waters and in the kitchens, supplanted by shrinking fisheries and one household after the other emptying to flee to the mainland for work in faceless crowds in nameless factories. I hope you love Cody’s short film to accompany Back Home on the Island as much as I do. My hometown, like so many on the coast of our Province is hoping to hold onto some of the best of our traditions and remind everyone, including ourselves, that we come from a rich and beautiful time and place.
The Ron Hynes version he probably saw can be seen here and is also Something Beautiful:)