Alan Doyle & Hawksley Workman, The Ship, St. John's, January 2012
You slept through the last small town,
I'll wake you up when the next one comes around.
Your eyes are closed, like you truly believe
You're safe and sound with me
No looking back, no turning into salt.
The city was crumbling but, baby, we're not to fault.
When things got too rough, I promised you we'd leave.
You're safe and sound with me.
You're safe and sound with me,
Just like you always will - just like you always will be.
The wipers clear the windshield of the rain.
My shirt sleeve dries your eyes the very same.
We fit together like the ignition and the key.
You're safe and sound with me.
You're safe and sound with me,
Just like you always will - just like you always will be.
The glove box light shines bright enough to see.
You read the map like you were reading poetry.
And it just might take you forever to see,
That you're safe and sound with me. - Safe & Sound, Hawksley Workman
I've written here before about how impressed I was the first time I saw Hawksley Workman perform - as an opener for Great Big Sea at the George Street Festival, a show during which he danced with broom sticks and made sweet love to a feather boa - about how moved I was by the power of both his songs and his performance. About how it took me all of five minutes into that first show to realise how much I'd love to see Hawksely and Alan (and the boa) performing together. And also about how glad I was when word came out that Hawksely was going to produce what would become GBS's Fortune's Favour album.
That wound up being a very good album, one of my own favourites from GBS; I still say that if you could combine the scope and sweep of Fortune's Favour with the emotional sincerity of Something Beautiful, perhaps add a generous dash of the hard-won authenticity of Turn and a strong shot of the resilient buoyancy of Sea Of No Cares, you might come close to making the perfect GBS album. Perhaps. But until that happens, there's much truth and pleasure to be found in the results of Hawksley's turn at the helm of the Great Big Ship.
Those first few times I saw Hawksley perform - on George Street, at the Edmonton Folk Festival, and at a few theatre shows here and there - I was so swept up in the high drama and lush sensuality of his Big Stage songs - Jealous Of Your Cigarette, Smoke Baby, and of course Striptease (which, I suddenly realised the other night at The Ship, I now think of in terms of Singing To, rather than Being Sung To) - that I can't recall much about the gentle, loving songs I heard at those early shows.
It wasn't until Hawksley came out to join GBS at their 2008 Molson Amphitheatre gig (one of the Biggest of all of Canada's Big Stages) at the very beginning of the Fortune's Favour Tour and they all started in with Safe And Sound - which I was then hearing in the context of the band having been safe in the hands of their producer - that I gave the song my full attention and heard Hawksely at his sweetest and most vulnerable - the rest of Hawksley...the best of Hawksley. Especially when Alan sang a verse of that gentle, loving song.
Seeing Alan come up and join Hawksely for a few songs this past Friday night (during the second of four straight sold-out nights at The Ship in St. John's) was very special. When Alan said he wanted to do Safe And Sound because it was his "favourite Hawksley Workman song," he made it all the more special. As he does. He also made me listen, more closely than I have ever listened before, to his Favourite Hawksley Workman song. Again, as he does. He always makes me listen, with heart as much as - at times with more than - hearing.
I've had Safe & Sound on my mind, and in my heart, for the past few days now, ever since hearing Alan sing it. What it means to be that person, to offer that assurance, to make and then live up to that promise - a promise strong enough and true enough to last all the way along the road, through each small town and crumbling city, in the worst of any storm. To welcome arrival and accept departure with equal grace, regardless of degree of understanding or regret for opportunity lost; to believe in and to hope for the best. To love the steadiest and most sure. To treasure the trust inherent in the capitulation of those closed eyes.
Ignition and key, shirt sleeve and road map...hearing and heart. Safe and Sound. Even if it does take forever to see.
Leave it to the Master Songwriter to choose the right song as his favourite.
Just a bit of a song - one from that Fortune's Favour album upon which the two of them worked together - which has become quite the local favourite of late, recognised as much (maybe more) as the theme song of CBC's hit TV show Republic Of Doyle as it is as a GBS tune.
And then to Alan's song, another from Fortune's Favour, another right choice - a song that tells the True Story of its Singer, its tale told all the more clearly and fully as Alan performs it here.
I love this song, have loved it from the first time I ever heard it, through closed Delta Ballroom doors at a Great Big Christmas sound check more than four years ago. It's since become a great production number at so many GBS shows - particularly effective as a set-opener - exciting and electric, enthusiastically responded to by a multitude of audiences. It's been powerful and true; there has never been a single time it's been performed when I've failed to see the heart and the soul, the passion and the need, of the Petty Harbour Boy. Never once has the answer been anything other than a heartfelt Yes.
And even with all of that, this already-much-loved song becomes Something More - something stronger, something more honest and genuine and complete - in Alan's own version of it here. Freed from the customary expectation that each song exists to uplift and energise the GBS audience, Alan can beautifully and poignantly express the aching edge of uncertainty and the restless intensity of longing that anchor this song in a richer, deeper Truth and a clearer, perfected view. What I love the most about this song - that it's a Portrait of the Artist as the Man he is - is allowed to mature and grow and reach out for its full potential. And so too can the Man.
The thought of what Alan could do with this song - of what he could with any song, especially his own songs - given a full freedom to choose and implement arrangment and tone, style and interpretation, is almost unbearably exciting. This is why the Solo Music - the albums and the tours - matter so much. What GBS does is great; nobody I've ever seen does what they do as well as they do it, and I earnestly hope they can keep right on doing it as much as they want for as long as they choose, for profit and for pleasure. But as inarguably good as it is and as clearly rewarding as it has been, the Whole has boundaries narrower than are those of its constituent Parts.
I believe deeply and sincerely in Alan's full potential with my own restless intensity of longing. How could I possibly not want to see the rest of him...the best of him? And much more to the point, how could he possibly not want this for himself?
As daunting a prospect as it has to be to keep everything else on the go (ncluding taking good care of his poor wonky back) while making the time to write and record - his wealth of solo songs and his music with Russell and his soundrack songs and his reciprocal-covers project with his other musician friends and so many other grand possibilities - to put together a tour band to take on the road (quite likely writing and recording yet more solo-album material while on that road, and on the GBS road too) to deal with label issues and show details and promo stuff...still, it's who he is and where he can go and what he can accomplish. It's the Something More he's been carrying within himself all this time.
If finding a continuing outlet and a lasting expression for the fullness of his Something More is what will please Alan and satisfy him, then it's what needs to happen. It's what he will find a way to make happen - I believe in that too.
And when it does happen, it will be Wonderful. Just like he always will be.
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