Monday, June 25, 2012

Celebrating Canada and Newfoundland: The Once

Canada Day: as diverse and different as the landscapes communities, and people of Canada are, July first is a time when celebrations of the country take place from the Pacific coast to Whitehorse to Hudson's Bay to Ottawa to the Maritimes. Here’s music to help you celebrate as you prepare for and enjoy Canada Day.

Andrew Dale, Geraldine Hollett, and Phil Churchill met as three actors working in  the once newfoundland musicNewfoundland in the far north of Atlantic Canada. They discovered they all liked to sing and make music, too. The result is their trio called The Once. Hollett’s compelling lead singing fits in with strong support from Dale and Churchill on backing vocals and acoustic instruments including guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and bouzouki

Their first album. called simply The Once (it’s a term that means immediately, imminently, right now in Newfoundland) showed a fine mix of traditional and contemporary material along with a strong, individual sound for the trio. Their second offering , called Row Upon Row of the People They Know, builds on this.



Songs include the well woven story of loss, change, memory and hope called Cradle Hill and the driving traditional story Jack the Sailor. The beat goes on in the traditional song with a couple of aspects you might not expect called My Husband’s Got No Courage in Him, and the quite different, reflective story of another sort of courage, that required to live in Newfoundland in times not so long past, in the song By the Glow of the Kerosene Light.

In the music they create and the music they choose to interpret, the the tree musicians of The Once go beyond the sea chanties and pub songs to a deeper place in the history and present day of this far northern province of Atlantic Canada. It is well worth traveling with them.

From the group’s first album, here is a piece that comes along with images to give you a flavour of Newfoundland landscapes




learn why Hollett’s singing is compelling as she takes on this song based on a true story from Canadian history




you may also wish to see

Le Vent du Nord, from Montreal, brings French Canadian heritage in to the mix with their new recording Tromper Le Temps
the Rockies and plains of Canada's west are the subject and substance of Ian Tyson’s recording Raven Singer
The Once have appeared at the Celtic Colours Festival on Cape Breton in October, a festival not to be missed if you love the music of the Maritimes, and at many other festivals and venues across Canada and internationally as well.

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Bookmark and Share
posted by Kerry Dexter at 0 Comments

Monday, September 05, 2011

Newfoundland music: The Once

Trinity, Newfoundland, is a small fishing community in the northern part of Atlantic Canada, a place where people have been making their livings from the sea of centuries. It was in Trinity that Geraldine Hollett, Phil Churchill, and Andrew Dale found themselves charged with making an evening’s entertainment for tourists and people passing through. In doing that their trio, The Once, came to be.

Newfoundland, far to the north in Atlantic Canada, is a place where Irish emmigrants brought their music, and in meeting up with fellow settlers from England, Scotland, and France. formed a new music. Another powerful force shaping the music of the provnce is the sea. These aspects of the music of Newfoundland weave into the music of The newfoundland msuic the once album coverOnce, whose self titled recording comprises songs and tunes from the tradition along with music from contemporary writers including Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and Amelia Curran.

Hollett is the lead singer for most of the pieces. Churchill and Dale add backing vocals with Churchill on guitar, mandolin, violin and a bit of suitcase percussion, and Dale on a range of instruments from bodhran to banjo to accordion. The sound is tight and connected. Though the sound of music is quite different, it is the same sort of musical dialogue among the three artists that you hear in groups such as Alison Krauss + Union Station and Blue Highway.

The ballad of sea and loss called Three Fishers takes on an Atlantic Canada sound in The Once’s version, which showcases Hollett’s heartfelt lead vocals and the interweaving of instrument and voice that is a hallmark of the trio’s sound. America Curran’s thought provoking contemporary song What Will You Be Building was recorded as the trio sat around a living room floor, with a connection tot he heart of the song which carries through in the recording of it. The group kicks things up with the high energy story of a woman outwitting her abductors in The Maid on the Shore, and the trio’s a capella take on another song from the tradition, Willie Taylor, is likewise foot stomper. The song Marguerite is an intricate and intriguing tale from Newfoundland history.

In Newfoundland, the expression the once means a soon as possible, right away, directly. It’s a good chance that once you begin listening to the once, you’ll be drawn in right away.

You may also wish to see
Music Road: music of Canada
Music Road: Celtic Colours Festival on the way
Music Road: Alison Krauss: Live from the Tracking Room: A Hundred Miles or Mores

A quick way to support Music Road: you could Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

If you enjoy what you are reading here, check out my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it.

Labels: , , , , ,

Bookmark and Share
posted by Kerry Dexter at 2 Comments