The musician who took the songs his father hitchhiked home to sing — and arranged them for the world. He has never moved away. He still goes home to play.
- From Petty Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador
Alan Doyle in his home town Petty sanctuary
The kitchen table where the songs were
Alan Doyle’s father, Tom Doyle, was a working musician and a working dad. By day, he was an orderly at a psychiatric hospital in St. John’s. By night, he was a local semi-professional musician — playing pubs, weddings, wakes, and his own kitchen table after the dishes were cleared. Because the family did not own a car, Tom hitchhiked the fifteen kilometres between Petty Harbour and the city every day to get to work, and back home every evening to sing.
Half the songs Petty Harbour remembered, his neighbours say, came through him.
Alan grew up at that kitchen table. The old songs — fishing songs, sailing songs, mummering songs, the Irish songs that came over with settlers two centuries ago and never stopped being Irish — were his first musical education. The newer ones came at school dances. The instruments came along the way: electric and acoustic guitars first, then bouzouki, mandolin, and banjo.
Alan Doyle in his home town Petty Harbour
As a child, Alan appeared as an extra in the 1981 TV movie A Whale for the Killing, based on Farley Mowat’s book of the same name, which was filmed in his hometown.
Great Big Sea
When Alan Doyle studied at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, he met Séan McCann, Bob Hallett, and Darrell Power. In 1993, the four of them founded Great Big Sea.
What Great Big Sea did was take the songs Alan’s father had hitchhiked home to sing — and arrange them for a stadium. Fiddle, accordion, and bodhrán against rock guitars. Every Newfoundland reel rearranged for a Canadian arena audience. Over two decades the band toured every province and most of the world, sold over one million records, and made every audience they played for understand what a kitchen party meant in the place those songs came from.
Alan primarily plays electric and acoustic guitars and the bouzouki for live performances, but he has been known to play mandolin and banjo.
Film, television, and memoirs
Alan Doyle, Allan Hawco, Russell Crowe
Doyle has acted in films, including the role of Allan A’Dayle in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (2010), beside Russell Crowe.
He has guest-starred on the CBC Television series Republic of Doyle (alongside Allan Hawco from Goulds, Newfoundland and Labrador).
He has written two memoirs about Newfoundland life: Where I Belong (2014), about growing up in Petty Harbour, and A Newfoundlander in Canada (2017), about the country beyond the island.
Coming home
Alan returns to Petty Harbour several times a year, often to play music for local concerts. He also runs his own annual music festival there — a small-scale homecoming that draws fans from across the country to the village where the songs started.
2012. Alan Doyle talks about Great Big Sea, Russell Crowe and the changing face of Newfoundland
About Petty Harbour-Maddox Cove
Petty Harbour-Maddox Cove is a town on the eastern shore of the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador. It is nestled deep in the heart of Motion Bay.
The town is approximately 200 years old, though the site has been continuously occupied since at least 1598, predating the arrival of the Mayflower and making it one of the oldest European settlements in North America.
