by Alan Doyle
“Know any John Denver?” someone asked.
I started singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and followed that up with “Country Road.” I went on to play for forty-five minutes or so, at which point Rose gave me a wink and made that circle motion with her finger that meant “wrap it up.” I played “Take It Easy” one more time, afraid to test the waters with anything more risky.
Once I was done, I packed up my stuff and said goodnight to Rose and the rest of the girls, who were really the only ones left.
“Leavin’ so early? Have one more drink with us,” Rose said.
But the day had gone well and I was too freaked out to stick around and shag it up. That night, I lay awake in bed thinking about what trouble I might have found if I’d stuck around. To this day, in lonely hotel rooms all over the world, I think about that night and continue to wonder what would have become of me had I stayed.
Later that week, Jim phoned the Château. I somehow convinced him that we should rehearse at least once, and he reluctantly agreed. On Thursday evening, he came by the house and we ran through a bunch of tunes that we both knew. It was hardly a real rehearsal, more like a fun “What do you know?” session.
That weekend we played two more gigs at the hotel. I thought they went well, but on Monday Jim phoned and said he wanted us to move out of that dump and go to a different place where we could earn more money. He knew the owners of a bar on Water Street called the Rose and Thistle. They had a Thursday night slot open and Jim figured we could get it.
We set up one more jam at my place, but roommates drinking and frolicking were a problem. Eventually we gave in and stopped jamming serious tunes and joined in the boozing, which led us to discover a mutual talent for writing instant parody songs. Every popular song of the day was easily turned into a tune about sex or fighting or throwing up or whatever we felt like. “Take It Easy” became “Take It, Sleazy.” “She Was Only Sixteen,” by Dr. Hook, became “She Was Only Fifteen.” Bryan Adams’s “Heaven” became “Eleven.” (Sing the chorus to yourself and switch the word. Then you’ll understand the immature shite we’d get up to.)
We decided our parodies would make a great act. This kind of thing had a history in downtown St. John’s and Atlantic Canada—Lambert & James were one duo who did blue comedy and music, and MacLean and MacLean had done the same. But we needed a name.
We came up with Stagger and Home. When you said it quickly with almost any Newfoundland accent it sounded like “staggerin’ home.” Again, no one had a better idea, so Stagger and Home it was. Perfect.
We played our first gig on a Thursday night in the fall of 1990. We sang a bunch of our Eagles and Harry Chapin songs. But it was our parodies that the crowd loved. After closing that night, the bar owner sat us down and offered us every Thursday, seventy-five dollars each, if we’d do a bit more comedy. Without talking it over with Jim, I said, “We’ll do it for fifty each to start off if you’ll keep Happy Hour prices on all night.” (I figured our shtick would only work if people were hammered.)
“Deal,” he said.
If we filled the place every Thursday, even for a few hours, we’d ask for more. Plus, if people came for the cheap rum, we’d have a better chance of them having a good time with us and the foolishness we intended to get up to.
Jim was furious that I’d just talked us out of a third of our pay. “You stupid f—ing arsehole,” he said. “You play the f—ing guitar, I’ll do the deals.”
He was probably right. I’m still not good at negotiating fees, but I stood by that decision then to fill the room. I still think it is one of the smartest moves I ever made. Word spread quick that you could get a double rum and Coke at the Rose for five bucks while these two crazy bastards sang delightfully ridiculous tunes about our friends’ hot sisters, priests and rum smuggling.
Our rants between songs were almost as awful as the tunes themselves. Jim would say something like, “You think it’s hard on the head getting approached by a priest? Well, imagine how depressing it is to be like poor Alan here. He was an altar boy for four years and never got a single feel out of it. Now that’s rejection, brothers and sisters. Can I get an amen?”
And the crowd would shout “Amen!” a few times. Then we’d break into our version of “These Are the People in Your Neighborhood.” I’ll leave the lyrics to your imagination.
The Thursday nights at the Rose became quite a thing. People heard about our gig and wanted to see it for themselves. We’d do most of the comedy stuff in the first set and then cover songs for the rest of the night. But our grand finale was “Thunderstruck,” by AC/DC.
I’d put a distortion pedal on my acoustic guitar, and when I played the hammer-on riff—as fast and as loud as I could—it sounded ridiculous. But the real kicker was what Jim did as I played the signature riff. He would prance around like a madman getting everyone in the bar to sing, “A na na na na na na na, THUNDER!” along with him.
When he had the crowd sufficiently engaged, he’d extend his mic stand as high as it could go in the air. Then Jim, a mad hobbit-banshee, would step on a chair and get on my shoulders. From there, he’d continue singing while I played the guitar at the same time—ludicrous but effective. The place went nuts every time.
I’d be lying if I said everyone dug our act, because not everyone did. Some people didn’t care for the crass nature of our songs. Some left disgusted. I don’t blame them. What we did was not for everyone. But a lot of people loved it. Séan McCann tells the tale of seeing me play for the first time at the Rose and Thistle. He, Bob Hallett and Darrell Power were in a popular traditional band called Rankin Street. They would get big crowds at Nautical Nellies, just across the street from the Rose. Between sets, they’d often leave the building for a break. On one of these breaks, Séan walked across the street for what he thought would be a quiet drink at the Rose. Instead, he was shocked by the sight of a crazy person on the shoulders of another crazy person who was shouting, “THUNDER!!” to a drunken crowd of about thirty other crazy people who were demanding an encore as loudly as a full house at Wembley Stadium. Séan was confused—and not necessarily impressed—but not quite able to look away either. He returned a few more times to see Jim and me as a duo.
In the weeks and months to follow, Jim got busier at school and I ended up doing a lot of the gigs without him. I’d put posters around town that read: “Alan Doyle is Staggerin’ Home Alone.” The club owners confessed they did not mind having me solo, which again surprised me as I still did not think of myself as a lead singer. Jim was an interesting fella, and I enjoyed my time with him immensely. I learned so much from him about the value of confidence and fearlessness on stage. He was not the best singer in the world, but Jim occupied every song he sang. He taught me how to deliver a performance. It was a great lesson to learn and I’m grateful to him for it.
By the winter, I was doing every Thursday night at the Rose, and doing it solo, and eventually I started playing three or four times a week. I played there so often that I did not even take my gear home. I kept my little PA under the church pew that served as the pub bench. I started getting gigs at other pubs, too—Trapper John’s, Bosun’s Whistle, Humphrey’s, Jungle Jim’s. All told, with Happy Hours included, I gigged about seven or eight times a week. Those were long nights, especially for a guy doing four or five shifts a week at the Newfoundland Museum and taking five courses at Memorial University. My day started at about eight thirty. I’d sleep as late as possible and still get to work by 8:55 to open the museum. I’d work until five and go straight to school after. I’d hang at the library and do whatever reading or assignments I had between five and seven. Then I’d head to a night class until 9:45, at which point I’d be bolting to whatever club I was booked in to play from ten to two. I’d get home by two thirty or three in the morning, and the next morning, I’d be up by eight thirty to do it all over again. I didn’t get much rest, but I loved the gigs so much that I did not mind the sleeplessness at all.
In 1991 and
1992, I probably played close to six hundred solo pub shows and I learned to be a lead singer. I made some good pocket money doing it, too. I loved it, but at times lamented not being in a band. And I wondered what would be next. Would I graduate from university and become a schoolteacher who had some fun singing in pubs on the weekend? Or was there more to this music thing? I thought about that a lot. I honestly think I would have been happy doing pub gigs on the side. But I decided that if I ever had a chance to take a real shot at the music business, I’d give it a try. I would never forgive myself if I did not.
Every now and again, I’d see Séan or his bandmate Darrell Power lurking in the back at one of my gigs, listening to a song or two. Even then, they were pretty well known, so it was hard for them to hide. Bob tells of how in the dying days of Rankin Street, in 1992, Séan returned to their packed house at Nautical Nellies and whispered to Bob, “I just saw the guy we need for our new band. He’s a Doyle from Petty Harbour.”
ORDINARY DAY
“Ordinary Day” is perhaps Great Big Sea’s most popular song. It has been a high point in concerts for almost two decades and opens or closes many GBS shows. It has been licensed for films, TV shows and commercials and even illegally used in political campaigns. It made its way onto several charts and was the No. 1 video on a couple of music video stations. Many fans have told me that this song has helped them through the most difficult times in their lives. Like most things in my life, it came into being after some struggles, luck and co-operation.
GBS was writing and collecting songs for the follow-up CD to the unbelievable success of our 1995 release, Up, which would go on to sell over five hundred thousand copies in Canada alone. We had two albums behind us, but our indie CD was still a very obscure find, so we felt like we were working on the dreaded sophomore release.
I wanted to write a song that could be a single on the radio and prove we were not a flash-in-the-pan success. I wanted a song that embodied the spirit and resilience of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
There was an old skipper in Petty Harbour whose attitude was always a source of inspiration to me as a kid. If you asked him how he was feeling, he’d honestly think about it and most often answer, “B’y, I might be perfect.”
I once heard someone on the wharf complaining about the weather, and the skipper replied, “It’s just an ordinary day, b’ys. No better or worser than any of the rest.”
I always thought that line would be a cool to sing. GBS had become well known for incorporating shanties and nautical chants into our tunes, so I came up with the “Way-hey-hey” bit inspired by seafaring songs. The rest of the chorus came pretty easily, as did the first verse about being lucky to live on such a beautiful island as Newfoundland.
A stroke of luck landed me the second verse. I wanted it to be about a specific person, but I did not know who. It had to be someone who had demonstrated that hard times or a bad turn of luck would not so much as break his or her stride. I happened to be flicking through the TV channels when a profile about a young singer gal from Calgary caught my attention. She’d made her way to Vancouver and was so determined to make it in the biz that she busked on the streets to pay her way. One evening, she was mugged and got beaten up pretty bad. Many of us would have packed it all in at that point and headed home, but not this gal. Hours after the mugging, she was right back to work, and after a while she convinced the music industry that it could not go on without her. She would go on to sell millions of albums and become an international star. Her name is Jann Arden.
The single-syllable “Jann” did not fit the rhythm of the melody in “Ordinary Day,” so I switched it to “Janey.” I got a chance to meet Jann a few times but I never confessed that she was the gal in the song. Finally, I got the courage to fess up and did so live on stage with her at a songwriters’ circle event at the Juno Awards in Halifax. She was quite surprised, I think … and flattered, I hope. She remains a hero of mine.
All this part of the song had come so easy that I figured I’d just sum up the tune in the last verse and I’d be done with it. But I could not find any way to wrap up the lyric. I needed a piece of poetry that was beyond me, I suppose. I was on a typically long GBS van ride somewhere in Ontario when Séan noticed my frustration from a seat behind. I explained to him that I was a verse away from finishing what I thought would be a cool song and needed a closing verse that had eluded me for weeks.
Cartoon by Kevin Tobin
I passed him my lyric sheet and about three minutes later he handed it back to me with the perfect concluding lines about double-edged knives and waiting for your ship to come in.
No one in the van knew it at the time, but Séan and I had just written a song that would change our lives.
From our video for “Ordinary Day.”
CHAPTER 12
One of the luckiest breaks I’ve ever received fell into my lap in the summer of 1985. A high school teacher of mine, Margaret Chang, called me into her classroom after school. She was impressed by my willingness to stand in front of a crowd of people and sing or act in a play or address an assembly. She had recently left the Newfoundland and Labrador civil service and had many friends and connections in the Historic Resources Division. She asked if I would be interested in being a tour guide for the summer in the Newfoundland Museum or at one of the province’s historic sites around St. John’s.
This really sounded too good to be true. I told her I was very much interested in any job that got me out of Petty Harbour and the Goulds for the summer and that did not involve night shifts or 4 a.m. rises or direct contact with fish guts, sod rolls or capelin genitalia. She made a few calls, and about a week later I got up at seven thirty in the morning and got Mom to iron a shirt for me. I could tell she was excited that one of her kids was getting dressed up and going to look for a job in St. John’s.
“I s’pose you are a bit nervous?” Mom knew I was.
“Nope,” I lied.
“Just be yourself, honey, and they’ll love you.” She thought for a second. “And try not to swear. Not sure they swears in Town like the Petty Harbour crowd.”
She made me my favourite ham-and-processed-cheese sandwich on homemade white bread. She put the sandwich and a clean pair of underwear and a T-shirt in a gym bag for me in case I needed them (to this day, I have no idea why).
“Be good,” she said.
This has always been my mother’s pearl of wisdom, a simple piece of advice she offers just about every time someone walks out the door or every time she ends a phone call. It’s one of the most brilliant pieces of advice I’ve ever heard: Be good. Be good to people. Be a good son to your mom and dad, a good brother to your siblings. Be a good husband to your wife, a good dad to your son. Be a good friend to your friends. Be a good worker to your co-workers, a good bandmate to your bandmates. Be a good celebrity to your fans. Be good.
After her parting words, she sent me walking down Skinner’s Hill to thumb a ride to St. John’s. I hitched to town with my aunt, who worked at a federal tax office. She dropped me on Water Street around 8:15 and I walked around the early-morning streets of downtown St. John’s by myself for the first time in my life, awaiting my nine o’clock job interview. It was the first time I was ever alone in St. John’s. I had just turned sixteen a few weeks previous and wondered if that made me a real grown-up. To be there in the big city, walking down the street in an ironed shirt, with a ham sandwich in my gym bag, about to meet someone who might give me a job where I wouldn’t have to gut, clean, lift or roll anything felt like I’d come a million miles in one morning.
And I had.
At 9 a.m. on the dot, I walked into the Historic Resources building on Duckworth Street. It had a small reception area and a big office on the main floor. I spoke to a lady at the front desk.
“Hello,” I said, but the lady typing did not hear me. “Hello!” I said louder and the poor lady almost jumped out of her skin.
“Jesus, honey. You scared the life right out of me!” I was s
urprised to hear her swear. I figured I’d left that behind on the wharf, but I was wrong.
“You must be Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour,” the lady said, smiling now as I nodded. “My lord, you’re cute for a harbour dog. You’re here about the interpreter job, right?”
I nodded, though I was very confused by the word “interpreter.” Did they think I spoke French?
The kind lady led me upstairs to a back office where two other ladies were talking over a desk. They wore ladies’ business clothes like I’d see on Mary Tyler Moore. They were beautiful. And not at all related to me. They smiled lovely smiles and put their hands out. I assumed I was supposed to shake them. I wasn’t quite sure, as I’d never shaken hands with strangers before. This was one of the things that separated Baymen from Townies. Townies always wanted to shake your hand, and we Baymen felt it was odd. An appropriate greeting for a Bayman when introduced to someone new is to wink and nod and say, “What are you at?” or “Yes, b’y.” Still, when in Rome, I figured, and shook the ladies’ lovely hands.
“Well, hello. I’m Elizabeth Randall and this is my colleague, Ms. Helena Gibson-Taylor,” the taller of the two ladies said. Not sure I’d ever met anyone called Ms. before. Pretty sure I’d never met anyone with two last names either.
“I’m Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour,” I said. “My teacher said you were looking for people to work at the museum for the summer.”
“Yes,” Ms. Gibson-Taylor replied, “we’re looking to hire a summer-student interpreter for the Newfoundland Museum in the Murray Premises. Have you ever worked in a museum before, Alan?” she asked, though I’m pretty sure she knew I had not.
“No, Miss, uh, Missus, uh, Mzzz,” I said.
“Have you ever done interpreting?” There was that word again. It was beginning to worry me, and I took my time to answer this question. I made a quick decision that I was going to say “oui” when they asked me if I could speak French. In my head, I began stringing together all the French I knew: “Et la première étoile, à choisissez de la Gazette de Montréal, le numéro 10, Guy Lafleur!”