It sounds ridiculous, but I swear there must be some sort of genetic predisposition towards this sort of thing. Buckle down your sporran and kick up your heels; Ben Miller, Anita MacDonald and Zakk Cormier have released South Haven, their first album as a trio, and it’s enough to make you swear off a lifelong habit of wearing pants in favour of a kilt.
Ben Miller explains that he and Anita MacDonald have been playing together since 2013 when the two met at the Celtic Colours festival in Cape Breton. The pair put out an EP under Miller’s name the following year, and then a full album together in 2015.
“But this is a slightly different project for us,” says Miller.
During their first couple of years touring together, Miller and MacDonald had the not-entirely-uncommon practice of picking up a variety of musicians to accompany them, depending on where they were.
“We had a few different friends in different areas, people from our own separate careers who we worked with depending on where we were in the world. For the last year we have steadily toured with Zakk Cormier, a musician who we met at the Rollo Bay Fiddle Festival in Prince Edward Island,” say Miller.
Since meeting Cormier, Miller says that the trio has become their main project.
“At the moment Zakk is the only other musician we are working with now and this has really changed the way our music has come together. I have always brought a lot of influences from the time I spent living in Scotland. Anita was born as raised in Cape Breton, and has always been really connected to that music scene. Zakk is Acadian and from Prince Edward Island, so that has really added a whole other layer to what we are doing aesthetically. He is a really dynamic guitarist, but he is also bringing some unique elements of his own culture, like the traditional Acadian foot-percussion you see with artists from that region.”
Miller explains that, where their previous albums fell into the trap of following the traditions they had grown up with, as a trio South Haven is trying to fuse together different aspects of Celtic culture to create a fresh voice.
“All three of us have been very connected with our own traditions since a very young age. Anita and Zakk both grew up in very musical families, so they were exposed to traditional tunes and songs from very early on. While my family wasn’t very musical, I started to pick up the pipes when I was about seven or eight years old.
I think it was the act of bringing these three traditions together that started us on the path of finding our own voice. They are three parallel branches of the celtic culture here in the Maritimes – the pipes were a very prominent instrument brought over with the people that came here from Scotland, but that was gradually replaced by the fiddle in day-to-day life here in Nova Scotia, and then there is this whole rich Acadian tradition that predates the Scottish culture that we see more commonly these days. They have their own take on the music and dance tradition that is so closely related. We wanted to create a sound that brought these puzzle pieces back together in a way – to create a sound that isn’t completely Cape Breton, or Scottish, or Acadian – something bigger.”
With the exception of the Gaelic sung “Alasdair nan Stòp”, South Haven is entirely instrumental, and if you’re a fan of the pipes, ever found yourself at least haggis-curious, or considered a career in caber tossing, then you’re going to love it.
If you’re hankering for even more you can catch their new video for the album’s “The Fowler on the Moor” here.
Tours Dates:
05.18.18 – House Concert – Ottawa, ON
05.25.18 – The Park Theater – Glens Falls, NY
06.03.18 – The Highland Village Museum – Iona, NS
06.14.18 – Festival of Small Halls – Vernon River, PE