ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with Bridget Ryan from the Carter-Ryan Gallery. How are you doing today?

BRIDGET RYAN: Pretty great. How are you? It’s nice to chat with you. I feel like you’ve been the constant voice of calm in my life in the past couple of months. Thank you.

RM: You’re very welcome. It’s great to chat with you too. It’s been a while. The last couple of years we’ve been chatting about like the success of Canada: The Musical all the great summer theater you’ve been doing at your gallery. Then all of a sudden COVID-19 hit and that’s not really a thing that happened this year. How have you been keeping busy with your summer?

BR: Myself and the entire theater community across the country and the world were in shock. I had my eyes on the big companies and when they are shuttering until 2021, and everyone’s kind of very nervously moving forward, it was a summer of like, how am I going to continue to do my craft and pivot? We are doing A Christmas Carol offering this year again so are happening. We’re just modifying and working within the confines of what Alberta Health Services is saying that we can do, also with what is safe for the performers. It’s been a summer of like, let’s get creative. No, let’s get really creative

RM: I want to talk about a fantastic concert series at the Fairmont Banff Springs. What can you tell us about the Starlight Concert Series?

BR: They have a lot of outdoor space there. It started back in September and we had acts like Opera on the Rocks and Classical Music on the Rocks. Celeigh Cardinal came down and Nuela Charles. The series is for the month of October is dedicated to the country lover in you. Dan Davidson plays tonight, he’s an amazing performer and an amazing songwriter, but what’s interesting about these concerts is that they’re almost like unplugged or acoustic. It’s almost like a coffee house style concert. They’re outside under the stars just behind the Banff Springs. You can’t really believe that you’re seeing a performer and then you look over to the left and you see just this incredible vista. For the month of October they all start at 6 and it’s quite lovely. It’s just refreshing to hear and see performers who so far have just been over the moon at this opportunity to connect with an audience again,

RM: I’m assuming there are a lot of safety protocols in place?

BR: It has been a challenge and it’s ever changing too, which has been interesting. First of all, you come into the Springs and you have your temperature taken. They are diligent about safety. Everyone wears a mask when moving around the hotel and then you get settled in your seat, perhaps have a drink, and then you can take your mask off, sort of following the same protocol of a restaurant. Actually, we had a situation last month where we had to go inside because the weather changed. It was the weekend that we had opera performers and I’m like, Oh my God, but literally on the Thursday before Dr. Hinshaw had said that, we can have singing with this number of people, as long as they’re wearing a mask and behind plexiglass. So that’s what we did. We created these cubicles of plexiglass and Martin Murphy, who’s this amazing opera performer…I was so nervous, Rob. But within two second you forget that the plexiglass is there. We were in this massive ballroom and the maximum capacity is only 80 people, and I think the ballroom seats about 600, so you can get a sense that everybody was well within their 8 to 10 feet apart at these tables of two. I think safety is huge, but the spirit in the room as well. I just was like, okay, we need to start to find ways to begin to do this because we need art right now. It’s pretty wonderful just to see the coming together of a performer and an audience again.

RM: We have Dan Davidson tonight. Who else is on the lineup?

BR: Next weekend we have country royalty here in Alberta, Gord Bamford, up close and personal. Within safety distance, obviously. Then the following weekend, Jess Moskaluke, who is just awesome. She was of course the 2018 CCMA award winner for Album of the Year, and I think she’s the first Canadian female country artist since Shania Twain to receive the platinum single with her song Cheap Wine and Cigarettes. Then on Halloween, if you’re looking for something to do, we have Nice Horse and they are fantastic. They are four women are so much fun. and they’re performing on Halloween on October 31st.

 

RM: Musician Dan Davidson is performing tonight as part of the Starlight Concert Series at the Fairmont Banff Springs. COVID-19 must be a real struggle for a hardworking, touring musician like yourself. Have you had the chance to play much live music recently?

DAN DAVIDSON: You know, we find a way. My summer looked a lot different, that’s for sure. Instead of being gone every weekend and racking up those Air Canada points it was hanging out in the backyard and doing some gardening and stuff like that. I was able to keep pretty busy. I came up with Canada’s first digital music festival called Diesel Bird and we put that on with some of today’s biggest acts like Dallas (Smith), Brett Kissel, the Reklaws, James Barker Band, and all these people. Then after that we kept that Diesel Bird name going and we came up with Canada’s first hotel music festival. We did a hotel show where people could check in and watch the whole show from their balcony. So getting creative to keep playing.

RM: It must be nice to be able to do a show like this in Banff tonight.

DD: It’s a dream anytime you can stay at the Fairmont Banff Springs and play some acoustic music, and enjoy the mountains and the scenery. It doesn’t get better than that. That’s a bit of a tour-cation, we call it.

RM: I’m quite familiar with your work with the band Tupelo Honey. I actually went to high school with three of the guys from that band, so I’ve seen you live in a rock and roll capacity. What made you decide to switch to country music?

DD: We’d been really grinding with Tupelo for a long time and it was fantastic. We got to tour with bands like Bon Jovi, Three Days Grace, Metric, and Billy Talent, and play all over the place from Whitehorse to LA to Halifax and back. It was a real adventure and it was a really great thing, but rock was changing a lot and it wasn’t a very fun place to be working. A lot of venues were closing down, not a lot of people to tour with, and rock radio was becoming a little bit different than what we were used to. It kind of just presented this point in our lives where a couple of us wanted to branch out and try some other things. A few of us went back to school, and after I got my business degree I decided I couldn’t stay away from music. As I started writing, I think maybe it’s just being an Alberta boy, stuff just started to come out country. All of it that had been sitting in there for all those years locked away in a little closet somewhere started to sneak out. Then I went to see Dallas Smith play. Tupelo Honey and Default used to tour together all the time. Dallas pulled me aside and gave me some encouragement. He thought I had the right kind of voice and the right look and the right name for country and that I should really consider giving it a shot. So I did, and my first single came out, Found, and it was crazy just keeping up with the momentum of that song that went gold was the highest starting indie song in Canada for a long time.

RM: I’m also a wedding DJ, and I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but your song Found is quite popular as a request for the Grand Entrance, like when the bride and groom come into the room. How does it feel to have your song featured in someone’s special day like that?

DD: That’s awesome. Honestly, I think that’s what made the song go so well. It really propagated itself through fans, and a lot of it was because of wedding songs. That really makes a song shareable. It’s something that people can connect with on another level. That was really cool to see. I hope I get another one of those someday.

RM: What can people expect from your show tonight at the Fairmont Banff Springs?

DD: We get to do something little bit different. It’s more of like a Bluebird Cafe kind of songwriter style thing. It’ll be me and a couple of the guys, and we’ll be focusing on the stories behind the songs and connecting with the audience on a different way to give them a bit of a behind the curtain look into how things go. It’s going to be a guitar, banjo, dobro, and some broken down country songs. It’s going to be really cool because I’m so used to being the loud, jump up and down, hype up the crowd, drinking song guy. It’s fun to explore this other side of my performance.

Filed under: Banff, live-music