Arts & Entertainment

Up close and personal with Jimmy Rankin plus concerts, festivals and events

When Jimmy Rankin heads home to Cape Breton, he follows Route 19, up the west coast.

“That’s probably my favourite spot in Nova Scotia,” he says. “I grew up there, it’s beautiful. It’s got ocean, rolling hills, a lot of rural areas that are left undeveloped.” Jimmy, who grew up in the village of Mabou, Cape Breton, speaks fondly of his province. “There are a variety of landscapes that I like. I like that you can find mountains in Nova Scotia, and you can go to the coast by the ocean,” he says. “Nova Scotia is a very beautiful place. There are so many places I haven’t even explored yet.”
What is it that keeps this singer/songwriter exploring here in Nova Scotia?

On his own, Rankin has won four SOCANsponsored ECMA and Juno Songwriter of the year awards. He did, of course, play his part in the success of the Rankin Family, has two previous albums of his own and a third, Edge of Day, is set for release May 1st. But he hasn’t up-ed and left for big-city Toronto, or moved south of the border to chase his dreams.

“As far as the lifestyle goes, I like Nova Scotia,” says Rankin. “It’s not overly populated, it’s by the water. From Halifax it’s 20 minutes to the ocean, a few minutes to a lake, a short drive to take a hike outdoors.”

Rankin can name several things that he believes make Nova Scotia special.

“Great culture, a lot of music, really good art,” he says. “People are generally very friendly, compared to the rest of the world. People will wave to you on the street; you can start up a conversation with people. People here aren’t guarded, they are very hospitable.”

But there is one problem he would like to see addressed.

Jimmy Rankin
“Nova Scotia needs a good injection into the economy to bring people back home,” believes Rankin. “Nova Scotia doesn’t have the population to support major sports teams or even big concerts. People are constantly leaving, especially in the rural areas. It’s a constant brain drain from Nova Scotia. We need to bring people back.”

Because Nova Scotia uses music and culture to draw people and tourism here, Rankin thinks it would be nice to be more like Ireland where artists and musicians can stay and make a life for themselves.

“It’s very hard here,” he says. “There should be a tax break or tax-cut to all artistic talent so that they will stay here and not go to Toronto or south of the border,” he suggests. “It would be nice to see musicians and artists be able to stay here, or at least come back here and make a decent living and live comfortably, and be able support a family and not scrape by.”

Fortunately for Rankin, he is able to make a living here. “But it’s a constant question of whether I can stay here or not,” he admits. “It can be hard to make a living here. I travel a lot out of here to do my job.”

Rankin says he will stay in Nova Scotia as long as he can. He too, has a family to support. He and his wife have a 19-month-old baby boy, with another baby very soon on the way. While he acknowledges it’s tough when he has to travel away from home, Rankin says in the last couple years, he has been home more than he ever has been in the past.

His most recent stint away from home came this past winter when Rankin joined his sisters Raylene, Cookie, and Heather on stage as the Rankin Family reunited for the first time in nine years.

“We toured the country west to east,” says Rankin. “It was great to be out with my sisters again, singing those songs again. We had a great turnout for the shows. It was a very successful tour.”

Away for four weeks at that time, Rankin recalls there were a lot of phone calls home. “Communication is key,” he advises.

Now that he’s back from promoting his family reunion album, Rankin is promoting his own solorecord, his first in three years.

“I put together all the songs I’ve worked on in that period of time,” says Rankin. “I honed the lyrics, honed the music, and I sat down with a producer and picked the strongest songs.”

While Rankin says Edge of Day involves a lot of collaboration with different writers from Nashville (where the album was recorded) and Canada, he is definitely the songwriting lynchpin on his new album.

“Writing, for me, is something I think about all the time, even though I am not doing it all the time, I always think about it,” says Rankin. “I write wherever I am. I take a guitar with me when I am travelin even if I’m not performing. I can write in a hotel room in Vancouver, in the kitchen at home or in an old house in Cape Breton where I go in the summer.”

Essentially, whenever he can get quiet, undistracted time. With a new baby on the way, he is surely about to lose a great deal of any peace and quiet he manages to find now.

“That’s part of it when having a baby,” says Rankin. “But you organize your time and work when you have time. You make time.”

It appears Rankin has some very busy time approaching. “I’m starting to do promotion for [my record] now,” he says. “I’ll have some solo dates this summer and a tour of some sort in the fall.” But it doesn’t stop there. “I’m working on another album in my mind, putting things together,” he says. “So I’m sort of multi-tasking right now.”

He is a busy man, but as long as Jimmy Rankin continues creating music in the gifted way that he does, he can stay here, home in Nova Scotia where his heart is.

Gordon Lightfoot
When Canadian cultural icon Gordon Lightfoot fell ill in 2002, his Atlantic Canada tour had to be cancelled. But the wait is finally over for East Coast fans as a healthy and upbeat Lightfoot is scheduled to perform five concerts this spring, hitting Saint John (May 10, 2007) and Moncton, New Brunswick (May 11), Sydney (May 13) and Halifax, Nova Scotia (May 12) and St. John’s Newfoundland (May 15). The 67-year-old folk-music legend has won 15 Junos, been nominated for five Grammys and has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also a companion of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario. Cover versions of his songs have been recorded by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. In 2004 he released his 20th album, Harmony and guest starred on “Canadian Idol.” Lightfoot’s long-awaited return to Atlantic Canada will be most welcome for his many enthusiastic fans!

Nana Mouskouri
After 40 years of traveling the world performing to loving audiences, Nana Mouskouri is saying farewell. This will be the last chance to catch this superstar songstress as she performs her final Maritime performance as part of her Farewell Tour which brought her to Europe, Asia, Australia and finally, Canada. As one of the most successful singers in history, selling more recordings than any other female artist, Mouskouri has collected an astonishing 350 Diamond, Platinum, and Gold recordings from around the world.

Catch Mouskouri one last time at the Halifax Metro Centre on Friday June 8, 2007 at 8:00 pm.

Welcome to Hali-wood
Nova Scotia’s film industry is on the rise, proven by the busy past 12 months for film production in the provincee. Production activity was over $130 million in the past year (the Nova Scotia Film Development Association’s year end being March 31), up seven percent from last year’s $121 million. Seven foreign productions took place over the last year in Nova Scotia, the biggest feature film being the epic sci-fi Outlander. Starring Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) and Sophia Miles (Tristan and Isolde), the movie has a human-like alien (Caviezel) crashing on Earth in 509 AD, inadvertently releasing a horrible monster that he must destroy with the help of a barbaric Viking tribe. The movie, now in post-production, was shot from July 2006 to January 2007 on the set of an entire Viking village built in 9 Mile River. The filming employed over 250 Nova Scotian crew members and cast who had the fantastic opportunity to work alongside world-class film producers and designers whose credits include special f/x extravaganzas such as I Robot and Godzilla.

Eastern Front Theatre
This spring, Eastern Front Theatre presents “On the Waterfront”, Atlantic Canada’s only national professional theatre festival. Running May 4-13, 2007 at Alderney Landing Theatre, the festival includes four feature adult shows and performing arts collaborations from local and national theatre companies. As the major East Coast venue for touring productions from across Canada to present their work this spring, don’t miss out on the only theatre festival of its kind east of Montreal.

Amadeus duo and Eden-Stell duo
The Amadeus Duo and the Eden-Stell Duo (right), playing four on one guitar, are some of the greatest guitarists of the international guitar scene who will gather for the Acadia Classical Guitar Festival.

Acadia Classical Guitar Festival
The 3rd Edition of the Acadia Classical Guitar Festival is bringing firstrate talent to Nova Scotia once again this summer. From Sunday, June 24-30, Acadia University in Wolfville will play host to world-class guitarists gathering to celebrate the greatness of guitar with students from all over the world coming together for concerts, classes and exhibitions. German guitarist Thomas Kirchhoff, along with his wife, Dale Kavanagh, a Wolfville native, who make up the dynamic Amadeus Guitar Duo, are presenting the festival. They promise world-class concerts by international guitarists from Uruguay, USA, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Italy and Canada at Acadia University every evening at 8:00 p.m during the week of the festival. Students and guitar lovers of all ages and levels can still sign up as active participants at: http://www.acadia-guitar-festival.com and concert tickets are available from the Acadia Box Office as of April 2.

Halifax Hosting
While Halifax is no longer in the running to host the 2014 Commonwealth games, the city is still playing host to world-class sporting events. Excitement builds as the Warrior 2007 ILF World Indoor Lacrosse Championship will be held May 14-20. Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, England, Ireland, Iroquois Nationals, Scotland and the United States have officially registered for the tournament and event packages are available through Ticket Atlantic or the Halifax Metro Centre.

Next spring, the 2008 IIHF World Hockey Championship will be cohosted in Nova Scotia at the Halifax Metro Centre as well as in Quebec City, May 1-14, 2008. This championship will mark the first time the event has ever been held in Canada.

Originally published in the Spring 2007 issue of Lifestyle Nova Scotia Magazine.