I often wonder what my teenage self would think if I told him that someday I would speak to members of some of the most iconic, long lasting Canadian bands of the last 20 years.

It certainly can be nerve-wracking at times when someone you grew up listening to is on the other end of the phone. In the case of speaking with Great Big Sea’s Alan Doyle, the solution was simple – pour myself a cuppa tea!

“It is a great old song. It is a cover, very obscure Kink’s song, that sounds like it was written for a Newfoundlander,” Doyle said of the song Have A Cuppa Tea on their new album Safe Upon the Shore.

Doyle called in from a tour stop in Pittsburgh, PA before heading to New York City. He, along with Bob Hallett and Sean McCann, bring their current tour entitled An Evening With Great Big Sea to Calgary October 28th to 29th and Edmonton October 30th and January 22nd. The first shows sold out quickly, but tickets are available for the second dates.

“We didn’t have time to fit in two Edmontons on this leg. As luck would have it we had to go back to Western Canada for a couple of things in January, including a gig in Saskatoon. We said if there is demand for another Edmonton show we can do it again. The Edmonton show sold out right away so back we go. I love touring Canada in the winter man! I love it! Bring it on!”

Listening to the new album, you hear a blend of “classic” sounding GBS, and a newer slant.

“It was made in a couple of sections, the first of which was very in-house. We had asked a few people like Joel Plaskett and Jeremy Fisher to get together and in a low-fi way we recorded some songs like Yankee Sailor and Have a Cuppa Tea within our own little studio. It sounded like some old school stuff and was great fun. We wanted to marry that with something that was completely new and different for us. We went to New Orleans and recorded the “hi-fi” part of the record there. It is an interesting juxtaposition.”

One thing you can count on is the upbeat fun aspect of Great Big Sea. Even their sad songs have a sense of joy, Doyle says.

“We come from a place where music is primarily used as a form of celebration. Newfoundland has recorded our history in song and we have found a way to make even the most tragic story a joyful experience. Some of the most famous Newfoundland songs are about sad events but are very happy songs. When you live on a cold, frozen rock in the middle of the North Atlantic you get really good at generating happiness. That has bled into our music and made us who we are, I suppose.”

One such song is Yankee Sailor, about a Newfoundlander boy sending a message to his former girl, who is now married to an American.

“It came out of the writing session with myself and Sean and Bob and Joel. It was Bob’s idea to do a song about one of the most significant immigration patterns in Newfoundland, and one that is rarely spoken of. There was a whole generation of Newfoundland ladies that got married off to American soldiers that came there during the Second World War. There are people all over New England and the Mid-West that are of Newfoundland heritage because of the Newfoundland dudes who lost their gals to the Yankee sailor. It was an interesting time in history because it was a real culture clash. One of the most sophisticated and advanced institutions in the world at the time would have been the US military. They had technology no one had, [even with] stuff like music. The first time most of the world heard big band music was American ships. So those ships came into St. Johns Harbor which is so poor it had thrown away its nationality and joined Canada. You can imagine how fantastic those ships and dudes must have looked, what a Hollywood comes to town kind of thing it must have been.”

GBS is also well known for their covers with a Newfoundland twist like REM’s It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, Slade’s Run Run Away and Oysterband’s When I’m Up (I Can’t Get Down). The tradition continues with the Kink’s cover, as well as the Led Zepplin classic Gallows Pole.

“Because we are a band that is instrumented differently than others. it gives us a bit of a license to do unique arrangements of other peoples songs. We’ve done songs like Run Run Away, effectively a heavy metal song, and add tin whistles and accordions and fiddles... it gives a song a whole new life to live in. Songs like the It’s The End of The World As We Know It was done as a song of celebration, which makes sense in the Celtic world. Gallows Pole was appealing to us because it is actually a traditional folk song that Zepplin made very famous in our lifetimes. It is actually a European song that made its way over to America and Huddie Leadbelly Ledbetter recorded it in the 1930s and that is the version Zepplin heard. Their version of it is similar to the Leadbelly version. We researched the song and found out about its old lyrics that are a little different, because it is an older version of the story. But we tried to emulate Mr. Page with the guitar riff. It was an homage as best as I could do.”

Another name in the liner notes which may surprise people is Russel Crowe, who co-wrote Hit The Ground and Run with Doyle. The two have been friends for close to a decade.

“I write songs with Russel a lot for Great Big Sea, and for his band and for TV and movies. We were writing songs for another movie in development and the notes in those songs were cerebral and heavy. To fill a lighter moment I told him I always wanted to write a song about a shotgun wedding and we wrote that song in about 10 minutes.”

That friendship also led to his first movie role, amusingly close to his own name. He portrayed Alan A’Dayle alongside Crowe in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood now available on DVD.

“I got a call about two years ago from Russel, and his calls always pick up from wherever you left off whether it was 10 minutes previous or 10 months previous. So he said Hey man, can you play the lute? I replied I guess I can play the lute why do you ask? He asked if I was interested in a role for a musician of Irish descent who could sing folk songs and play the lute. So I went down to LA and did a read through and got the part,” he recalled. “It was really fun and interesting, I learned a lot from everybody there. I felt bad for my actor friends because I had never done it, I had nothing to compare it to. As far as I was concerned this was how all movie shoots were. They’ve corrected me…nooo...no they aren’t. It was like learning to drive in a Cadillac.”

With 10 albums and 17 years, it’s hard to narrow down a set list. That is why the current tour features just the band, no opening act, in two sets.

“One of the reasons we decided to do a two-set show was to meet demand. We get to play more music when there is no opening band. We do almost 30 songs a night and most bands do hardly 16 or 17. Still we have 155 recorded Great Big Sea songs. I love doing it this way to be honest. You get to play a bit longer. I find a lot of little kids want to see Great Big Sea and if we have an opening act we don’t get on sometimes until 9 or 9:30. It is often a bit late for them. So I like to start at 8 so people can bring their younger kids.”

As veterans of the music industry they have seen it change a great deal – their first album released in 1993 was a cassette.

“There were wax cylinders when we started man! The downside has been obvious, and well spoken about. Music is free. You can spend a lot of time and money making a song and anybody who wants to get that song for nothing can get it. Unless you can find a different way to make money and pay for your existence, that is a deal breaker and the end of it. For lots of bands in the last five or six years it has been the end of it, they can’t function. Luckily for a band like Great Big Sea the positives outweigh the negatives. We have always been blessed with having a good live concerts and people still want to see that. The whole internet world has separated the boys from the men in terms of live performance. You can’t sleepwalk your way through being a musician anymore, it is impossible. You have to have a great concert in order to be a full time musician nowadays. I think that is a good thing. The young bands out there that have a great concert and make great music will be heard of and found out. They can get the word out there quicker. The big adjustment that everyone has had to make is the stack of how you do business. Music sales used to be a percentage of your business; that is now less, it doesn’t matter if you are Great Big Sea or U2. That number is less than it used to be. The concert ticket world has to be higher than it used to be or you’re done.”

It is because of that live show that bands like Great Big Sea, legends for their performances, have stuck around for this long. Whether a veteran fan with multiple GBS concerts under your belt, or seeing them for the first time, their upcoming performances promise to be something spectacular.

“It is a very interactive experience you’ll find. Not because we try to push people into joining in, it just happens that way. People want to come and participate in a wonderful kind of way. I am not totally certain why. I feel like sometimes we are a very small part of a Great Big Sea concert to be honest; we are just facilitators of a great night out. I always feel like the concert is something that the band and the people who come out share and do together. I always hated going to watch bands and the guy didn’t mention the name of the town he was in, it could have been a recital anywhere and he went back to the bus and goes to the next place. I always like to live in the town we are in. I feel very fortunate to be able to do this and I want people to see that.”