Great Big Milestone: Alan Doyle releases 20th album

Legendary Newfoundland musician Alan Doyle barely remembers a time when he didn’t play guitar.

“I always say one of the great blessings in my lucky life is that, you know, I got to learn all my musical lessons the easy way. I didn’t even know I was learning them,” says Doyle.

As he grew up in Petty Harbour-Maddox Cove, N.L., Doyle was surrounded by music.

“In most areas of rural Newfoundland has a family that’s the band,” he says.

“And I was born into that family. I was born into the Doyles, and I started playing music when I was really young.”

When he moved to St. John’s, N.L., for university, he met his iconic bandmates, in what would become Great Big Sea.

A few weeks later, the band was down at The Lower Deck in Halifax.

Newfoundland musician Alan Doyle walks on the Pedestrian Mall on Water Street in St. John's on Wednesday, July 8, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Daly

On Friday, Alan Doyle released the 20th album of his career – in his 30th year in the music business.

Three decades in, Doyle says the most rewarding part of his career is the team he assembled, from management to the band that backs him up.

“The best seat in the house at one of my concerts is mine. I’m grateful to have it,” says Doyle.

There are new songs on the album, but some of them will sound familiar, says Doyle, like the title track, “Welcome Home.”

“It’s a Newfoundland anthem of trying to get home, gone away to work and trying to get home,” he says.

It’s a little more quiet, reflective and personal, says Doyle.

Alan Doyle, best known as the lead singer of Great Big Sea, performs during the Canada Day noon show on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, July 1, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

In “Yours and Mine,” co-written with Jimmy Rankin, Doyle sings about watching his kids grow up and about anxieties and insecurities.

“Those are not things I’m used to singing about. I felt like it was time to let people see behind the curtain of the clown,” says Doyle.

Alan Doyle and his Beautiful, Beautiful Band are gearing up to hit the road for an extensive North American tour next month, with stops in Moncton, N.B., and Halifax on St. Patrick’s Day weekend.

“The greatest privilege of my life is to get up there and people give me their night. They’re getting everything I got, and I do that every single night,” says Doyle.

“Especially to the people in Moncton, Halifax and Atlantic Canada, it barely needs saying, but I would not be sitting where I’m sitting if it wasn’t for the people in Atlantic Canada."