Drumlin

The talent that Drumlin showcased was amazing, and we are sure that your visit to Pictou has increased your fan base. All of the directors and volunteers that were present during your performance were each impressed with the caliber and performance of Drumlin.

I hope that you all enjoy the rest of your summer & very best wishes for all of your future endeavours.

Warm wishes & lots of gratitude

Michelle Davey

Business Coordinator

Northumberland Fisheries Museum & Heritage Assoc. - NFM&HS

“Drumlin has established themselves, over several years of careful and diligent development and management, as one of the East Coast’s most promising musical entities.”
- Brookes Diamond

“Drumlin has proven to be one of the most durable and talented groups on the East Coast music scene. They consistently deliver a high quality of musicianship whether it is live or recorded…” - John Wiles, Station Manager, CKBW

“The Canadian Maritimes must truly be a place of a music fertile soil because group after group seems to emerge from the region with a sound which captivates. The list of course includes the likes of Great Big Sea, The Rankin Family and the Barra MacNeils. Now you can add Drumlin to the list.

Like the others mentioned, Drumlin emerges playing the music of the region, a music rich in tradition, growing from strong Celtic roots, and grasping the heart of the land and the ocean from which it flourishes.

In this case Drumlin goes right to the heart of the traditional music of Nova Scotia with a CD of 12 songs inspired by the province's heritage songs from the Helen Creighton Collection, a famed-regional collection by a woman born in 1899. It is a volume of songs which provided Drumlin with a fine selection of songs, proving that when it comes to music you can look to the past to find something compelling for the present.

There are songs of outstanding beauty here such as My Irish Girl with its haunting tin whistle work, and great ballads such as Down In Old Ireland, the kind of song with a story revealed by the lyrics. The tin whistle also shines on Homeward Bound.

As for the group itself, Drumlin is another of those family units which also seem to emerge so often from the region. In this case it's the Gilbert family with Anya, Dal, Kassia, Liam and Nehara performing on the CD. The family are fine musicians and have wonderful clear, and strong voices.

Certainly Drumlin is a band with the skills to properly portray the historical music contained here, and as a package it's a fine recording, premised by the fact you must enjoy Celtic/Cape Breton music to enjoy this one.”
Check out the group at www.drumlin.ca
- Calvin Daniels
- Yorkton This Week

"Wow, what a performance."
Drumlin was a huge hit at the Wild Blueberry Producer Banquet in Truro. Everybody enjoyed their music and the special family chemistry that exists within the group. I would highly recommend Drumlin to other organizations. Drumlin has a bright future.

Thanks again for making our Wild Blueberry Growers Banquet a success.

Dave Sangster - Dave Sangster

To my knowledge, Drumlin’s "Mackerel Skies", is only the third recording made up solely of interpretations of songs from the Helen Creighton collection. Diane Oxner’s 1956, Traditional Folksongs from Nova Scotia and my own, 1982 release, False Knight Upon the Road, is now joined by Drumlin’s fresh and exciting collection of songs rescued by "Canada’s First Lady of Folklore".

This talented family of young performers has given these traditional songs new life yet manage to keep the integrity of the original works intact. While not literal copies of the original songs, [they wisely offer credit to the people who sang them for Helen], Drumlin has taken these precious chestnuts and given them a contemporary sensibility. For many, Drumlin’s "Mackerel Skies", will represent the future for traditional songs from the Maritimes and, I believe, Drumlin is moving in a good direction.
- Clary Croft

This recording of “Mackerel Skies" has been a producer's dream.

Each song has it's own unique allure, from the first cut featuring an incredibly rare treat of a ”first taker" (the vocal track being recorded only once, with no overdubs) to the contemplative mystique of Homeward Bound.

Drumlin’s individual musicianship is honest, meticulous, and mature, creating an entity solidified by mutual respect of one another.

This has been an unforgettable journey, and a labour of love that I will forever treasure!

- Tim Feswick
- Tim Feswick/Record Producer

Drumlin’s Mackerel Skies updates decades-old songs from Creighton collection
By STEPHEN COOKE Entertainment Reporter

SHORE folk quartet Drumlin certainly brings a youthful energy to its versions of traditional tunes, so it was a treat to see the siblings from Bridgewater’s Gilbert family honoured with a nomination for the Canadian Folk Music Awards, which will be handed out tonight in St. John’s.

Sharing the young performer of the year category with another Nova Scotia performer —Cape Breton fiddler Chrissy Crowley — Drumlin is an apt choice for its latest CD Mackerel Skies, filled with fresh updates of decades-old songs from the Helen Creighton collection.

Other Nova Scotia nominees for this weekend’s CFMAs include Antigonish pianist/fiddler Troy MacGillivray with three nods, Antigonish-bred Mary Beth Carty for traditional singer and Sons of Maxwell’s Dave Carroll for contemporary singer.

For singer and multi-instrumentalist Anya Gilbert, the nomination isn’t just a feather in the band’s cap, it’s also an opportunity to finally travel to Canada’s easternmost city.

'We’re so excited about it!' enthuses the 17-year-old Park View Education Centre student from her home in Bridgewater. 'Dal, my older brother and I are flying out for the awards. The nomination kind of came out of the blue, I guess with Drumlin we’ve just kind of gone wherever the wind takes us.

'We just had a video made as part of the Atlantic Film Festival and now we’re going to Newfoundland for the first time, so it’s taking us to some pretty exciting places.'

The video clip in question is for the song Stormy Weather Boys, which was produced as part of the Atlantic Film Festival’s 10 X 10 program, teaming up young musical acts and local filmmakers to make a musical short over the span of a few days.

Stormy Weather Boys is a stunning video — viewable on the band’s website, www.drumlin.ca — shot by filmmaker Joel Mackenzie at folklorist Creighton’s Evergreen House in Dartmouth. The production bears a professional sheen that belies its limited production timeframe.

'It was a lot of fun, and we only had a day to film it,' says Gilbert. 'We didn’t know what song we’d be doing or who the director would be, we just picked the location and showed up on the day to see what would happen.

'It started out as a total mystery to us, so we went in with open minds and it all seemed to work out wonderfully.'

Filming in Creighton’s own house literally brought the whole project home, considering how it was her vast treasury of songs collected all over the East Coast that provided the foundation for Mackerel Skies.

'It’s so interesting to think that these songs are actual history,' says Gilbert. 'This is how people recorded their history, especially when they couldn’t read or write, they passed along stories and knowledge from the past in song. 'These songs are often true stories from hundreds of years ago, some of them we don’t know how old they are, but they’re still fascinating.'

The songs may be old, but Drumlin’s approach to them brims with invention, working with producer Tim Feswick to combine elements of folk and pop and give these tales of bold seafarers and mourning maids a new lease on life with a broad range of sounds.

'We started out with My Irish Girl, and that is really traditional. We didn’t branch out with any out-of-the-ordinary, un-folky things for that song. But as we did more songs, we got more into experimenting with different flavours and different instruments.
'We got a little more adventurous as the recording worked itself out; we opened our minds to a whole bunch of different genres and sounds, it was really fun.'

Gilbert says she and her siblings hope to continue having fun making music for years to come, although right now education comes first as singer-guitarist Dal is in a first-year physics student at Dalhousie, younger sister and cellist-singer Kassia is being homeschooled while the youngest, 10-year-old drummer Liam, is in French immersion at
Bridgewater Elementary School.

'It’s getting a bit harder as we get older, because we have to make some pretty concrete decisions about our individual futures as well as deciding where we want to be in five years,' she says.

''I’m really excited to see where the music will go . . . I really would like to make music for the rest of my life.'

- STEPHEN COOKE Entertainment Reporter

Damn this is good! The new CD from Drumlin is worth paying for! You all know how rarely I gush about anything. Drumlin is a band from Nova Scotia comprised of 4 family members, only one of who is over 18 years (I believe). Mackerel Skies, their disc, is a collection of songs written by Nova Scotian songwriters over the last century, and collected by folk-archivist Helen Creighton. This ambitious disc manages to present these folk songs with modern production that makes them fresh and listenable. In fact, some are quite danceable.

Well packaged in eco-friendly materials, clad in browns with traditional instruments on the cover, the CD is a wealth of interesting tidbits about Ms. Creighton, Nova Scotian history, and the Gaelic origins of the band's name. Yet, the production by Tim Feswick is a masterful preservation of the traditional element of the songs combined with modern instruments, sonic signature, and arrangement. The songs are obviously traditional in subject ­ quite a bit about fish and fishing - and yet the band evokes Toad The Wet Sprocket, The Proclaimers, and even occasionally The Monkees (go figure). Fellow Nova Scotian rockers April Wine come to mind on the album closer, Homeward Bound.

Standout tracks include Sailor Boy, Let Go Your Bowline, The Twa Brothers, and Silvy. I guess I'm just a sucker for a good song ­- modern arrangement just turns my head. Go buy this disc!


- Jordan Tishler

“Drumlin’s Mackerel Skies is one of the best produced/sounding CD’s I’ve heard all year." - JP Cormier