Where I Belong

by Alan Doyle

  CHAPTER 10

  “You’re a Doyle from Petty Harbour. No wonder you can sing and play guitar.”

  I cannot tell you how often I heard this said to me over the course of my younger life. For generations, the Doyle name in Petty Harbour—all up and down the Southern Shore—has been synonymous with music. The Doyles were a musical crowd, and that was that. If you had the family name and came from Skinner’s Hill in Petty Harbour, well, you knew something about songs—for concerts, for masses, for weddings and funerals, and most of all, songs for bands that played in local clubs and at dances.

  Many rural Newfoundland towns are rich in musical talent. Newfoundland has been isolated—in many different ways—since the Europeans settled here more than five hundred years ago. Over the centuries, it would have been inevitable that a certain family or group in each community became appreciated for its musical abilities. Perhaps that family, generation after generation, became more musically accomplished. There was probably a favourite musical family or group at the centre of most towns. In Petty Harbour, that family was the Doyles. It still is.

  Hamming it up at Mom’s piano in 1986. In my mind, I can sit at a piano and play sheet music on command. In reality, I cannot.

  Even as recently as my parents’ generation, little radio or television was available anywhere in Newfoundland, so people had to entertain themselves. They memorized and recited stories. They made up skits and plays. They learned to play cheap and simple instruments, like accordions and harmonicas. They wrote and sang their own songs and performed in church halls and kitchens.

  You know the tourism myth of the Newfoundland kitchen party and how everyone thinks we Newfoundlanders just sit around a big kitchen, drinking and playing music almost every other night, like it’s all a perfect postcard? Well, it was never a postcard for me. It was my reality. It’s how I grew up. It’s everything I knew.

  That’s how parties went. That’s what my folks did. People came over to our house, we sat around the kitchen or the piano and we sang songs. It wasn’t a party unless someone was singing a song. We didn’t have a big stereo or many records. Music was homemade.

  My mother, my father and just about all my uncles played music probably a hundred days of every year. They got paid a little or a lot for their appearances, depending on where they were playing and for whom, but never once did I hear any Doyle refer to playing music or to rehearsing as “work.” Never. Work was work, and music was fun. After all, we were Doyles; we carried music in our blood. Not that this made us professional musicians. To think that way would have been boastful.

  When I was starting out with Great Big Sea, my grandmother said it best.

  “Alan, honey. Still at the band?”

  “Yeah, still at the band, Nan.”

  “Not working?”

  “No. Not working, Nan. Not working.”

  In our house, there was always at least one guitar, a piano-accordion and, of course, a piano. Mom justified the elaborate expense of almost five hundred dollars on a used piano by charging five dollars per half-hour for lessons to kids from Petty Harbour and the Goulds.

  My dad on guitar, my mom on piano-accordion and me on guitar, playing at the wedding of some friends.

  Mom played the organ at masses, weddings and funerals—and at any other social function for the church. To this day, she’s an amazing piano-accordion player, and I’m sure it is because of her that I love that instrument so much. Her addition to my dad’s and uncles’ traditional music collaborations must have made a good thing better. But Mom, of course, did not belong to Petty Harbour. She was from away. And she was considered “the new Doyle” when she married my dad—an honorary and welcome addition to the Doyle family musical tradition.

  Like any kid, my ambition when I grew up was to be just like my dad. I wanted to sing like him and play guitar like him. I wanted people to smile when I came in the room the way they did when he announced his arrival with the mock formality of a concert announcer. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages …,” he’d say, and then subtly gesture to himself: a man who needed no introduction.

  I mimicked the way Dad made foldy bologna sandwiches and I stirred my Tang the way he stirred his tea. And when he would have a drink of rum, I’d sit with him as if in a pub. “Cheers, Alan,” he’d say, clinking his rum against my Purity Syrup. Then there was that perfect silence that followed as we’d both enjoy a relaxing sip—it was our moment.

  I loved how Dad lit up when his friends came round our house and in no time at all, there’d be rum and whiskey on the table, guitars and accordions in hand and pots of soup on the stove. I would stay awake as long as I could and wonder how he knew so many songs and how one seemed to organically lead to the other.

  Dad taught himself to play guitar as a teenager, as did a few of his six brothers. I undoubtedly inherited my love of singing from my father. We also share the unrelenting need to have everyone in a room listening to us and looking at us—preferably at the same time. Neither of us is that fussy on how we accomplish this goal, though doing it with a song is our preference. Anything from a rousing party tune that gets everyone clapping and singing along, to a mournful ballad that brings a tear to every eye, to a long and exaggerated story that is either tragic or hilarious and may or may not have its basis in fact—if there’s a way we can call attention to ourselves, we’ll do it. And if it’s through music, even better.

  Me and Dad in 2000.

  My uncles aren’t that different. They all sing really well, and when Dad and my uncle Ronnie started their band, they each found their place in it. My uncle Leonard quickly became the instrumentalist of the family, and by the time he was twenty, he could play just about anything with strings on it. He remains one of my favourite guitarists. I’ve known dozens of more dexterous and technical players, but no one plays a song quite like Leonard. It’s kind of like the guitar becomes a different instrument with each song he plays. Sometimes it’s a chunky, percussive rhythm instrument, other times more like an Irish harp accompanying a ballad, other times a biting melody instrument that takes the lead solos. My uncle Paul has been writing lyrics for as long as anyone can remember. There are others, my uncles Dennis and Brian, along with their first cousins Gerry, Stan and John Doyle, who grew up next door to us on Skinner’s Hill. They all sang or played instruments. A generation before that were two brothers, Joseph and my grandfather, Bernard Doyle, who were well-known singers and storytellers.

  In their late teens, my dad and a few of his brothers got on the radio and TV.

  On set at the CBC show All Around the Circle, my dad’s band, the Boys from Petty Harbour. Back row, left to right: Uncle Jimmy, Jim Kennedy, Uncle Ronnie, Michael Keiley. Front row, left to right: Uncle Leonard, Dad, Jim Keiley, John Doyle (Dad’s cousin).

  They were asked by the CBC to be recurring guests on All Around the Circle, a variety show. They sang Irish drinking songs and ballads, and to Celtic-up the show, they borrowed a banjo. For their first appearance, my uncle Leonard learned to play that banjo on the thirty-minute drive to St. John’s. The Boys from Petty Harbour, as this group was known, played together for many years, and still do, in various incarnations.

  Just after I was born, in the dying days of the sixties, my uncles Ronnie and Leonard started playing less traditional music and more electric rock ’n’ roll and country. My father and Uncle Jimmy were not inclined to be in a rock ’n’ roll band, so they did not join Ronnie and Leonard. The band was known first as the Sandelles, then as the Ringdelles, and then as Medicine Jar. There were other names, too. But to me, from the moment I was old enough to know anything, I called them Uncle Ronnie’s Band.

  Uncle Ronnie’s Band often practised across the dirt road from our house in my grandparents’ basement. Within earshot of our house, there was always someone learning some new song or tuning a guitar or hauling drums and amps into a station wagon. As an eight-year-old kid, I would watch my uncles loading and unloading equipment before a
nd after gigs. I could often hear them jamming across the dirt road and I’d poke one of Dad’s bent screwdrivers between the studs of our unfinished porch to serve as my microphone. From there, I strummed my imaginary guitar and sang along with Uncle Ronnie’s Band into the handle of the worn-out screwdriver.

  I would listen to rehearsals but also to all the conversation about the gig the night before or the one about to come. About the girls who might be there. About the fights that might happen if the dodgy club owner did not pay them. At three or four in the morning, I’d wake up to the sound of Uncle Leonard getting out of a car and chatting with whoever had dropped him off after a gig. Often, the driver would be some gal he’d cajoled into chauffeuring him all the way down the Southern Shore. I’d kneel up on my bed and peek through the window in hopes of catching Uncle Leonard smooching with some missus.

  One Saturday night, after a week of being as good as an eleven-year-old kid trying to stay on Santa’s “nice list” can be, Dad let me stay awake long enough for a special treat. He borrowed a car and we drove to the Goulds and parked right under the side window of the Crystal Palace bar, where Uncle Ronnie’s Band was about to start the first set. I stood on the hood of the car and watched through the window as the band played about a dozen songs. The dance floor filled the moment they began and my view became obscured by the good times, but I saw what I needed to see and heard what I needed to hear. It was a window to my own Narnia.

  Occasionally, like on a Sunday afternoon, my father would go with the band after they had played at the Crystal, or at Darby’s in Witless Bay, or at the Station Lounge in St. John’s over the weekend. They’d be heading back there to get their gear. I begged to go with them every time and eventually they started letting me tag along.

  I remember being just under ten years old, walking into the dim and dingy Crystal Palace on a Sunday afternoon. The place was a mess. It had obviously not been cleaned from the night before. There were beer bottles everywhere, ashes and cigarette butts from wall to wall. A bloodstain smeared the wall near the men’s washroom. Uncle Ronnie said there had been “quite a racket” the night before.

  On stage, I recognized Uncle Ronnie’s silver Ludwig drums, the sticks laid on the snare as if he’d finished playing five minutes earlier. A dozen empty glasses were scattered around the kit. Uncle Leonard’s black and white Fender Stratocaster rested against his Fender Super Reverb amp, a burnt-to-the-butt cigarette jammed under the strings at the headstock. A rat’s nest of cables twisted and knotted into a ball beside the microphone stand. The place stank of stale beer, cigarette smoke and ashes and sweat.

  It was amazing.

  The tired, dirty-looking fella that let us in asked Dad and Ronnie if they wanted beer, and of course they did. After all, it was well after 1 p.m. They went straight to the bar, elbows perched on the edge, and they started chatting. I went directly to the stage and sat behind Uncle Ronnie’s drums. I picked up the sticks just to feel them in my hands. I was surprised how far I had to reach to get my foot on the bass drum and hi-hat pedals. I pushed my right foot to the floor. The kick-drum beater made a soft and plush sound when it made contact with the bass-drum skin. I pushed my left foot down and yelped a little as my left pinky got caught between the closing hi-hat cymbals. I hit them gently with one of the sticks as I slowly pressed and released my left foot on the pedal. I had always assumed the “sock cymbals,” as Uncle Ronnie called them, made only two sounds—the tight tick tick tick when they were closed and the ping when they were loose and apart. But I discovered I could get a whole variety of sounds in between the two extremes—that swoosh sound, like in Eagles songs, that hard clang like in Led Zeppelin. If I hit them while they were closed and opened them right after contact, that was disco. I spent a lot of time discovering those hi-hats while the grown-ups drank beer at the bar.

  At one point, I hit the snare drum and nearly scared the crap out of myself, it was that loud. Uncle Ronnie turned my way and smiled. “Give it a good whack, b’y,” he said. I did. Wow. It amazed me then and still does to this day how loud a snare drum is. I hit the toms a few times, but they were nothing like the snare. I crashed the crash cymbal and dug it, but nowhere near as much as Ronnie’s ride cymbal. His ride cymbal had holes punched in the metal and he had steel rivets bent in from one side to the other. With every touch, each rivet rattled and shimmered like rainfall. I’ve done dozens of recording sessions with hired professional drummers, and I always ask them to bring a rivet cymbal. They always say yes and then show up with some bathtub plug chain and try to convince me it sounds the same as rivets. (Kris MacFarlane, Great Big Sea’s drummer and my drummer of choice for over a decade, had Sabian build me two rivet cymbals so I’d always have one on hand, saving everyone a pile of grief.) But there is no other sound on earth like the sound of Uncle Ronnie’s ride cymbal at two in the afternoon at the Crystal Palace. I was imprinted by sound on that day, on that stage, and for better or worse, I’ve been trying to find the same sound and feeling ever since.

  After a good wank at the drum kit, I turned to the next thing I saw on that stage: Uncle Leonard’s Strat. I put the strap over my shoulder and it hung so low on me that it almost hit the floor. I flicked on the amp and sat on it. I turned the volume up and played a D chord, as it was the only one I was sure how to play. The guitar must have been in tune, as it sounded pretty good. I turned it up a bit more and it sounded even better. I turned it up the whole way and it rang like rock ’n’ roll and started to feedback a tiny bit as it faded away. I wanted that guitar more than anything I’d ever held in my life at that point.

  (I kept my eyes on that guitar for years. My uncle sold it to a bandmate, and a few years later, when I was fifteen, I walked up to this fella and said, “I want that guitar.”

  (“You can have it for four hundred, if you’ve got the cash now.”

  (I did not have the cash. But a few weeks later, I borrowed enough to buy it. A schoolteacher of mine, who always saw more in me than I did, loaned me the money. I paid her back in a few months. I remain grateful to her for her confidence in me. That guitar has paid for itself a hundred times over. It got me through hundreds of amateur and semi-professional gigs. Out of honour, I insisted that guitar make it onto my first professional recording. There’s an electric guitar solo on “Drunken Sailor” on the first GBS album. The guitar you hear is Uncle Leonard’s black and white Strat.)

  Uncle Leonard’s 1972 Fender Strat, easily the coolest instrument in history.

  I put the Strat back on its stand and completed my tour of the Crystal Palace stage. I walked up to the lead microphone.

  It was way too high for me, so I lowered it a little. I closed my eyes and pressed my lips to the rusty grille. The jagged edges pinched my lips.

  It hurt a bit. And I loved it.

  I loved the smell of every breath of the night before that still lived on it. It tasted like songs. I opened my eyes and looked over my nose and down the microphone ball to where the silver connector joined the mic to the cable. Past that, I saw the simple dance floor, but I suppose I saw much more than that. I saw a dance floor where dudes might nod to you after the guitar solo. Where girls would shout out loud for you to keep playing or sneak a glance at you over the shoulders of their dance partners. Where a week of working like a dog was erased by the right song at the right time with the right person. A place where a band played and people loved it. A magical place. A band needs a crowd and a crowd needs a band. This is where the two met.

  I remember deciding then that I wanted to sing, which I’d kind of always done, but more importantly, I wanted to play guitar. Bernie also remembers me making such a decision. I took to it partly because I saw early signs that I might be able do this one thing better than him. You see, he was quicker, stronger, faster and smarter than me at everything, the way that older brothers often are—a better singer, better at sports, better at fighting, better at getting girls—and he knew more about music by the age of thirteen than I do now. When we both star
ted noodling with the guitar at around ten or eleven years old, I quickly discovered I had an aptitude for it that he did not. Of course, even as I progressed with the guitar, Bernie was still the one who could sing like a bird.

  BERRY PICKING TIME

  “Berry Picking Time,” from our self-titled debut album Great Big Sea, remains a popular request at concerts and a bit of a mystery.

  While collecting songs for our very first album, I suggested “Berry Picking Time” to Séan, Bob and Darrell. They loved its quaint message but also its authenticity. My grandfather Bern Doyle used to sing it at kitchen parties when I was a kid. It is a courting song that made my grandmother Frances glow and even blush on occasion when Bern sang it and turned her way:

  We were picking berries at Old Aunt Mary’s

  When I picked a blushing bride.

  As we strolled home together, I just wondered whether

  I could win you forever if I tried.

  Then at love’s suggestion, I popped the question,

  And asked you to be mine.

  By your kisses I knew, you’d picked me and I’d picked you,

  At berry picking time.

  “Berry Picking Time” was known to us for years as a Petty Harbour song. It was a song that lived only in the Doyle family. We could find no other singers outside of Petty Harbour who knew the song. In even the most studious traditional music circles in Newfoundland, I could still find no one who knew its origin. So how did my grandfather, and before him my great-grandfather, come to know this song?

  A clue came to me years later when a friend sent me a YouTube link of some country gent from the United States singing the song in the 1950s, but his song was a verse shorter and not the same melody. This confirmed that the song had been passed down from somewhere. I wonder if it was perhaps an old English or Irish song that made its way into American country. Is it possible that my great-grandfather learned it from a Yankee sailor? Or perhaps my grandfather heard it more recently on the radio and decided to try it out himself? No one seems to know the answers, and so, like so many things in Petty Harbour, the mystery remains alongside the tradition.