Bluenose Folksinger Goes International
Ron Foley Macdonald
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A curious thing is happening to Halifax-based singer/songwriter Dan McKinnon. After genuine Atlantic Celtic giants like Great Big Sea and The Cottars, he's become the East Coast Folksinger who is scoring the most international airplay. New Zealand, Northern Ireland, England, Israel, Trinidad, and various parts of the US from Santa Cruz, California to Alaska, all these places have seen folk music radio stations and internet playlists adding tunes from McKinnon's latest album Fields Of Dreams And Glory.




Indeed, the tunesmith with the sturdy baritone is spending Spring 2006 across the pond on yet another tour of the United Kingdom. He's coming off a week-long workshop engagement in France with the legendary Scottish-born, Australian-based folksinger Eric Bogle (the man who wrote the enduring anti-war ballad And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda). Bogle led McKinnon through a week-long songwriting session outside of Paris; the Nova Scotian folk artist will now open at least two--and perhaps three--of Bogle's upcoming English Concerts.


Pretty heady stuff for a neo-traditionalist songwriter best-known for his half-decade of Saturday morning performances at Halifax's bustling Farmer's Market. McKinnon's approach, however, has always been unconventional. He's released five solid, defiantly independent albums, played hundreds of gigs with rubber-boot traditional groups like McGinty and Evans And Doherty, and portrayed the man who inspired him--Stan Rogers--in a theatrical presentation that has been seen widely all over Eastern North America.


At the heart of Dan McKinnon's life and art, however, is a stubborn dedication to writing songs about who and how we are. Using our rich nautical history to spark his extraordinary storytelling skills, the Halifax-based musician and recording artist has charted out a musical path that manages to balance the traditional with the contemporary.


Blending elements of the early 1970's singer/songwriter approach--where confessional revelations and biting personal observations were the norm--with the enduring oral folk traditions that still linger from Nova Scotia's strong Celtic lineage, McKinnon is clearly on the verge of a major breakthrough.


One listen to the man's latest album will tell the tale. Fields Of Dreams And Glory is a superb 14-song collection of ten originals and a handful of cover tunes. Using a spartan recording approach where voice and accompanying acoustic guitar form the basis of the sound, producer Paul Mills of The Millstream studio in Ontario has perfectly caught McKinnon's warm, direct approach.


A couple of tunes have a little more instrumentation--a restrained piano here, a sinuous violin there, touch of accordion in between--but for the most part the album consists of McKinnon's vocals and guitar delivering confident performances of some exceptionally compelling songs.


The selections range from austerely tuneful (Angeline) to warmly nostalgic (Aesop's Fables) to the humorous (This Side Of The Sod) to the starkly reflective (the title track Fields Of Dreams And Glory). There's much yearning in the melodies; the lyrics are intelligently crafted and packed with vivid imagery that evokes our collective past and McKinnon's particular present.


And while the Halifax singer/songwriter was once heavily influenced by the likes of Stan Rogers, he's clearly his own man now. The songs and performances on Fields Of Dreams And Glory contain a brisk, determined originality that reveals a musical artist who clearly knows exactly where he wants to go.


The album is one of those unique discs that reaches a sustained plateau of tranquility. The narrative force in a song like Many Miles To Go, for example, has a full cinematic quality, bringing the listener in on the action and events detailed in the lyrics about the wartime Merchant Marine, raising and falling with the melody like the gentle rocking motion of the waves that play such an important part in the story of the song.


The more personal songs leave room for unexpected bursts of illumination. A selection like The Road Seldom Travelled--powered by a stunningly soaring melody--deftly balances self-confidence with a touch of melancholy, revealing McKinnon's ability to translate images of motion and travel with more acute observations of the natural world that surrounds him.


Clearly, there are some very good reasons that Fields Of Dreams And Glory is currently making such major headway right around the world. By the time McKinnon returns to his East Coast home from his summer of tours, workshops and other global wanderings, his lingering, just-under-the-radar status might have to be exchanged for that of an emerging folk music star with a burgeoning international reputation.


For more information, check out danmckinnon.ca.




© Ron Foley Macdonald