Imagine being successful at EVERY art form you try? Not just as a singer and songwriter, but composer, playwright, and actor too? That’s the case of Newfoundland’s most famous export Alan Doyle. After Great Big Sea called it a career, Doyle went on to build on that initial fame with a string of solo work, but that was just a drop in the bucket of his artistic endeavours. We caught up with the very busy artist ahead of his performance at Bluesfest today.
APT613: Honestly, it’s tiring just keeping up with everything you’re doing these days.
AD: It’s a bit of a busy summer when it all ends up happening at the same time. But that’s part of the fun. It’s a bit of a train smash, I call it every now and again when the four or five columns of your life are all firing at the same time. But it’s all good.
We’re in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island mostly, in the middle of a run of a musical that I helped to write and I play one of those roles in, called Tell Tale Harbour. That musical is running here until the end of the summer, and then in September it moves to the Mirvish stages in Toronto and does a six week run at the Royal Alexandra Theater.
We’ve always known when you allow Newfoundlanders to tell a story, it’s gonna be a good one, whether it’s Come From Away or now Tell Tale Harbour.
Alan Doyle at the “Come Out With Me” Tour. Photo: Landon Entwistle/Apt613.
I’m lucky to come from that world where a lot of the history’s been recorded in story and song and where that kind of comes naturally to us to be storytellers in whatever world we live in. I always thought that it was a great blessing to be from a place where there are songs just in the air.
Music lives in the air in a way that it doesn’t in other places. And I always like to point out that I was born into a tradition that sings songs that were conceived long before there was any kind of professional music industry. Even before there were concerts to be played, especially in small fishing towns, there were no concert halls. Music was to entertain and to coordinate a dance. It had a function, and the songs are often written about things that are only from there.
I’m sure in the 1740s there was nobody in Petty Harbour singing songs about Manhattan. They didn’t know anything about Manhattan, all they knew was what was in their own backyard. So that’s how the storytelling and songwriting tradition started, and has kind of stayed that way.
And they did it because they needed to, they felt the need to capture and record some of their own history. There was no newspaper. There was no library. If they wanted five years from now to remember whatever dumb thing that Reggie did at the garden party, they wrote a song about it. If there was a shipwreck or a disaster or a death or a birth, the newspaper of the day for all those people was a song.
You are now going to be playing Bluesfest for the fourth time solo, plus some appearances with Great Big Sea as well. What keeps you bringing back?
Bluesfest might be the best organized festival in the country. You probably take it for granted because it’s in your own backyard, but I mean, I play lots of them, and not many of them are run as well as Bluesfest is run.
But the other part of it, in all honesty, and I’m not just saying it, it’s Ottawa. From the very first time Great Big Sea played Ottawa, we were welcomed and appreciated and loved, and it continues to this day that Ottawa is one of the biggest places for me in the world. It’s just a place that has always looked after me every time I go there in whatever incarnation. So I’m always grateful for any opportunity to come to Ottawa, especially Bluesfest.
Alan Doyle at Bluesfest. Photo: Landon Entwistle/Apt613.
This time you’ll be opening for Shania on the main stage.
What a thrill! We actually did it last summer, in St. John’s at the Churchill Park Music Festival. I think it was 20,000 people or something and we went on right before Shania and what a thrill. It’s just great, because of course everyone is ready for the night and we just get to stoke the fire. It’s a great slot opening for Shania. That’s a prized hour, so I’m really looking forward to it.
Last time you were on the River Stage behind the museum. Does that change your approach to your set?
Always does. That’s part of the job, to have a quick look at the environment that you find yourself in and adjust accordingly. If you’re playing a small theater, you might get away with singing a few ballads and telling a few stories about your grandmother, but if you’re playing the beer garden, and on George Street at 11 o’clock at night and people have been there since four, you better bring the barn burners and you better bring them quick.
Do you have the same backing band as well?
Actually, it’s all the same people with one exception. I don’t want to let the cat outta the bag necessarily, but, you’ll see it on Sunday anyway: we’ve lost (fiddler) Kendel Carson for about four weeks this year, because she’s playing in Shania’s band and we have the wonderful Johanna Sö who lives in the Ottawa area actually. She’s playing with us for the month of July, and she’s absolutely incredible.
Going through everything you’ve had on the go: there’s your solo album last year, Welcome Home; you’ve been scoring of the Son of a Critch series, the Tell Tale Harbour play. What other art form are you going to be mastering next?
Alan Doyle at Bluesfest, July 2023. Photo: Curtis Perry.
I have a book coming out in November called Smiling Land, which I assembled over the last two or three years. It’s a sort of travel and observational book about going around Newfoundland and Labrador, because I think I know everything about Newfoundland and Labrador, and then watch me discover that I actually know very little. It’s one of those places that is quick to welcome people when they come in and share their own stories and share their own songs. They don’t want you to leave without knowing.
With everything on the go, I was wondering, it’s been 30 years now since Great Big Sea’s breakthrough album Up. Is there anything planned in terms of a re-release or a 30th anniversary edition?
That’d be fun, wouldn’t it? All the Great Big Sea stuff is 30 years now. We started in 1993, so the start of the band had the 30th anniversary that’s just passed. There’s Up hitting 30 years this year, and then the Play record will be 30 years in 2027. It is a blessing, right? What a thing to have, and those records still live in people’s minds and hearts and soundtracks of their summers. There’s no discussion of it, to be honest with you, but it would be super cool to do, maybe we will be in time for the Play record in 2027.
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