We catch up with Canadian music legend Alan Doyle in his guitar-filled home studio in St. John’s, Newfoundland. First question: what will he do with his last days before launching on a massive North American tour?
“Shovel!” he says and bursts into laughter. “Whether I wants to do it or not, that’s what I’ll be doing.”
Once he gets the snow moved, he’ll be on the road more or less until the middle of summer, celebrating his new album, Welcome Home.
“At some point during the recording, Cory [Tetford], who plays guitar in our band, said, ‘you know, this is your 20th record!’” Doyle recounts. “And I said, ‘no, no, no.’ And then I added them up and thought, ‘Oh. That’s too many records.’”
“But what a lot of luck,” he continues. “I didn’t get into the music business to make a trillion dollars and move to a villa in Spain. I got into the music business because I wanted to spend my life playing music with my friends.”
“That goal came to me when I was 13 years old and it never left. So 20 records, 30 records, whatever comes, I’m grateful for it.”
Doyle, a songwriter, musician, actor and author, is often best known as the front man of beloved Newfoundland folk-rock band Great Big Sea, which he led for 20 years.
This is his sixth solo album. Doyle is calling Welcome Home his “lower and slower” record. It features several quieter, more introspective songs and he goes into a deeper range with his voice. It felt “terrifying” to do so, he says.
“I offer these songs with tremendous humility,” he says. “A lot of the rest of my songs are me being the grand facilitator in the celebration. I spend a lot of time going to the audience and there are a couple of songs on this album where I ask them to come to me.”
“And that’s a very humbling thing for a guy who spends most of his time yelling, to ask people to come hear you whisper about something.”
It means a new flavour in what Doyle calls “the magic stew” of a compelling musical performance.
“If we do it the way I hope we do it, it’ll be a bit more of a wave of a night, that has rises and falls and heartbreak and joy and more joy.”
Joy is a constant theme throughout his 30 years of music.
“I’ve had more joy packed into my 54 years than a thousand people get in 400 lifetimes so I feel really, really lucky,” he says. “Luck is where stuff comes to you that you didn’t earn because if you could just earn it all you would. But every once in a while you need a good little jingle of luck and I’ve had my share.”
See Alan Doyle, live, February 29 in Edmonton and March 1 in Calgary. Then, a little further down the road, at the Bear Creek Folk Festival in Grande Prairie, August 16 to 18. Details and tickets here.
Check out “Welcome Home” from Alan Doyle’s new record of the same name:
