CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Write this one on the wall.
Canadian music business veteran Mark Haines has released a new CD, Up By The Roots, and is celebrating with a concert at the Trailside Music Hall on Thursday.
In a career that spans almost 50 years he has played theatres, festivals, concerts, clubs and churches across Canada and the United States, and has toured in Britain, Sweden and as far afield as Taiwan. His main collaboration of the last eight years has been with friend and Island comedian Patrick Ledwell performing The Island Summer Review in Hunter River.
Haines is fluent on several instruments and familiar with as many styles. Engineered, recorded, mixed and mastered by Sergey Varlamov at Crabbe Road Studio in Miltonvale Park, Up By The Roots is a collection of 12 original songs plus a cover of Stephen Foster’s Camptown Races.
Instrumentally and stylistically the tracks are acoustic driven with some unexpected yet compelling twists. Everything in the roots library was called in to play here. Witness the fiddle instrumental on the first track, High On The Hill, a song cast in the North American bluegrass mold and then layered over top of that a provocative European violin melody all set to a rolling bodhran rhythm.
“Mark’s song, The Shannon Belle, is a master class in story telling,” says Doug Gallant, who writes a regular music column for The Guardian.
And where would you expect to find a rhythm and blues-tinged folk ballad juxtaposed to 1980s' techno dance beat infused fiddle rant? Well, Up By The Roots.
Available on several online platforms, Up By The Roots can be previewed at markhaines.hearnow.com.
Tickets for Thursday's show can be purchased online through eventbrite.ca or at The Trailside Box Office, Back Alley Music, by phoning 902-367-3311 or emailing [email protected].
