Alan Doyle - All Together Now: A Newfoundlanders Light Tales for Heavy Times

Copyright 2020 Skinners Hill Music, Ltd.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisheror in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agencyis an infringement of the copyright law.

Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: All together now / Alan Doyle.

Names: Doyle, Alan, 1969- author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200331167 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200331469 | ISBN 9780385696777 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385696784 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Doyle, Alan, 1969- Anecdotes. | LCSH: Great Big Sea (Musical group)Anecdotes. | LCSH: MusiciansNewfoundland and LabradorAnecdotes. | LCGFT: Anecdotes.

Classification: LCC ML420.D755 A3 2020 | DDC 782.42164092dc23

Book and cover design: Kelly Hill

Cover photo: Adam Hefferman

Interior images: (ring stains) Davdeka/Shutterstock.com; all other images Clipart.com.

Lyrics to Large-Breasted Woman Skinners Hill Music, Ltd., administered by Kobalt Music Group Ltd.

Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

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This book is dedicated to everyone working

to find a way out of this pandemic and

everyone holding fast on the front lines

to keep us safe while we are still in it.

I AM SUPPOSED TO BE IN ITALY .

To be specific, today I am supposed to be in Matera, a wondrous ancient cave city carved into the hills of southern Italy. My bandmates and I were to play a concert here, at the foot of a vineyard on a sandstone bluff dotted with olive trees. I bet the after-show party would have featured rare wines that I could never find or afford even if I could. Im sure wed all be beaming as we wandered the winding stone roads at midnight or later, as bands on tour often do, headed for the one garden bar still open. Cold Peroni flowing hand over fist for the Friday faces not yet ready to part with the warm glow of night.

I am not in Italy.

I am not where I am supposed to be or doing what I am supposed to be doing. Just about the entire performing world, from bands to dancers to DJs to circus clowns, would all say the same thing. Like so many in the gig and gathering industry, I am home in my basement, occupying myself as best I can while waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to pass and the green light to signal that our tour buses can roll once again.

As I type this, it is a Friday in July of 2020. It is my seventeenth Friday in a row without some kind of gig. I suspect this is my lengthiest consecutive streak at home since 1994 and offstage since 1982. Now, I wouldnt want you to think it is all bad. I am enjoying the long-overdue extended family time and sleeping in my own bed. But times like this, suppertime on Friday, when I should be sound checking and watching people form up and down the street around the venue, excited people craning their necks to see whos on the bus, or cloistering at close-by patios with glasses raised and troubles soon to be forgotten for a few hours, I miss it.

I am built for the road. Bandmates have commented that my Petty Harbour Hobbit DNA is genetically programmed to live out of a six-foot-long by thirty-inch-wide tour bus bunk and sleep soundly while a diesel engine pushes a forty-five-foot tube on rubber tires through the Canadian winter. Being in one place for this long is not what I am accustomed to, at all. I miss the gigs and the crowds and the physical and mental satisfaction that comes with singing a song while others sing along with you. I miss looking across the stage to wink at a bandmate whos just played something incredible, or giggling as one of them, or more likely I, play or sing a note so wrong that it almost derails the whole train.

I miss the concerts and all that comes with such a privileged life, but I also miss the gatherings. Not just on the road, but at home as well. I live in St. Johns, Newfoundland, a city with one of the few great pub cultures in North America. We Newfoundlanders are sociaholics, if youll forgive a generalization. Gathering is our superpower. We do it at home or abroad. We do it in good times and especially in bad. We find each other and congregate and talk and joke and complain and sing. I think this could be why COVID-19 hurts us so badly. It has taken away the one sure-fire defence we have used against so many hardships of history: We get together. We work it out. We get through it. We do what has to be done. Then, we celebrate. With the best of them.

COVID-19 has born us our kryptonite. We cant get together. Not to talk or joke. Not to complain or sing. Not to work it out and get through it. And certainly not to celebrate. For a gathering pub culture like ours, this has been especially hard.

If you are at all like me, you are longing for a pub, with a black and golden pint on the bar and another one not too far behind. Where friends play a game of Sure, thats nothing as we try to constantly one-up the story thats just been offered to the gang. Where all the mouths at the table are moving at the same time and no one seems to mind. Where one yarn leads to another so quickly you have to be as ready as an Olympian at the start line to get your tale in before someone else is well into theirs.

Alas, right now, all we can do is imagine such a time.

So why dont we do just that, Dear Reader? Why dont we imagine we are in such a puball together, nowand the stories are flying? Lets say we are mid-stride on a Friday, jammed into the corner at the Duke of Duckworth on the last bar stool, my left arm on the bar and my right on the high table. The whole pub before me. The best piece of real estate on Earth tonight.

The musings to follow are offered just as they would be from that throne of a stool. Told in response to a prompt or question or nudge or dare. Told as they occur to me, sometimes to make a point, and more often for no rhyme or reason other than they might make someone laugh and help turn a good night into a great one.

Perhaps a few stories will not only pass the time but get us a little closer to a time when we can do this for real.

I will be there with bells on. Till then, thanks for joining me here.

Cheers,

Alan

It always seems like an innocent enough idea to assemble the gang right after work. Just pop in for one on the way home. You know, before you gets back to your own house and gets too settled in. Youll be home by five thirty at the latest.