Canada Red Cross 2017 NL Humanitarian Of The Year, November 2016
George Street Festival Regatta Roulette Rock Star, August 2016
Winnipeg Folk Festival, Show with Oysterband, the East Pointers and Matt Byrne, July 2016
I'll tell you right from the start
If you've got love in your heart
You've got everything I need to see
You're beautiful to me - Alan Doyle, "Beautiful To Me"
Your new record and book are also looking very beautiful to me.
From the Rock to Bob Rock - recording the "A Week At The Warehouse" record in Vancouver, 11 songs in 7 days, January 2017 - due out in October (pic from Alan's Twitter)
Written over the course of this Birthday Year, also due out in October (pic from Random House Canada, taken by Vanessa Heins)
I'm going to break with long-established tradition and wait on the customary Year That Was pic/video Review portion of the Birthday Blog, mostly for practical reasons: Time is running short and if I get only a part of this up on your actual birthday, this year (unlike some prior years) I'd rather it be the Accomplishment/Advice portion. Because this year, there are no doubts about what to say. Well, almost no doubts. There's always room for at least a wee bit of doubt.
Perhaps best to say fewer doubts this year than in some others. Your accomplishments over this past Birthday Year would be ample enough for many to lay claim to with pride as a decade's output. You wrote your second (sure to be best-selling) book, you wrote and recorded your third Alan Doyle album with a legendary producer and your own amazing band, you took that amazing band (in various configurations) on the road for something in the neighbourhood of 100 public and private gigs, including Boots & Hearts, Cavendish Folk Fest, Winnipeg Folk Fest, George Street Regatta Roulette, FireAid for Fort Mac (as both performer and co-host), Fermilab Particle Accelerator, Belleville with the lights out, your largest solo-career crowd (so far) in Kitchener's Centre In The Square, and an utterly triumphant night in NYC...a delightfully large number of those gigs sold out to the doors.
You also created a charming new character - the Time-Travelling Historian - on the Murdoch Mysteries, provided a moving narration for Newfoundland At Armageddon and appeared in Trail Of The Caribou. You found time to do fundraising for (these being just a few of the many) Kids Eat Smart, Memorial University Alumni, Smiling Land Foundation, Hope Live, Sarah McLachlan's School of Music Society, Gold Medal Plates (across Canada and all the way to Portugal and South America), and for a park in the tiny Newfoundland town your cabin is in. You also found time to work on your latest project for mental health and addictions foundation-funding, you helped to open the new National Music Centre in Calgary, and you co-produced (and co-wrote songs and performed on) bandmate Cory Tetford's brilliant new album In The Morning.
Then there's that matter of your being named the NL Humanitarian Of The Year by the Canadian Red Cross, where immediately after receiving your award (that after an unforgettable introduction from your show-stealing son - "I love my Dad; he loves me more" ), you and that amazing band put on a show during which you sang the song you wrote for your parents, to your parents. That moment alone made it very hard for me to resist choosing this as your Biggest Accomplishment of this Birthday Year. It wound up very close to the top, winning the secondary award as the moment I was most proud of you this year. It had some competition there too. It's been that kind of year...again.
I'm going to save A Newfoundlander In Canada ("Always Going Somewhere, Always Coming Home" - I may never be able to stop telling you how perfect that is, how much I love it) for next year, not because I'm not thoroughly impressed by all of the day-off writing you did while on the road to meet your deadlines, but because I want to be able to specifically quote all that I know will be wonderful in your book. What you have said about the breadth of the scope of that book has me counting the days until October, when I am sure I will eagerly read it from cover to cover as soon as it's in my hands. The first reading. The ones that come after may be a bit more leisurely.
For this Birthday Year of yours, the accomplishment that stands highest above most other folk's Decade Best is, in my opinion, the new record, for two reasons. Reason Number One is that this is your first true Alan Doyle & The Beautiful Gypsies Record, your first Band Album with this spectacularly talented group of people you've brought together. The Beautiful Gypsies are no longer merely your touring band, not now that they've poured their own passion and energy into the fashioning of each song on this record; A Week At The Warehouse was created by all of you and it in turn plays its own part in creating you as a stronger, more-unified whole, each member of the band needful and necessary to the completion of that whole.
This is is a breath-taking, double-edged Act of Creation, and it happened right there in Bob Rock's Vancouver studio, Bob Rock himself being, of course, Reason Number Two why I'm picking this as your Biggest Accomplishment of this year. You now have a Bob Rock-produced record, filled with the songs you have written, which this consummately skilled and unabashedly iconic Artistic Force was glad to produce - Metallica, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams, The Hip...and Alan Doyle & The Beautiful Gypsies - and to which your amazing band members have given the fullness of their own prodigious talents. Not easy for much of anything to trump all of this for the Accomplishment Award. (I have to say "not easy" instead of "impossible," because I have learned well never to underestimate you - if you had more time in this Birthday Year, you very well might have outdone even this.)
But it is indeed quite late in this Birthday Year - technically past for you, so safe enough for my final accomplishment-picking - down to the final few waning minutes over here on this side of the continent (needing and using my full PDT advantage this year), so on without delay to the Advice for the Year To Come. But that advice requires a bit of a preface.
Early on while thinking about writing this blog, I was sorely tempted to choose one accomplishment that surpassed even the From The Rock To Bob Rock wonder and awe of the new record. I resisted that temptation, but the more I thought about it, the more intertwined that other accomplishment became with the advice I had already decided to give you. Although "intertwined" is seldom a synonym for "clarity," I'll try my best to sort it out in the allotted time.
While reading through the Happy Birthday messages sent to you on Twitter today, it was impossible not to notice how many people, especially those who know you personally, carried on the theme of what a hard worker you always are. This was also where my thoughts had been while going back through this past year, the same as happens when thinking back on each and every past year that I've been witness to what I know is only a small part of just how hard you truly do work. Witness as well to how achingly weary you sometimes get as a result of it all. I will somewhat reluctantly confess that even when I may have disagreed with your efforts at doing this or that or whatever, even when I may have wished with all my heart that you would give yourself a break and stop pushing yourself so hard so much of the time, I have invariably, irresistibly, found myself deeply moved by and abidingly respectful of the whole-hearted persistence of those efforts of yours.
So much so that I really did consider how hard you have worked for the year's Biggest Accomplishment, before deciding against it for two reasons, the first reason being that it could easily - terribly easily - take that prize every year, and the truth of the matter is that along with being moved and respectful, there is also the worry and the concern, understandable enough, I hope, for the ears that hear the hoarse voice, the eyes that see the shredded fingers and the slumped shoulders, the heart that hopes for a bit of rest after the brilliant lights go down.
The second reason how hard you work is over here in the Advice portion is difficult to explain - tangly and complicated and I fear I am going to shag up that explanation attempt. But I am not going to tiptoe around it.
Humility is a rare and wonderful thing, Alan, something to be treasured in others whenever we encounter it because of that very rarity and wonder. With all that you have done, with all that you have created and accomplished and achieved, you continuously refer to yourself - think of yourself - as the Luckiest Of Men, and there is a genuine humility in that which is priceless and dear. And true in that there will always be a measure of Luck - good and bad, fortune and misfortune - in our lives, for those of us who work as hard as we possibly can, as well as for those of us who hardly bother to work at all. But only a measure. The greater part of what we do or do not accomplish in our lives will surely be the result of what we do or do not attempt, the result of the positions and places in which we put ourselves to allow luck to either smile upon us or smite us or pass us by, the result of the opportunities we have had the cleverness to seek out and the courage to accept.
The heartfelt gratitude you consistently show for all the good things in your life is laudable, even inspiring. It is always endearing, will always be so. It's a fundamental part of who you are, and who you are is a good man with a kind heart who works harder, who tries more to do what he thinks he is supposed to do, than almost any person I know and who deserves every single one of those good things he has in his life.
It's permissible to be both lucky and deserving, Alan - there are and will always be those in this beautiful-but-sometimes-unfair life who do not get what they deserve based on their efforts, for the good and for the bad - and what I hope for you, what I advise for you in the Year To Come (and all the years that follow after) is that you give an equal amount of acknowledgment to that which you know you have earned as you give to that which you believe you have been given. Because the balance of those two aspects is an integral part of seeing yourself and accepting yourself as that good man with a kind heart who works hard and deserves much, a good and wise man who is thankful for the rewards of his efforts and grateful for the grace of his luck.
That Man could accomplish Anything his heart desired. He could be sure that he need not make the same mistakes that some around him have made, because no matter what anyone else might think of him, he would know beyond doubt who he is, what path he has chosen to walk, and what he wants to become. That Man could let himself be loved; he could see in himself the Beautiful that others can so clearly see in him.
He might even be able to get a bit of rest now and again. Dreaming Big, I know. But that's what Birthday Wishes are for.
Happy Birthday, Dear Alan. Again and still. With Love. Again and still.
I'll add in Year That Was pics & vids bit by bit after posting this while it's still the 17th.
Birthday Year May 2016 - May 2017
FireAid Benefit For Fort Mac, Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton, June 2016
Looking good in that Eskimos jersey, Mr. FireAid Benefit Co-Host, June 2016
A large day for a worthy cause in Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium for FireAid, June 2016
What a night in the Kirkland Lake Sauna Rink! June 2016
Tribute to a fallen Troubadour with The Once, Matt Andersen and Chris Kirby at Cavendish, July 2016
Hoping Tom Power won't mind my using his epic from-stage pic at Winnipeg Folk Fest. July 2016
When I say "1, 2 "you say "3, 4". "1, 2..." Winnipeg Folk Festival. July 2016
From earlier that same day at Winnipeg Folk Fest, different stage, with the ever-awesome Oysterband, July 2016
Joined by Oysterband's John Jones during the AD&TBGs Main Stage show at Winnipeg Folk Fest, July 2016
My kind of folk festival. Winnipeg MB, July 2016
Rock Folkers, Winnipeg Folk Festival, July 2016
Taking my breath away at one of two sold-out shows at lovely Jackson-Triggs, July 2016
Sharing your stage with a friend on a sold-out Summer Night at Jackson-Triggs, July 2016
A spectacular Where I Belong to close out Jackson-Triggs, July 2016
The laws of gravity can't keep the George Street King on the ground. When he's up... George Street Festival, August 2016
The George Street King and his Court play Regatta Roulette with a few thousand loyal subjects, St. John's, August 2016
Sometimes you do too wear your heart on your sleeve. This is one of those times. GSF, St. John's, August 2016
The George Street King listens to his song being sung back to him by thousands of voices. GSF, August 2016
Soundchecking "Rosy and Grey" with Lowest of the Low at Buffalo's Canalside, August 2016
Also hoping Sean Sisk won't mind my using this great pic of his from the Boots & Hearts gig. Oro-Medonte ON, August 2016
This man, the one right here, is who I just wrote all the words above for. This is him. Garden Cove, NL, August 2016
Most priceless moment of a very sweet day fundraising in small Newfoundland town, August 2016
Which is not to say this wasn't a wonderfully special moment too. Garden Cove NL, August 2016
Petty Harbour Boys, singing songs and doing good in Garden Cove, August 2016
Tellin' tales true and tall with TSN's Dave Hodge at lovely Redstone Winery, Beamsville ON, August 2016
A Master Storyteller, expertly practicing his craft in the warm light of the setting sun, Redstone Winery, ON, August 2016
A poignant Blue Rodeo song on a soft Summer night at an Ontario winery, August 2016
Doing proper obeisance at Sun Peaks, BC, August 2016
Grand opportunity for two dear friends to share a stage at Vancouver's PNE, August 2016
Sweetest face - most vulnerable face - at the PNE. Vancouver BC, August 2016
Cory's got your back at the Fairport Music Festival, August 2016
Todd is your consummate Keeper Of The Keys. Fairport NY, August 2016
Best Band On The Go. Fairport/Rochester NY, August 2016
Bringing the (beautiful) house down in Stowe VT, September 2016
The Fiddle Goddess and the Petty Harbour Rock Star Boy, Stowe VT, September 2016
Could there be a more perfect song for a (Magna) Hoedown? Aurora ON, September 2016
Hoedown Guitar Gods, Aurora ON, September 2016
Looking good in appropriate Hoedown gear. Aurora, September 2016
You're a Petty Harbour Cowboy...
On A Tour Bus You Ride (and you're wanted...wanted...) Magna Hoedown, September 2016
Putting the "Hoe" in...hmmm, never mind. Magnificent Magna Hoedown. September 2016
Time to be Alan The Actor again, this time on CBC-TV's "Murdoch Mysteries" (that era really does suit you). September 2016 (Pic from Alan's Twitter)
Here's hoping the Time-Travelling Historian finds his way into future "Murdoch Mysteries" episodes. (Pic from Twitter)
Singing a classic tune with old friend Damhnait Doyle in Moose Jaw SK, October 2016
At the end of the day in Moose Jaw, October 2016
Yes, ya gots an amazing band. Deerfoot Casino, Calgary, October 2016
Definitely the face of a grateful fella. Deerfoot Casono, Calgary,. October 2016
"When you were young, where did you hide..." Deerfoot Casino, October 2016
"Are you Ready To Go, Mississauga?" Living Arts Centre, October 2016
Thoroughly rocking Mississauga's Living Arts Centre, October 2016
Given your aplomb while getting to Ithaca on this difficult day, I'm tempted to go with the "Graceful & Charming" title. October 2016
A beautiful song in a beautiful old theatre (with a full complement of BGs from across the border) in Wilkes-Barre PA. October 2016
I love it when you dance. And soar. The Barns, Wolf Trap, October 2016
A song straight out of Petty Harbour (and your heart), sung for the first time, at Berkeley's famed Freight & Salvage, November 2016
Sharing a song with a gal from St. Mary's Bay at Seattle's Tractor Tavern, November 2016
Introductions by friend and son, tribute, acceptance speech and several songs, including the one sung by a grateful Son to his Mom and Dad. St. John's, November 2016
No award winner could have possibly ever been introduced with more charm and grace than you were. November 2016
And no award winner could have possibly ever been more humbly grateful than you were. November 2016
Many thanks to Alick Tsui for getting this pic. Everyone stood up when the Humanitarian Award was presented and that meant no view at all for short gals.
A Humanitarian Of The Year and his amazing band. St. John's, November 2016
Son and Father, NL Humanitarian Award. SJCC, November 2016
I love that smile. You look like a delighted, exhausted 8 year old. Beautiful to me. November 2016
Dedicating the song about your Mom and Dad, to your Mom and Dad. Must have something in my eye. November 2016
Right by Cory's side at his St. John's "In The Morning" album-release gig. Jag Hotel, November 2016
All hands, "In The Morning" record launch, Jag Hotel, St. John's, November 2016
Coming up from the audience to sing a Christmas song with the Ennis Sisters. St. John's, December 2016
Storytelling (and book reading!) Through Song at Ottawa's sold-out Centrepointe Theatre, January 2017
Telling a Rock Star Guitar God Story Through Song at Centrepointe, January 2017
Shining On at Centrepointe, January 2017
New music to begin the Paddy's Month Tour (at the Particle Accelerator Lab). Batavia, March 2017
Back out on the road again with your Beautiful Gypsies and your face tells the whole story. Fermilab, Batavia, March 2017
Paddy's Month Tour graced by a familiar face (and bass). Ann Arbor, March 2017
Forever Light Will Shine. Yes, you will. Pittsburgh, March 2017
What an awesome night for you in NYC! B.B. King's, March 2017
At NYC's B.B. King's, with Bob Hallett and Petrina Bromley (Come From Away), March 2017
Four-fifths w. Mid-Air Murray, B.B. King's, NYC, March 2017
Paddy's Day with Donovan Woods in Sellersville PA, my favourite show of Paddy's Month for all kinds of reasons. March 2017
Drinking the venue bar dry in Port Washington, Long Island, March 2017
Best Guitar Face ever to grace a Port Washington stage. Long Island NY, March 2017
Opening the show at Easton MD, March 2017
Hearing this song again after such a long time was definitely the highlight of Richmond VA (that, and the fact that it was actually Spring there!) March 2017
When in Boston (or the Boston Area)... Cambridge, March 2017
More wonderful new Week At The Warehoue Music at the equally new Tupelo Music Hall. Derry, NH, March 2017
Cory and Murray both helping save the Riddle-I-Day in Tupelo. March 2017
Simply the sweetest face to be found on any stage, in any place. Tupelo, March 2017
The new song I most expect take off, especially in the States. And maybe in a motorcycle commercial too. Vroom vroom! Bath ME, March 2017
A stage-edge River Driver -what a way to start a show! Bath, ME. March 2017
There's no other life, Lindsay ON, March 2017
Largest crowd (so far) to come for your show with your band. Kitchener, March 2017
Raising funds for NL charities at the Rockin' Big Give, with guest Ed Robertson, Toronto ON, March 2017
Supplying your own power during one of your most memorable shows, Belleville ON, April 2017
Part Power Player, Part Magician. Mostly Magician. Belleville ON, April 2017
Possibly the sweetest version yet, and I've seen more than a few sweet versions. Truro NS, April 2017
A grand time in Burlington VT opening up for Barenaked Ladies, April 2017
Grand times with BNL in now-triumphant Ithaca NY, April 2017
What a pair. What a night in Ithaca. April 2017
The best show ever done by a fella with a broken foot. Steveston BC. May 2017
One more time: Happy Birthday, Dear Alan. Technically Happy Day After Your Birthday, which means we are already in the Year To Come. Not even a wee bit of doubt that you're Ready To Go.
