Séan McCann works harder than you. Now don’t go getting all up in arms. It’s just a fact. Yes, you work hard too. We’re not arguing that, but just writing about McCann proves exhausting.
Co-founder of Canada’s most popular party band, Great Big Sea, author of five solo albums and a book, multiple ECMA winner and Juno nominee, unflinching advocate for the less fortunate, and recipient of the Order of Canada. We’re already spent and McCann is just getting warmed up. Add husband and father to this list, and you begin to see what I’m getting at. Séan McCann never stops. But he almost did. Once.
Imagine being at the lip of the stage while thousands of fans raise their glass to you. What would you do? Well, if you’re Séan McCann you raise that glass right back to them.
Now, imagine multiplying that, fan after fan, show after show, city after city. It sounds glamorous and exciting, and no doubt it is, but, at the end of every one of those evenings, it’s you that you have to lay down with. When the roar of the crowd fades away, what is left? For McCann, and many like him, what was left was alcohol abuse and the string of problems that come along with it. You can be sure that McCann’s friends and family held their collective breath as they waited to see how he would handle this battle.
In true McCann fashion, of course, he came hollering out of the gate; his newfound sobriety fuelling within him the drive to create. Couple this with the state of affairs over the last two years, and what you’re left with is a brand new recording from a man who has been writing songs since the eighties and was, by all indications, born to do so.
Shantyman, Séan McCann’s latest release is a many-layered record. Shanties are, at their heart, work songs. Driving, repetitive, and rhythmic, they are songs you’d sing while pulling traps or hoisting sails; swinging axes, or driving cattle. They are songs, put quite simply, that get you through a task by giving you something to concentrate on and share with those around you. It’s this spirit that McCann drew upon while enlisting the help of some musical compadres to put this record together.
Hawksley Workman, Gordie Johnson, Jeremy Fisher, and JP Cormier all answered the bell when McCann came calling with ten songs on his hip. It’s friends like this that McCann was hoping to have around, seeing as this is an album dedicated to working together, and one that he put together to keep himself from going mad at home. All in the spirit of the shanty.
The record itself is a melting pot of styles, players, and instruments, and reminds us that the similarities between musical genres are great and that the line from one to the next can be easily blurred. East coast instrumentation is the bedrock on which these themes are explored and this story is told, but the whole thing starts with an electric guitar riff that makes you wonder if McCann is trying to wick away some of the saltwater that he’s always waded in.
“A Shantyman’s Life,” the album’s lead single, speaks to the brotherhood and toil that even gives birth to a shanty. It does so with big guitars over top of the more traditional instruments you might expect from McCann, and it ushers us in and kindly asks that we buckle our seat belts.
The rhythmic aspect of sea shanties is an integral part of telling their stories. Any shanty worth its salt is propped up by a driving, quarter note rhythm that gets you in your gut. It’s primal and powerful, and anyone who can stomp their foot can take part. The second cut on the album, “10,000 Miles Away,” gives you your first chance to participate. Immediately after that, however, we’re set upon once more by electric guitars for the ‘Land Down Under’ tinged “Rolling Sea”. You were warned to fasten your seatbelt.
Stylistically, the next couple of tracks are the biggest departures on the record. “Deep Blue Sea” has an almost Graceland-era Paul Simon vibe, and “Chariot” starts its life as a shanty before washing up on the shores of Jamaica as a groove-heavy reggae song. The captain has left the seatbelt sign on.
Marching hand in hand with the rhythm of a shanty is the story that it sets out to tell, and even outside the shanties on this album, McCann proves himself again an able storyteller. Songs like “Go to Sea No More,” and, “The Bold Fisherman,” spin yarns with themes as old as time itself.
Stories of betrayal, tender moments, centuries-old work songs, good ol’ rock n’ roll; Séan McCann delivers it all on this album, and he does it with a clear head and a generous heart. He wanted us to come together and he chose one of the purest forms of music—the sea shanty—to help us do so.
McCann’s new album, Shantyman, is available for purchase exclusively through seanmccansings.com.