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Doyle looks to provide a winning party

Going out on the road together was not part of the plan when two of Canada's most celebrated musicians got together to write a song. Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea fame and Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies fame had been good friends for many years.
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Alan Doyle entertains a huge crowd in the Canada Games Plaza Sunday night. Citizen photo Brent Braaten Feb 16 2015

Going out on the road together was not part of the plan when two of Canada's most celebrated musicians got together to write a song.

Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea fame and Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies fame had been good friends for many years. Doyle had, for a long time, wished to write a song that had a rap bridge in it, and when he reheard the big Ladies hit One Week - with its speedy rap breakdown midway - he realized it was Robertson in particular he wanted to do it with.

When he brought this up with his buddy, Robertson said he had always wanted to write a sea-shanty drinking song like the Great Big Sea boys were world famous for.

So the collaboration began, and the results are out on the airwaves now. The single 1-2-3-4 was released just in time for the joint tour the pair are now on. Their schedules coming together for a cross-Canada road trip had almost nothing to do with their friendship or the launch of this song, but it sure helped.

Doyle was last in Prince George only about eight months ago when he and his band The Beautiful Gypsies opened the 2015 Canada Winter Games music festival. Now he is coming back on federal election night, so he was excited to provide a winning party, no matter who prevails at the ballot box. In fact, he said, "whoever wins in Prince George on Monday night, your two Members of Parliament, I invite to the show. They can just come have a good time with us to celebrate."

He has been closely following the campaign from his home in Newfoundland & Labrador, even sitting on a political panel on CBC's The National alongside comedian Mark Critch (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) and actor Allan Hawco (Republic Of Doyle) to discuss the political personality of their province.

It's not new for Doyle, who has always shown his cerebral sides intertwined with his folksy sides and his life-of-the-party sides. His solo music, and that made with his Great Big Sea bandmates, has never steered away from historical and small-p political themes. It's what's made him into an unofficial ambassador of Newfoundland & Labrador.

He detailed the reasons for this by laying out his upbringing in tiny Petty Harbour in the autobiographical book Where I'm From. It has been so successful that it is now out in paperback and he spent countless hours in his home studio reading into audiobook format.

Now his publisher wants a second book.

"The Where I'm From book was really about me growing up in Petty Harbour up until Great Big Sea starts," he said. "This next book, I'm not totally sure yet, but the working title of it is A Newfoundlander In Canada , and it's about me sort of discovering Canada from the back seat of a band van, starting as a 24-year-old. It's mostly a collection of road stories that will hopefully be linked by enough narrative to tell what Canada looked like to a kid from a small fishing town in 1993."

For Prince George audiences, the salivating ought to begin now over that, since Great Big Sea got a great big dose of life beyond Newfoundland & Labrador through the launch of UNBC. The local university's first Backyard Barbecue event featured Great Big Sea as a last-minute fill-in band, only because they were in the general area on their way from northern Alberta to Vancouver on their first jaunt off the rock as a band.

After that surreal outdoor concert headlined by heavy rockers Junkhouse and Barstool Prophets, they piled back into the van the same night and headed down Highway 97, passing through forest fire smoke and a checkpoint at 100 Mile House in the throes of the Gustafsen Lake Standoff. Story of Canada from the band van indeed, and that was just one little leg of the massive highway - literal and figurative - that the band went down after that.

The passport got several stamps in it this year, thanks to a small tour of Germany then some official duties in France and Belgium "to appear in a documentary film about the 100th anniversary of the July 1 battle, the great disaster for our Newfoundland First World War regiment. There's a huge monument in Beaumont Hamel in the north of France, site of the big most tragic battle. There's usually a ceremony there every July 1, oddly enough. It's Memorial Day for Newfoundland & Labrador, and Canada Day for the rest of Canada - one of the million ironies about Newfoundland's place in Canada. So I sang the ode there, which was quite moving and emotional."

Doyle almost got to Prince George in time to cross paths with another of his good friends, country singer-songwriter Dean Brody, who was raised in B.C. (Smithers and Jaffray) but now lives on the east coast where he and Doyle have collaborated more than once.

Halifax was the site of this year's Canadian Country Music Awards extravaganza, which gave Doyle a chance to hang out with some kindred spirits. In Canada, the line is short between any genres of music especially when his and theirs are both rooted in traditional instruments and rustic lyric themes.

"It was great because I sort of see myself on the fringes of country music," Doyle said. "I've never felt like I fit into a perfect box, you know? I play this odd mix of traditional Newfoundland music, but I'm a kid from the '80s so there's a pile of hair metal in there, and then I'm a singer-songwriter guy just like most of our country heroes. So it was kinda fun to go hang with my friends in country music. And the thing I like about Canadian country music right now is I love the show that those guys put on. They put on their hats and their boots like it's a costume, because they are going out there to give people a great night out. Some good lookin' dude with his shirt open singing something all the girls like - awesome! - it's just like hair metal was when I was 14. It's showtime, man, it's showtime."

There are still some tickets left for Doyle's showtime with Barenaked Ladies on Monday night. They hit the CN Centre Stage at 7:30 p.m., half an hour after the polls close.