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October 27, 2005
Island Clan Back On Celtic Circuit
After Lengthy Pause
Tide coming in for folk acts Fans want
'what's real,' says Barra MacNeils leader
by Greg Quill,
(entertainment columnist)
The way Stewart MacNeil sees it,
Newfoundland folk-pop outfit Great Big Sea responded to a
loud and clear message from its legions of fans when it
released its latest CD, The Hard and the Easy, a couple of
weeks ago. In its first week, the album of traditional
seafaring and rural Newfoundland folk songs was the third
best selling pop album in Canada.
"They want more folk music," says
MacNeil, singer and multi-instrumentalist with the
chronically gifted Barra MacNeils, arguably among the
world's finest practitioners of Canadianized Celtic music,
from the family band's home at Sydney Mines in Nova Scotia.
The Barras' ninth album, All at Once, is out this week, and
will be previewed live in three rare Ontario performances -
tonight at Hugh's Room, tomorrow night at le Parc in
Markham, and Sunday at the Empire Ballroom in Belleville.
"People everywhere want to hear more
traditional music, more of what's real," says MacNeil, who
unlike many in the biz is not surprised by Great Big Sea's
seemingly daring move.
"The Celtic music audience has never been
stronger, even though there has been a fall-off in the
number of artists who were out there a few years back. We
did the big nine-day Celtic Colours International Festival
on Cape Breton Island earlier this month, along with
hundreds of other acts from all over the world. And we do as
many as five Celtic concerts every season when we tour in
the U.S."
The band is booked up through the end of
next year, and as soon as the current tour ends Nov. 28,
they'll be teaming up with not-so-distant cousin Rita McNeil
for her cross-country Christmas tour, which touches down in
London, Kitchener, Welland, Hamilton and Brantford in
mid-December.
A six-piece band since the recent
addition of brothers Ryan (piano, uillean pipes) and Boyd
(fiddle, guitars, mandolin) - their folk band Slaint Mhaith
is on hiatus while some of its members finish school - the
Barra MacNeils now boasts a full complement of MacNeil
siblings, along with fiddler, guitarist and mandolin player
Kyle, and singer, fiddler, harpist and step-dancer Lucy. All
at Once, contains mostly band originals or MacNeil
arrangements of traditional jigs and reels, as well as a
vigorous rendition of Irish songwriter Luka Bloom's "You
Couldn't Have Come at a Better Time," and an equally rousing
version of Canadian folk star and multi-award winning
songwriter David Francey's "A Thousand Miles."
"We met David at a North American Folk
Alliance conference in Florida a few years ago, just after
his first album came out," MacNeil recalls. "He was playing
music part-time and working as a carpenter in the building
trade. I bumped into him recently and told him he seems to
have grown into a career since that first time."
All at Once is for the most part an
upbeat celebration of Celtic musical currents, old and new,
tempered by some gentler, world music inflections. It's the
Barras' first album in five years, and was almost three
years in the making - at studios on Cape Breton with veteran
folk music producer Delcan O'Doherty and producer/engineer
Jamie Foulds at the controls. Cape songwriter/guitarist
Gordie Sampson plays on several tracks, and co-wrote the
opener, "Haven't Got a Care."
"Life kicked in," MacNeil explains. "In
that time, our parents have celebrated the arrival of four
new grandchildren. We had to scale back on touring, so we
took a break from recording, as well. When we got back into
it, we realized we didn't have enough of the right material
for a whole band album, so we took another year off to
write. Then Ryan and Boyd came aboard, so we had to rejig
everything.
"I think the result is worth the wait.
All our strengths seem to have come forward in this one
recording. It's a mix of traditional and contemporary, with
lots of voices and musical styles. It's wonderful to have
the whole family in the band. The music feels very strong."
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