Bet you can’t listen just Once

St. John’s folk trio reinventing Newfoundland music

By Ryan Belbin

With the release of their self-titled debut album in July, four-time MusicNL award winners The Once are turning heads with their stunning harmonies and arrangements of traditional songs. Drawn together by their theatre backgrounds in 2005, lead vocalist Geraldine Hollett, Andrew Dale (vocals, bouzouki, mandolin, guitar, piano accordion, piano, tenor banjo, Hammond organ, bodhran, bass, percussion), and Phil Churchill (vocals, mandolin, fiddle, electric and acoustic guitar, percussion) spent one of their rare nights off with the Muse.

The Muse: First off, congratulations on everything. How have you been responding to your successes? PC: I still feel like we don’t really notice it. It’s great to find out from Fred’s Records, “Ok we’re sold out, we need more,” and hearing people say, “You’re all over the radio,” but you’re not hearing what everyone else is getting at all at once.

TM: It seems like many of these songs are stories put to music. Is there a conscious fusing of theatre elements to your music? GH: I don’t think it’s conscious, but it’s absolutely there. It’s like acting: you want to understand the character, so that when you play it you can portray it as honestly as possible. I want to believe it so I can make everybody else believe it. PC: When you’re looking at arranging a song, you can call that one act or a scene. But then you’ve got your whole album, which you have to do that exact same thing to. Playing live almost becomes a stripped-down version of a play, of a piece; your album is your Broadway production.

TM: What do you think is the overarching tone of this album? AD: It’s about making traditions still relevant today, of reminding people that they are still relevant. I think it’s happening on a broader scale; if you look around, there’s a number of people, younger people, who are digging folk music and traditional music, and making it hip again. It’s cool to listen to folk music.

TM: Do you think people from outside the province “get” our music, or does it have an esoteric appeal? AD: I don’t think it’s limited to here. What really caused us to take it seriously was a trip to the Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival. It was a folk festival, but it wasn’t a folk festival in St. John’s. The response there was so overwhelmingly positive that the three of us looked at each other and said, “There’s got to be something to what we’re doing”

TM: There must be some sort of universal appeal to the music. AD: Well ultimately, folk music is exactly that: it’s the music of the people. PC: There are different areas where certain sorts of music rise. In the States, pop music rules. In Britain, dance music rules. These are blanket things, but everywhere in the world there are little pockets where there’s that voice and a story. When you’re playing folk music, there’s someone out there who’s going to connect. It’s going to make sense to somebody.

TM : Are there any particular musicians that you identify with? PC: We have a lot that we want to be like. Amelia Curran comes to mind; just a relentless song writing ability. Sean Panting is another one. That guy throws out more beautiful songs than all of us will write in our lifetimes. Then you get a guy like Ron Hynes. I was going around Ireland with my family and went to Walton’s Music in Dublin, and grabbed some Irish songbooks.

I flipped over to “Sonny’s Dream,” and it says “Irish traditional.” So I get pissed off, first of all, but then kind of go like, “I know that guy. That’s a guy from home who has written something with such massive appeal that another country – the country that spawned most of Newfoundland – stole it!”

TM : You definitely have your work cut out for you then. What’s next for The Once? GH: We’re going to go to Ireland, we’ve got a Newfoundland tour, we might have an Atlantic tour, and we’re writing with different people, making another album. Andrew: None of us have those crazy lofty goals of being rich and famous. If that happens, that’s cool. But if we can make a living out of this, we’ll continue doing this, because we love it.

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