Canada Day 2017 was a special one for Don and Dave Carroll, also known as the Sons of Maxwell.
They took the stage at the Stars and Thunder festival in the city they were born and raised. In fact, a very short distance from one of their childhood homes.
Although they played a concert with the Timmins Symphony Orchestra in April, it had been 27 years since they were in the city for Canada Day. Their longstanding annual Christmas concert was a guaranteed sellout, but they had never performed for a crowd that big in their hometown.
"I don't know if anybody has really. There's over 20,000 people here," said Don.
They moved from Ottawa to Nova Scotia in 1993, having left their hometown of Timmins for post-secondary education in the late 80s. It started their love of Celtic style music.
"We ended up getting our start in Ottawa, when we were going to university there. There were a lot of people visiting the pubs we were playing that were from the east coast, and they'd demand a song list. They'd say 'here, you've gotta know these seven songs' or something like that. We picked them up, and we loved the tunes, and loved the response. Then we started going out the east coast to see if we could fit in there, and we found out that we could," said Dave.
The Carroll brothers loved it in the Maritimes, and now call it their home.
"The music culture, the bar is really high on the east coast, so it keeps you sharp. If you can succeed there, you can conceivably succeed anywhere. The whole music culture had a big influence on us, and the early east coast Celtic stuff too," said Dave.
After their set wrapped up on Canada Day, they spent two hours combined in the merchandise tent and crowd, shaking hands and making personal connections with those in attendance. They still keep in touch with many people in Timmins.
"Our parents just left a couple of years ago. They live in Nova Scotia now. We were here amongst friends, it's nice," said Don.
They have noticed some big changes in the city since they last few years.
"Well, that open pit (Goldcorp's Hollinger Pit Project) used to be the golf course, and we lived right beside the golf course. We used to play on it, like a lot of kids around the neighbourhood did. Sneak on the golf course, and maybe steal a few golf balls off the green, getting chased," Don said with a laugh.
Dave fondly recalled his early years in the once bustling neighbourhood of Schumacher.
"We were raised for the first few years in Schumacher, and Schumacher was a different community back in the day. It was a closed community, and everyone looked out for each other, and to this day, if you talk about Schumacher to older people, it means something. Now its kind of just a bedroom community of Timmins. We used to know everybody. Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so, and everyone knew everyone. It was a really cool spot to be," he said.
The audience adored the Sons of Maxwell set. They made sure to play Dave's unexpected hit United Breaks Guitars, a song about his awful experience with United Airlines, and how poorly it was handled from a customer service perspective. The YouTube music video, released in 2009, of the song has over 17-million views, and found a resurgence once again after another public relations nightmare befelled the American airline earlier this year when a doctor was violently dragged off an oversold flight. Dave continues to give speeches on customer service.
Hosting an eight-day music festival is a bold move for any city, let alone one the modest size of Timmins, but the Carroll brothers were 'super impressed' with how well things ran.
"The volunteers are exceptional. The planning has been top drawer. I don't think you would find an event anywhere in the country better planned than this. Even from the time we got picked up at the airport, the intricacies, there's been nothing left to chance. It was a bold move to step up and take a gamble on what is obviously a very expensive venture. But again, it reflects on the people in the community to step up and buy the tickets, because you can try anything, but if the community is not open to new ideas, it would have never succeeded," said Don.
Interestingly, they were fully aware of the controversial nature of how the festival came together.
"The Mayor took a real risk putting this forward. Which is not to say people who were critical are wrong either, because it's a risk. So people who were critical were doing their job bringing these concerns forward. But it took a lot of guts on the Mayor's part, and the people who were behind this whole thing to make it happen, and here it is," said Don.
Dave Carroll made sure to play his unexpected hit 'United Breaks Guitars' to his hometown audience. Andrew Autio for TimminsToday"They jumped in 'whole hog' too, the whole thing. I think to Don's point, the people who were cautious about it had examples where people didn't go all in, they sort of hedged their bets, and it's very costly when you do that. So they probably had to ante up more on the front end, to make sure that the back end was taken care of, and that's what made the difference," said Dave.
They asked if they thought it could be a success on an annual basis.
"I'll use Canso, Nova Scotia as an example. A town in the middle of nowhere, that was actually on the verge of being disenfranchised, no industry, and they have a successful festival (Stan Rogers Folk Festival) in the midst of horrible weather, they attract fans that are willing to put up with privation, there's no hotels. But if you put something together at a level that people will want to buy into, they'll go through it. It starts with artists they want to see, and make sure they have things they need. This is a great park (Hollinger), people are set up well. The bathrooms are set up, there are food vendors here. I know they're selling more beer than a lot of small breweries on any given weekend," said Don with a chuckle.
The band enjoyed their time onstage so much, that they expressed it was a bummer to have it trimmed.
"We were going to play a little longer, but because of time constraints and whatever, we were told that we had to cut our set a little short, which was a bit of a disappointment. But we had fun with what we did, and the audience liked it," said Don.
Due to the day's schedule being thrown off earlier in the day, and wanting to keep things in line for Johnny Reid and especially Keith Urban, festival crew made the call.
"When you love what you do, you want to play more than they'll give you. We had 45 minutes, and we wanted to play an hour and a half. To lose a few songs, it's a bit of a drag. But we had no problems, we got to play seven or eight songs to this crowd, on that stage. Life is good," said Dave.
