Alan Doyle, Canadian national treasure and unofficial ambassador of Newfoundland’s rich musical traditions, will release a new EP, Back to the Harbour – a collection of songs to celebrate his love of folk music – on May 21. The album was produced by Joel Plaskett at The New Scotland Yard in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Featured alongside Doyle on the album are Kendel Carson and Cory Tetford from his touring band, along with Plaskett himself.
Back to the Harbour features three original songs plus unique spins on three classics: “Back Home on the Island” by one of Newfoundland’s most popular musical groups Wonderful Grand Band; “Let It Be Me” popularized by legendary duo The Everly Brothers; and the first single, the shanty “Leave Her Johnny.” “Leave Her Johnny” is available at all digital streaming services and retailers today.
“This shanty of a ship’s last day is one of the dozen or more songs I don’t remember learning,” Alan says of “Leave Her Johnny.” “I realize this may seem odd to some, as in most parts of the world people have one or two songs they don’t remember learning, like Happy Birthday or Silent Night. But in Newfoundland we have so many songs that are just part of our language. I doubt many from around here could tell you when they learned I’se The B’y or Lukey’s Boat. We just know them.”
Back to the Harbour follows Rough Side Out, Doyle’s chart-topping country album released last February, and Songs from Home, a collection of music from Doyle and an all-star lineup of Newfoundland artists, which was released in November. Doyle – the songwriter, producer, actor and author – is a 12-time JUNO Award nominee for his solo material and work with his iconic band Great Big Sea. In 2018, he was awarded the Order of Canada for his contributions to the musical traditions of Newfoundland and for his commitment to numerous charitable initiatives. His most recent book, All Together Now: A Newfoundlander’s Light Tales for Heavy Times, was released in November 2020 and quickly became a national bestseller.
Track by Track
Back Home on the Island
I first heard this song on TV sung by the most influential band I have ever known, Wonderful Grand Band. The voice singing was that of the legendary Ron Hynes though the words he spoke could have been directly from the mouth of any one of my father’s generation in Petty Harbour. They spoke with weary heartbreak to see the way of life their parents lived, with happy, busy days on the waters and in the kitchens, supplanted by shrinking fisheries and one household after the other emptying to flea to the mainland for work in faceless crowds in nameless factories.
Into the Arms of Home
Written with Cory Tetford, easily one of the most skilled musical minds I have ever had the pleasure to try to keep up with. This song is a direct result of my one and only time visiting Beaumont-Hamel, France where so many young Newfoundlanders died in the battle of the Somme in WW1 that it directly changed the course of history for our nation. It is such hallowed ground that I expected it to be something more than what it is. So many died. So much was sacrificed, I expected something otherworldly. But, of course those soldiers who died were the extraordinary, not the place at all. Their bravery and the curse of war is what remains incredible. As for the place itself, it could have been anywhere, I took one look at it and said to my friends, “This is just a meadow.”
Back to the Harbour
I wrote in another song recently, “I’m from a long line of singers. I’m not even the best.” That’s not false modesty as the whole Doyle family has been in one way or another responsible for the soundtrack of my hometown. Every Christmas or St. Patrick’s day concert or funeral or wedding or dance in Petty Habour had been presided over by one (or more likely a few) Doyles. I wanted a song my Dad and I could sing, which could have been one of a million he knows top to bottom, but I thought it would be more special if we sang about us, and about how we both had to pack it up and leave our beloved little fishing harbour to find work. A historical note about the opening lyric of the song, “I’m a dog from Petty Harbour, like my father was before.” Years before I was born, Petty Harbour folks would use dog teams to pull them over the Southside Hills into St. John’s to shop and sell. It was said that on a Saturday you could hear the barking on Water Street long before the sleighs came into sight. Word would get around downtown quick. “Here comes the Petty Harbour dogs”.
Leave Her Johnny
This shanty of a ship’s last day is one of the dozen or more songs I don’t remember learning. I realize this may seem odd to some, as in most parts of the world people have one or two songs they don’t remember learning, like Happy Birthday or Silent Night. But in Newfoundland we have so many songs that are just part of our language. I doubt many from around here could tell you when they learned I’se The B’y or Lukey’s Boat. We just know them.
Let it Be Me
Whenever I heard the Everly Brothers sing this song, it always sounded traditional to me. Like a lonely sailor or soldier’s lament for his one true love. I always wanted to record it around an out of tune upright piano at a legion hall at closing time.
Dream of Home
I wrote this song with someone I’ve never met and I doubt they even know I wrote it with them. While filming the feature film Robin Hood in 2009, I was tasked with taking bits of the script and making fulsome songs for my character Allan A’Dayle to sing. I took a short passage from a funeral scene and wrote this song as both a Farewell and a Coming Home. The final scene we shot did not require a song, so this was orphaned until I started singing it to open or close live shows. This is its first studio recording. And I still don’t know who wrote the short passage in this song that remains at the heart of it and was the inspiration for it all.
