Country Canada East Coast singer-songwriter Alan Doyle takes things in twangier direction on new EP By: Erin Lebar Posted: 7:00 PM CST Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020

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This article was published 18/02/2020 (1774 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you’re ever lucky enough to receive a phone call from Canada’s best friend, Alan Doyle, you’ll know it’s him before you even answer — because his name comes up on the call display.

This may not seem like something worth mentioning, but the more common practice with music stars of similar fame is to co-ordinate with a publicist who connects the two phone lines and listens on the other end to make sure nothing goes too far off track.

But not with Alan Doyle; those formalities are replaced with true East Coast hominess when you’re dealing with the pride of Petty Harbour, N.L.

Perhaps that casual, friendly approach also comes from more than 30 years in the business, first as frontman of Great Big Sea, and then as a solo artist with three full-length albums under his belt and a brand new EP, Rough Side Out, which takes him down a slightly different sonic path, into the world of country music.

Doyle says he first got invited into the Canadian country music scene by B.C. singer-songwriter Dean Brody, who asked Doyle and his Great Big Sea bandmates to lend their Celtic hand to the track It’s Friday on his 2012 album, Dirt.

“It turned out great and people loved it,” Doyle says of the song. “And over the course of chatting with Dean and eventually Brett Kissel and Tim Hicks and a bunch of other people, I became aware of how big the Atlantic-Canadian music scene was for most of the Canadian country music folks. Bands like the Rankin Family or Great Big Sea or whatever were kind of part of the building blocks for a lot of those performers.”

It wasn’t long before Doyle was penning tracks with some of the best in the country songwriting game, including fellow Canadian Donovan Woods, and it became apparent recording the tracks with a country flair would be the most authentic way to go.

“I fell in love with the songs we were coming up with,” Doyle says, “and I thought it would be cool to let them live in the world that they were created in and have them be country music songs that were tinged with all the stuff I grew up with, including fiddles and accordions and all that kind of thing.”

The record also boasts two duets — one with Brody, of course, and What the Whiskey Won’t Do with celebrated Canadian country-pop singer Jess Moskaluke.

Doyle hadn’t ever recorded a male-female duet before, but took inspiration from the few country records his parents had when he was growing up in the 1970s and ’80s that featured men and women crooning to each other, such as Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge and, of course, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.

“It was really popular when I was a kid and I’ve always been charmed by the love song or broken-hearted song when a guy and a girl sing together,” says Doyle.

“We wrote that song real quick and Jess is, and I don’t want to over simplify, but she’s one of my favourite singers in Canada right now… she’s a lovely, lovely person, and my God, what an instrument she has.”

In all his years performing, the tour Doyle has just kicked off in support of Rough Side Out is the most extensive of his career (the Canadian leg alone has 34 dates over the course of two months). Live performance is Doyle’s bread and butter, and his excitement is clear as he goes through his itinerary for the next 18 months, which also sees him head to the United States and overseas.

“Well, you know what I always say when people say, ‘What’s the goal of doing 100 concerts a year?’ The goal of doing 100 concerts a year is getting to do 100 concerts a year. The journey is the destination,” says Doyle.

“I didn’t get into the concert-playing racket to get me somewhere else. I started playing concerts with my uncles when I was 13 or 14 and loved it. I loved it. I’m 50 and I still love it. And I’ve been lucky, too, to get to do other things in the music business and the arts world, produce a few records, done a few soundtracks for movies, acted in a few movies, did a few books, all that stuff. And I really enjoy that, especially because I get to work with some talented people but none of it compares to doing a concert for me.

“If someone for whatever reason said, ‘Look, you have to give all the rest of that up and just play concerts for the rest of your life,’ I’d be like, ‘Yeah, OK, cool.’ It’s still my favourite thing to do. It’s magical.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel

Erin Lebar
Manager of audience engagement for news

Erin Lebar spends her time thinking of, and implementing, ways to improve the interaction and connection between the Free Press newsroom and its readership.

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