The Top Country Interview with Alan Doyle
by Chas. Hay
He is best known as the lead singer of the East Coast band Great Big Sea, and for almost twenty years the multi-talented music artist Alan Doyle has written, recorded, and performed with his mates in that popular folk-rock band. Now, for the first time, he has released a solo album. It is titled Boy On Bridge and features original tunes produced in various locations (Toronto, Northern Ontario, Nashville, and St. John’s) with various musicians and producers including Gordie Sampson, Hawksley Workman, Colin James, actor Russell Crowe, Mike Post, Jim Cuddy, and Sean Panting. (Top Country exclusive…click on the TC radio tab on the left to listen to a stream of Boy On Bridge).
Buy Alan Doyle’s Boy On Bridge here…
I had the pleasure of recently sitting down with Alan on a rooftop patio on a beautiful afternoon in downtown Toronto, where we discussed his solo debut, his native province, and the music he loves.
TC – It has been well documented in a number of books, including David Levitin’s ‘This Is Your Brain On Music,’ that so much of the music we end up listening to the rest of our lives is determined in our teenage years. What were you listening to when you were a teen?
AD – Luckily, a whole pile of different stuff. I grew up in a folk music kind of place. I grew up where Liam Clancy was the most popular guy in the world, you know The Clancy Brothers and Stan Rogers, that kind of stuff. I was 13 or 14 in the early 80’s, so I like Van Halen and Def Leppard, and I also loved, probably the most favorite stuff I loved, was Lonesome Jubilee by John Cougar Mellencamp, Glass Houses – Billy Joel, Drove All Night – Cindy Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty; singer/songwriter people, guys primarily, who stood in front of an awesome band every night and made records with that band. I was reading the liner notes of Glass Houses to see if Liberty Devitto was still the drummer, and, you know, “this is cool, that black girl who plays the fiddle is on this record now too” and all that kind of stuff.
TC – Yea, and Kenny Aronoff is still Mellencamps’s drummer.
AD – Yea, I loved that. It certainly never occurred to me until I started doing this record that if Lonseome Jubilee came out today it would be called a country record. That’s what country music is today. ’Glory Days’ (Springsteen) would be a country music single and this whole notion of the role of the singer/songwriter with his band that’s what it’s become, and that’s what they call it nowadays. I loved that era of music, not that it’s necessarily gone away. I think Bruce Springsteen records are still awesome. The latest Springsteen record, ahh, …
TC – Wrecking Ball.
AD – Yea, it’s fantastic. I like that type of thing. It’s like a guy with his guns.
TC – Did any of that music you were listening to inform Great Big Sea?
AD – Great Big Sea was much more influenced by the other stuff, by the folkies, by The Clancy Brothers and The Dubliners and Spirit Of The West and The Pogues and by British folk music, you know, Fairport Convention. Great Big Sea’s always been more influenced by that stuff as opposed to the singer/songwriter with a band behind him.
TC – Is this your ‘singer/ songwriter with a band behind him’ record?
AD – I think so, yea, without question. I just love that, I love all kinds of singer/songwriters. Like the Lyle Lovett’s who do all kinds of wacky things with their songs. There is something about a great song, by someone like Kris Kristofferson, with a great arrangement and if it’s a recurring band it has always spoken to me in a cool kind of way, in an ‘E Street’ kind of way.
TC – The Silver Bullet Band.
AD – Oh awesome, man. When I was playing solo gigs in St. John’s I used to do Against the Wind records cover-to-cover.
TC – So why now? Why release your first solo album now?
AD – Really because for the first time in nearly twenty years there was time to do it. We toured… Great Big Sea toured up until almost the middle of 2011 on our last record tour. And we knew we wanted to save a splash for 2013 for our 20th anniversary, so it kind of left 2012 as a time when each band member could kind of do what they wanted. So the next big push for the band will be the end of 2012 and almost all of 2013, so it left a window to do something, to do whatever you want. So Bob did a book and Sean put out a solo record and I did this crazy musical journey where I went into a lot of different musical situations that I always wanted to put myself in.
TC – So you had a year where you could have just chilled and done nothing. So why did you choose to keep doing this?
AD – I swear to God that never occurred to me. It never occurred to me that I was given an opportunity to do whatever I wanted to and take a break from traveling and playing music, and I thought, ‘cool, I’m gonna travel and play some music.’ It’s just a different vibe, a different situation, kind of a fantasyland situation where I get to work with whoever I want to.
TC – How were you able to keep the record so cohesive, when you’re playing with so many different people, different producers, different locations and studios? The obvious common thread is you.
AD – It’s a good question. When I listen to it I don’t see it as disparate or whatever, I sort of hear it as a snapshot of a year in the life of me. I suppose it’s just my own honesty on it. It’s me singing, but I’m pleased to hear…and you’re not the first person to say they were surprised how I managed to get indie rock songs and modern country songs and torch ballads to sit next to each other on a record…but I love that stuff. Some of my favorite records have an electric guitar solo on one song and on the next one a country recording with a fiddle, like Lonesome Jubilee.
TC – Record companies don’t like that.
AD – Shhh (laughs).
TC – How would you categorize Boy On Bridge for someone who hasn’t heard it?
AD – Awesome (laughs), file under ‘A.’ Umm, I don’t know, I guess I’d have to categorize it as a very eclectic record. The country stuff on there sounds like it was recorded in Nashville, which it was.
TC – How was your Nashville experience? How familiar were you with that city before you went down there to record the country songs?
AD – Familiar enough because I knew Gordie (Gordie Sampson, producer of the Nashviile sessions) and those guys, but I wasn’t familiar with the actual recording scene because I had never done that. I had written there before, performed there, but I had never done one of those sessions.
TC – And was that different than other sessions you had done and in what way?
AD – The most efficient music making I’ve ever been a part of in my life. Everybody who makes music for a living should go to Nashville to do a proper session because you learn so much, what to do and what not to do. That doesn’t mean that session will produce the best music in the world, or make a good song an awesome song, but in terms of how to get sound on tape or get recorded, they know how to do it the fastest and most efficient of anyone I’ve ever seen. It’s a machine, a thrilling machine. And it’s only a thrilling, efficient machine because everyone is so f-ing good at their job. It’s like four songs in three hours, no problem. I was absolutely reinvigorated and thrilled by the possibilities of what kind of awesome music you can make in a short period of time if you go into Nashville with the right attitude.
TC – Was it a lot different working on the songs with Hawksley Workman producing, as opposed to the Nashville sessions?
AD – Sort of, not that they were complete opposites of each other because if Nashville is the most efficient machine then Hawksley is the most efficient person. Sean McCann from our band has the best quote about Hawksley, when he produced a Great Big Sea record. Sean said, “Well, the best rhythm section I ever played with in my life is Hawksley.” But Hawksley’s a bit more of a world music guy and a bit more experimental than you might find in a three-hour session in Nashville. Not that those guys wouldn’t be jonesin’ to do that, it’s just not what they’re normally doing in a run of the day. Hawksley’s eyes and ears are wide open.
TC – Backing up here a little bit. Why did you choose music as a career back when you were starting out?
AD – I spent my whole young life preparing to be a schoolteacher or somebody who worked in tourism in Newfoundland. That’s what I did in school. All the while playing music in bands, practicing, writing songs, doing shows, and having a great time doing that and putting myself through university. All the while knowing that if the kind of opportunity presented itself where I could take a shot at making a living with music, even as a part-timer, that I would do it and I would run as hard as I could at it. Then one day Sean McCann stopped me on Water Street in 1992 and asked me to start a new trad band with him and I said sure, and that’s how Great Big Sea started and at the time I was playing pubs, doing solo shows, and in a comedy duo.
TC – So this wasn’t some grand design.
AD – If he hadn’t stopped me I probably would have happily gone into teaching and would’ve played in a band on weekends or something. I’m sure I would have been very content, but make no bones about it, this is what I’ve always wanted to do. Just when you’re a kid growing up in Penny Harbour you just don’t think it’s possible. Nobody gets to do that where I’m from. Nobody gets on a plane that somebody else has paid for to go and play a concert, I mean, c’mon! (laughs) and someone will carry your guitar for ya! (laughs).
TC – The last song on the album, ‘Where I Belong,’ is a very personal song, you are wearing your heart on your sleeve.
AD – It’s a song I wrote with Russell (actor Russell Crowe) 5 or 6 years ago about the constant exportation of people out of Newfoundland that’s always been a reality of every young Newfoundlander’s life. Faced with the fact that no matter how much you love home you probably are going to be faced with an adulthood of living somewhere else. There is just not enough work. It’s a topic that’s been written in song a lot, so I was kinda nervous about writing a song about that kind of thing. But when Russell came to Newfoundland for the first time he had just spent almost a year in Toronto doing The Cinderella Man movie. He came to visit me in St. John’s and he said; “it feels like I’ve come to a different country. It just doesn’t fell like the same place I’ve spent the last eight months, what’s goin’ on here?” So I told him the whole history of the place, how we just kind of joined Canada. My Dad doesn’t have a Canadian passport, he was born in the country of Newfoundland. I’m a first generation Canadian. So he got drawn into that story and I told him about my desire to write a song about Newfoundlander’s leaving home and we just ran with it. And we created this little mini-movie about one guy, one party, one attitude.
TC – So for five years you sat on that song.
AD – It’s always kind of lived with me and I just never got a chance to record it. I thought it might make one of the Great Big Sea records but it didn’t. Kind of the nature of being in a band with three good songwriters, sometimes it’s hard to get your songs on the record. I was delighted to get a chance to record it for this record.
TC – What were your goals for this record?
AD – I didn’t have any goals when I started.
TC – You did it truly for the love of the music?
AD – I would have shot for something if I knew what to shoot for, but I actually didn’t (laughs). I’d be thrilled if people heard it and they heard my songs and singing in a little bit of a context that they’re not used to hearing them in. If they enjoy it then that’ll be all the more thrilling, you know. I’ve never been one for goals, to be honest, even in Great Big Sea. My goal has been pretty singular since day one, and that’s to have a life playing music, that’s what I want. I don’t want a weekend playing music, I don’t want to have the biggest hit of the summer and then go away for the rest of my life. I want to have a lifetime of singing songs. I hope this is a step towards it and not away from it (laughs).
