One flute shy of a Marshall Tucker Band classic, and two gulls short of a shanty, Pirate Jenny have released a single that shows both sides of their native Cape Breton. “Swept Away” is a balanced perspective about a home they can’t help but love, despite its faults.
The band describe “Swept Away” as a vignette of the island that most of them grew up on, through their own eye — beautiful and gritty with a side of hardship that in turn produces some of the greatest tight-knit communities to be found anywhere.
“It’s about my home, Cape Breton Island,” says frontman Ryan Rideout. “But from a more relatable standard, it’s small-town living. The ups and downs of everyone knowing everyone, a beautiful site but a struggling economy. The loves and losses, the difficulties of making a living, working seven days a week with nothing to show for it, etc..”
The track portrays a truly love-hate view of the island. While the lyrics are brimming with all there is to love about the place, affectionately name-dropping local characters left and right, they also outline all the reasons one might want to pack their bags and head for greener pastures.
The band relocated to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, for a number of reasons, but their absence from their home clearly, as can be heard through the song’s lyrics, seems to have made them grow fonder. At the very least, the distance has caused some of the rougher edges to soften.
“[I left because of the] lack of work, for the most part, but also to escape a failed relationship that is much harder to avoid in small-town communities,” continues Rideout. “I’m not trying to make it out to be an impossible place to live. I’m still trying to portray it for the home I know and love. I’m just throwing in the bad with the good so that it’s more real.”
The single comes off the band’s debut album, recorded, mixed and mastered by Alex Arnold at Compact Studios. Shortly after the band had finished recording the album, Rideout underwent a thyroidectomy due to thyroid cancer, with which he was diagnosed earlier in the year. And though his recovery is not expected to be very quick, he is told he will heal and be able to sing fully again.
“I was told pre-surgery that there is always a chance that my voice could be damaged if certain nerves were disturbed during the procedure. After the surgery was over they said as far as they could tell nothing was noticeably different. One side had a minor stretch but it would still heal. So you can imagine the relief when they told me I was going to be able to sing again to my full potential.”
Despite the major hiccup, the album is still set to be released on November 14th.
Pirate Jenny will be performing a series of small, intimate and unplugged shows in mid-December at Dukes Pub in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton. The shows will be recorded as a live album and will feature talented guests such as Andre Pettipas and Jon Hines.