Alan Doyle

Expect the unexpected from Welcome Home, Alan Doyle’s fourth full-length solo studio album and 20th overall. While upholding his status as a perennial merrymaker — a reputation burnished by his years with acclaimed folk-pop combo Great Big Sea — the new album also finds the multifaceted singer-songwriter and 14-time JUNO Award nominee exploring novel sonic terrain.

Alongside marquee co-writers Jimmy Rankin, Donovan Woods, and Hollywood actor Oscar Isaac (yep, of Star Wars fame), Doyle presents nine original songs that are both typically buoyant and surprisingly intimate, what Doyle refers to as “the lower and slower: the lower part of my vocal range and the slower songs. I’m letting myself do that for the first time on this record,” which he cut in Montreal with producer-engineer Marcus Paquin.

Doyle’s CV is extensive — he is a thrice-published author, a film and TV actor-producer with multiple major credits, and the co-producer of the recently released, 20-song Ron Hynes tribute album, Sonny Don’t Go Away. Yet the wildly popular musician from Petty Harbour, Newfoundland remains most electrifying before a live audience, abetted by his ace band. “I am the luckiest guy in the world,” Doyle says. “It’s such a privilege to stand among those players on stage.”

Originating from a chance encounter while busking in NYC’s bustling subways, Brooklyn based Bandits on the Run burst onto the national stage in 2019 when their song, “Love in the Underground,” was featured on NPR Tiny Desk Contest’s Top Shelf, with its esteemed tastemakers proclaiming, “the band orchestrates a symphony of sound and story through its impressive musicianship and marvelous harmonies.” A musical trio comprised of Adrian Blake Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd, and Regina Strayhorn, Bandits on the Run are known for their distinct combination of cello, guitar, accordion, and found-percussion, along with sophisticated three-part harmonies and, in the spirit of ultra-collaborative groups like The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and the Mama’s & the Papa’s, rotating lead vocalists. After recording their 2021 EP, Now Is The Time, with producer Ryan Hadlock (Brandi Carlile, The Lumineers), the Bandits took to the screen, devising a short musical film, Band At The End Of The World, commissioned by Prospect Musicals. Since then, they have continued to explore the nexus of indie-folk music and theatrical storytelling, composing music for the Netflix animated series Storybots, scoring the movie The Same Storm, setting William Shakespeare’s prose to music for a theatrical production of As You Like It, and receiving an NEA grant for a new musical with Prospect Musicals, all the while touring the globe with appearances at the Cambridge Folk Festival, Floydfest, Milwaukee Summerfest, Americanafest, F1 Singapore Grand Prix, Mile of Music, and the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival. Bandits on the Run are currently working on the stage musical adaptation of the novel What’s Eating Gilbert Grape in association with MCC Theater, alongside actor-musician Christopher Sears and Academy Award Nominee Peter Hedges, who wrote the original book and screenplay.