Phew! I’m home finally! We finished our 2 week tour with a show in Tors Cove last night, at the lovely Five Islands Art Gallery – thanks Bill, Frances and Laura! It was a great time, but it’s also awesome to be home for a couple of days! Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us during the tour – we sold out of our run of our shed album, Shed No Tears. It’s been a long day of driving, so I’ll sign off here and say good night!

Hi all!  We finished the West Coast portion of our tour last night, playing to a lovely crowd at the Oceanview Hotel in Rocky Harbour, after great nights at the Black Thorn Stick in Corner Brook and the Woody Point Heritage Theatre, as well as the Gros Morne Theatre Festival in Cow Head!  Packing up the car now to head east, for Appleton, where we’re playing the town hall tonight!  Should be a great one!  Thanks to everyone who came out to our shows in Cow Head, Corner Brook, Woody Point and Rocky Harbour!  Check out the events page to see if we’re hitting your town on our tour!

Fighting off the zombies hordes just outside Wiltondale.

Hey all!

Just arrived in Cow Head to kick off a two week tour with Matthew Byrne and Aaron Collis! Should be a great time, we’re playing the Gros Morne Theatre Festival (here in Cow Head) tonight, then heading to Corner Brook to play the Black Thorn Stick Cafe on Broadway. Wednesday has us at Charlie Payne’s wonderful Heritage Theatre in Woody Point, then Thursday has us in Rocky Harbour at the Oceanview Hotel! After that we’re heading to Appleton in Central Newfoundland to round out our first week. Week two has us zigzagging Eastern Newfoundland – see the Events page for more details. Check the post below for an mp3 from our shed album, fresh off the presses! Come out and say hi, hope to see you!

Hi all!  Whew been busy lately!  Visited Gander last weekend to make a “shed recording” with Matthew Byrne and Aaron Collis, two talented fellows I’ll be touring with this July!  We spent a long and very enjoyable evening recording in Austin Sheppard’s shed – thanks Austin -awesome shed!  Also big thanks to Louis McDonald who loaned us the microphone and Tony Norman, our man in Gander, who introduced us to Austin and took the photo below just after, also who called the cab when recording was wrapped and it was time to go for breakfast at 6 am.  The result is a fun and loose recording that will be available only on our tour this July!  Here’s one of the tracks, Dianne’s Happiness, composed by Emile Benoit, sandwiched between two tunes (Aaron what are these called?) from Boyd’s Cove.

Dianne’s Happiness

Click here to download a PDF of our summer poster, including tour dates!  Feel free to put one up in your area or to forward to friends!

Right now I’m in the St. Anthony area, attending the 1st Annual Iceberg Festival!  It’s a great time so far, last night I was out on the water for fiddle tunes at sea, and there are lots of icebergs on the go!  Tomorrow I’ll be performing a concert in Griquet, at a gorgeous old parish hall there, the oldest building in the community, I was in there today to check it out for the first time and the acoustics are fantastic, with wood everywhere, so that will be a real treat!  To find out more about the festival, visit their site here!

I’ve finally updated my summer schedule!  Been really busy lately finishing editing on Volume 2 of Learning the Newfoundland Button Accordion – and good news!  Preliminary editing is finally done!  Volume 2 will explore the bass, ornaments, and playing in different keys!  Just received my second run of Volume 1, which means that my first run of a thousand is now out there making its mark, in addition to people around the island using it to learn accordion I’ve had people across Canada working with it as well as people as far away as Spain, Australia, and Taiwan!  Pretty cool!

Ok that’s all for now folks!  Take care and enjoy the warm weather now that it’s here! Daniel

Hi all!  Just back from a great Tales Trails and Tunes festival, in Norris Point – ten very special days!  Just got the cool news that the opening track of Chain, Viking Jig/George Fowler’s/Ambrose Mahar’s/She Broke The Leg Of Her Coffee Pot, has won the Independent Music Awards Vox Populi Award in the World Traditional category!  Here’s an excerpt of the email I recieved from Lauren Veteri, Independent Music Awards Program Coordinator:

Dear Daniel,

It¹s official. The votes are tallied and the fans have selected you as a
Winner of The Independent Music Awards Vox Populi poll, a component of the
8th IMA program.

On behalf of all of us at Music Resource Group and The Independent Music
Awards – Congratulations!

The 8th annual IMAs received submissions from over 70 countries on 6
continents, and more than 33,000 votes were cast at the Vox Pop jukebox, so
this was no small feat to say the least.

Thanks to everyone who voted!  Again a big thanks to Paul MacDonald for his invaluable help in making Chain such a success!  Also to Minnie White, who composed Viking Jig!

Hello again!  Couple of fun projects coming up!  The last half of April will find me travelling to schools around the Northern Peninsula and Southern Labrador with a group of talented individuals giving workshops on traditional instruments, music and dance!  We’ll be visiting Woody Point, Trout River, Rocky Harbour, Port Saunders, Port aux Choix, Conche, Forteau, L’anse au Loup and West St. Modeste, St. Anthony and Cow Head.

The schedule is being finalized as I type but if you’re in the area and play traditional music or are just plain interested, feel free to contact your local school and say hello as we pass through!  I’m always up for a chat about music or whatever.

Then in May, I’m very happy to say I’ll be again attending Tales, Trails, and Tunes, the island’s most wonderful festival, happening for its third time in lovely Norris Point, Bonne Bay.  If you haven’t been, you must come by and visit if at all possible.  It’s a special ten days of music, dance, hiking, storytelling, and I could go on till I run out of commas because it’s really an event where just about anything is likely to happen.  The whole community participates and that’s what makes this such a time!  May 15-24th!  Click the photo to visit the TTT site!

Here’s a pic of my brother Vernon, myself, and the great accordion player from Black Duck Brook, Bernard Felix!  The three of us and Norman Formanger, who accomanied Bernie on electric bass, spent a great few days at last year’s TTT, hope to see you there again this year b’ys!  Thanks to Geraldine Hiscock for the photo!

Oh, PS!  I’ll be doing a repeat of a project I began at last year’s Tales, Trails, and Tunes Festival.  It’s an attempt to archive and preserve home recordings of traditional music, storytelling, and culture.  If you are planning on attending the festival and have old tapes (audio or video) lying around of grandfather playing the fiddle or Aunt Susie singing her favorite old ballad, please bring it along and I will digitize it, add it to an online archive and return the tapes to you along with a digital copy.  Digital copies are important to have because they are much more easily preserved and shared, whereas tapes deteriorate and can be lost quite easily!  Meaning that much of our tradition is now sitting in our homes in danger of being lost!  Let’s save these songs, stories, and tunes by digitizing them and sharing them!

Take care!

Daniel

Bernard Felix, Vernon Payne, and myself at TTT

Hi all, thought you might be interested to see a recording of the concert I played during the ECMAs last month.   Micheal McDonald on drum and his brother Louis on guitar.  Hope you enjoy!

Hi all,

The City of Corner Brook and the ECMA organization can give itself a well deserved pat on the back for pulling off an incredible weekend of music.  You could feel the buzz around town the whole time!  I’ll post again soon with a link to the CBC broadcast of the Roots Stage concert I played Saturday night.  It was my first time playing onstage with Louis and Mike McDonald and a tremendous experience!  Even got a standing O at the end!  Thanks Louis!  Thanks Mike!  Will post again soon everyone.  For those of you who got to take the ECMAs in, hope you had a blast and if you were here from away, safe travels home!

Thanks to Neil Robbins for the picture, taken from stageside at Nightsounds, Saturday night.

Me and Louis playing Selma Barkham's Waltz

Hi all! Hope everyone is having a great 2009 so far. Just writing to let you know that I’ll be performing at the ECMAs, which this year will be held in beautiful Corner Brook, Newfoundland. Should be lots of good music so if you’re in this neck of the woods be sure to get out and enjoy some of it!

Here’s a quick rundown of where I’ll be appearing. Check the ECMA website for more information.

ECMA MusicNL Stage, King Henry’s Pub, Glynmill Inn
5:00 pm – 5:45 pm, Friday February 27th

With Dr. Zoo, NightSounds on Broadway
11:00 pm – 11:30 pm, Friday February 27th

ECMA Roots Room, Pepsi Studio
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm, Saturday February 28th

ECMA MusicNL Stage, NightSounds on Broadway
11:00 pm – 11:30 pm, Saturday February 28th

ECMA Industry Awards, Pepsi Studio
10:00 am – 12:30 pm, Sunday February 29th

Hope to see you there!

Hi all, just checking in to wish everyone a Happy New Year and to share with you the cool news that Bryan Kelso Crow, host of Celtic Connections on US Public Radio stations has chosen Chain as his 2008 Album of the Year, beating out such contenders as Celtic Fiddle Festival, Capercaillie, and Solas.

“This is a solo album that is truly ’solo’–Daniel plays all the instruments and does all the singing, with great artistry and liveliness.  But he’s not really out there all by himself.  The sources of these tunes and songs are the legendary Newfoundland and Labrador musicians who came before him, and he humbly sees himself as the latest link in the unbroken chain of musicians carrying on that oral tradition.  ’Chain’ is a treasure and a delight!”  –Bryan Kelso Crow, Celtic Connections (US Public Radio)

That’s some cool news, and I must say I’m happy that these songs and tunes will reach a wider audience through Bryan’s show, hopefully sparking some interest among people who’ve never heard of the tradition here.  Thanks Bryan!