It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Atlantic Canada has been punching well above its weight in the category of folk music. We’ve been topping nomination lists at the Canadian Folk Music Awards and now representing a whole ten percent of the performing artists at Folk Alliance International. Folk musicians fill an essential niche as documentarians to an entire subsection of our culture, but they’re also a curious lot. Colourful and naturally nomadic, they’re hard to pin down. Sometimes it takes a certain amount of wrangling to commit those songs to posterity, and like a modern-day Lomax, Dylan Jewers set out on a mission with Big Turnips: Vol 1, to capture Atlantic Canada’s folkscape.
Two years ago, Dylan Jewers and Stephen McIntosh came to the somewhat unsurprising conclusion that they were surrounded by talent. Drawing inspiration from folklorist and fellow Dartmouthian Helen Creighton, they sought out the folk musicians at hand to document their contemporary folk songs.
“We were surrounded by talent and few of them had any drive to record or push their talents so we thought a compilation made sense,” says Jewers.
“I wanted to do something on that vein, but with mostly original material, not old old ballads. We recorded eleven artists over a nine-month span for free at the Halifax Library.”
The compilation features all kinds of unique versions of fantastic song difficult to find elsewhere, including solo renditions of Mike Kerr‘s song recorded prior to the release of his much lauded Guitar Rags and Country Ballads, and Canadian Folk Music award winners and travelling troubadours Mama’s Broke, just to name a few.
“In many cases they have never even had physical copies of their recorded material. It feels nice to provide a platform for them. Most people we are recording now are really making a go of their musical careers, which is also amazing to work with, but I do dig the idea of putting out stuff that really wouldn’t have been out otherwise, plus volume is mostly composed of friends. So it’s just nice all around, ya know.”
With Jewers acting as producer and McIntosh as sound tech, mixing by Charles Austin and mastering by Thomas Stajcer, they finished recording back in November of 2017, but spent all of 2018 finding money to release the compilation on vinyl.
“We could have put it online last year or made cd but we thought vinyl made the most sense,” says Jewers. “May have been stubborn but whatever. It took so long I was not sure it would even happen. Stephen worked really hard on all the tech stuff. I am awful at that shit. Just terrible. I almost broke him at one point. But he kept on, and I kept on, and now it is out and we are quite pleased.”
Jewers and McIntosh are now working on Big Turnips: Vol 2, which is taking much more of focus on traditional folk tunes. Since the release of Big Turnips: Vol. 1, Jewers has strengthened that connection with folklorist Helen Creighton through the Dartmouth Heritage Museum and recorded much of Vol. 2 at Evergreen, Helen Creighton’s family home in downtown Dartmouth.
“I have three more folks to bring to Evergreen, and then I start art work plans, mixing, mastering, etc. I am planning on dropping a promo in June or July. If all goes well with Vol. 1 sales, could have Vol. 2 out this time next year or earlier,” says Jewers.
For those looking for an authentic Big Turnips live experience, they’ll be having their release show on Friday, January 18th at New Scotland Brewing Co. in Dartmouth at 8:00pm.
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(Photo: Sarah Jamer)