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Great Big Sea hopes new CD brings good 'Fortune'
Fortune's Favor is a game of solitaire in which the odds are heavily stacked in the player's favor, but when the Canadian band Great Big Sea made their album "Fortune's Favour," they didn't know how the cards would tumble out of the deck.
"We weren't sure how it was going to go, I must confess," according to lead singer Alan Doyle. "We didn't have any preconceived ideas of how the record would sound."
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That path ultimately included a rethink of Great Big Sea's sound. He asked the trio to write some new songs and approach them in different ways - in other words, "completely take all the bricks out of the house and ... build up a new house in a different way," the 39-year-old Doyle explained last week.
"You become guilty of overthinking it. You start to go back to your default way of doing things all the time. It taught us to start living in the moment and trust our instincts."
One of the songs on the disc, "Company of Fools," was co-written by Doyle and Russell Crowe, the Oscar-winning actor who's dabbled in music on the side. Doyle produced Crowe's album, "My Hand, My Heart" and was a member of Crowe's band, the Ordinary Fear of God, when he toured Australia.
The two met "in true Canadian fashion" at the National Hockey League awards ceremony in Toronto. They were both presenters, and Crowe told Doyle that he was a Great Big Sea fan. From there, the two wrote a bunch of songs and it's been "one of the coolest musical experiences I've ever had," Doyle said.
"He's a fantastic lyricist."
Hailing from the maritime province of Newfoundland, Great Big Sea was formed in 1993, and grew out of informal "kitchen parties" the band had at their homes. By the end of the 1990s, they were best-sellers in Canada and casting their eyes to the south.
"We built it up a lot, and the following we have is great," Doyle said. "It wasn't an overnight success, but it wasn't in Canada or Europe or any other place we've been."
Great Big Sea launched a tour of North America last week in London, Ontario, that will take up their calendars through December and bring them to the Byham Theater tonight. With rising gas prices and increased border security, touring isn't quite as easy as it once was, Doyle admitted, but it's a necessary part of a musician's life in an age of declining CD sales.
"Everything is hard," he said. "The music business right now is challenging ... But enough whining. Everyone has to deal with that in the industry. Nowadays, you have to be thoughtful and eager and organized."
