Daily News, February 7, 2004
BY SANDY MAcDONALD
"We'll rant and we'll roar like true Newfoundlanders" When Ryan's Fancy sang the traditional nugget The Ryans and Pittmans, they always embraced the free-wheeling spirit of the message.
The three fun-loving transplanted Irishmen -Denis Ryan, Dermot O'Reilly and Fergus O'Byrne - helped spread Newfoundland culture to the rest of Canada with a fair dose of spirited ranting and roaring. Ryan's Fancy will receive the Helen Creighton Lifetime Achievement Award at next week's East Coast Music Awards (ECMAs).
For O'Byrne, -who with O'Reilly is still active in the Newfoundland music scene -the award is a tip of the hat for, a job well done, a job they loved doing.
"I'm humbled and very grateful for the recognition by my peers and the ECMA for recognizing the contribution we had to the whole development of the music industry here," O'Byrne said.
It's a contribution and a connection to East Coast music that traces back more than 30 years.
"I'd gone to Newfoundland in 1969 and just fell in love with the people and the culture," recalls musician turned businessman Denis Ryan, feet up on his expensive desk looking over Halifax Harbour. "It was stepping back home to Ireland in a way; but they were much more liberal there."
Ryan, O'Byrne and O'Reilly arrived independently in Toronto in the late '60s, but soon found themselves working the folk clubs together as Sullivan's Gypsies. Ryan had visited Newfoundland along the way; and had his eyes set upon settling there.
"I told the boys I was going to leave the group, go back to Newfoundland and put myself through university and make some sort of a living there," recalls Ryan. "Well, jeezes, Fergus andDermot said 'we'd love to go back with you'." The three arrived in March of 1971, the pack ice still in St. John's harbour.
They took their stage name from a little jig that Ryan had composed on the fiddle, and began a storied run that would change the course of Canadian folk music. They quickly fell in lovewith Newfoundland music.
"We connected with this music, and they connected with us," says Ryan. "It was a two-way street."
Before long, Ryan's Fancy was established at the Strand Lounge, with crowds lined up seven nights a week all coming to hear the lively music and robust storytelling.
They sang popular Irish tunes (many borrowed from the Clancy Brothers songbook), traditional folk songs, and gradually began working Newfoundland songs into their repertoire. And there was a wealth of traditional Newfoundland songs to choose from, material which had been carefully collected for decades.
A sick guest gave them an opening -and a big break -on the Singalong Jubilee television in Halifax. Television was the perfect vehicle to take their music to a wider audience. By 1973, producer Jack Kellum came to Newfoundland to helm a new series with Ryan's Fancy, which would run for three years and cement the profIle of the band. "That was great fun. We went around to different locations in Newfoundland and Labrador."
The band released a dozen albums (and one eight-track cassette) through the '70s, including a collection of Newfoundland drinking songs that sold 50,000 copies in two weeks. Radio stations were playing their music, college students were lining up to see them onstage and they toured across Canada 'and Ireland till they dropped.
Part of the magic came from the onstage chemistry between Ryan, O'Reilly and O'Byrne.
"It's a lot easier doing stuff that you really like doing ...with people you like doing it with," Ryan said. "I was privileged to work with this band."
By the early '80s, though, the wind was starting to luff in their sails.
"We were getting tired by then and I saw our time was corning to an end. It was time to move on. And it's always nice to get out when the going's good."
Ryan's Fancy played their final show at Dalhousie's McInness Room in the summer of 1982. Though they were come-from-aways, Ryan's Fancy was accepted as Newfoundland's own, andtheir influence can still be heard in the music of the region.
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Dermot O'reilly
Denis Ryan
Fergus O'Byrne