INTERVIEW – Roughing It with Alan Doyle: Atlantic Canada’s Favourite Son on New EP and Touring at 50

For 27 years, Alan Doyle has been bringing the kitchen party to venues throughout Canada and around the world. First in the iconic Great Big Sea, now as a solo artist. Doyle released his 4^th solo release, a 6 song EP titled Rough Side Out on Valentine’s Day. The album went to number one on the Canadian country charts. Doyle chatted with GayCalgary prior to hitting the road on a tour that brings him to Calgary February 28th and Edmonton February 29th.

"The songs seem to suit that world (of country music). My favorite songwriters are working right now in that world. So that’s where I went. The whole thing really kind of started with Dean Brody (featured on We Don’t Wanna Go Home) inviting me and the Great Big Sea fellows to play on a song of his like in 2011 or 12 or something with a song called, it’s Friday. Over chatting the Dean, I became aware of how sort of significant Atlantic Canadian music was for in the development of a lot of Canadian country bands. Chatting about how the history of people wandering back and forth between Atlantic Canadian music and Canadian country music goes back kind of a ways. I didn’t really think about it. Like you think about the Rankin family, they were the biggest traditional Celtic band, you know in Canada when we started Great Big Sea, they wandered back and forth between being having country singles all the time. Before them Rita MacNeil, and even before then, Ann Murray and you know, some of my favorite writers who were from Atlantic…