Kilt

Kilt came out of the Halifax pub scene of the mid-1990s, a six-piece band that played Cape Breton fiddle tunes, Irish and Scottish reels and wildly unlikely pop covers with the same kitchen-party abandon. Singer and whistle player Tony Ronalds fronted the group. Fiddler Bonny Jean MacDonald brought the Scottish fiddle tradition of her home community of Mabou, and she and guitarist Brennan MacDonald step danced on stage. Justin Stewart played mandolin and electric guitar, Andy Gallant played bass, Brian Buckle handled percussion, and everyone sang.

Halifax pubs and university bars were their proving ground. When Dalhousie's student paper The Gazette caught them at the Grawood in March 1998, under the headline 'What's under the Kilt?', it found a band that slid from jigs into rock and pop without warning and held the room as much through personality and banter as through the arrangements.

Their self-titled debut appeared on Oh Ha Music in 1997, recorded by Terry Pulliam at Soundmarket Studios in Halifax and produced by Pulliam and the band. Stewart and Ronalds wrote the opener, 'Wreckers' Den', a tale drawn from the shipwreck history of Sable Island, and the band's own 'Dream of Death', 'The Keeper', 'Dylan's Ghost' and Buckle's 'Last Call' sat beside brisk medleys of 'Tripping Up the Stairs', 'Speed the Plow', 'Sleepy Maggie' and 'McNab's Hornpipe'. They borrowed from Spirit of the West ('Honest Gamble'), the Waterboys ('Fisherman's Blues') and Stan Rogers ('Plenty of Hornpipe'), then went further afield with Dexys Midnight Runners' 'Come On Eileen' and a fiddle-driven 'I Was Made for Loving You' by Kiss. The Kiss cover became a crowd favourite and pulled in audiences who would never have gone near a traditional music night.

Kilt received two nominations at the 1999 East Coast Music Awards in St. John's, for New Artist of the Year and Group Recording of the Year. Gordie Sampson took New Artist, and the Rankin Family won Group Recording over a field that included Rawlins Cross and Sloan.

The band took the show west, through Ontario and the Prairies to the Pacific, playing to homesick Maritimers and Celtic music fans along the way. Ronalds remembered one forty-two-hour drive from Calgary to Sudbury as the trip that tested them most. Somewhere in those years Stewart and Gallant left, and Kilt settled into a core of four: Ronalds, the two MacDonalds and Buckle. Bassist Scott MacFarlane, appearing courtesy of Lisa Hayden, filled out the band on the road and in the studio.

Cribbage kept them sane in the van, and the band was known to settle bookings and set lists over a hand. A four-card crib gave the second album its name. Four in the Crib was recorded at Sound Park Studios in Irish Cove, Cape Breton, where Jamie Foulds engineered, mixed and mastered the sessions and sang on 'Sight'. Fiddler and guitarist J.P. Cormier co-produced with the band and Foulds, adding banjo, mandolin and guitar to 'Rubber Boots', 'Hold You So' and 'Snappy Jack', and Hilda Chiasson-Cormier played piano on 'De Jigs' and 'Snappy Jack'. 'Snappy Jack' itself was cut at Lakewind Sound in Point Aconi with Mike Shepherd and Gordie Sampson at the controls. MacFarlane is credited with bass, vocals and vegetables, and the album photography is credited to Snappy Jack Ronalds. The band released it in 1999 through Oh Ha Music and its own company, Kilt Music Group Inc., and dedicated it to the memory of Paul Buckle.

The songwriting spread across the band this time. Ronalds and Kilt wrote 'Island Kitchen', a picture of a crowded Cape Breton house party, along with 'Sight', 'Instead', 'Shift', 'Lift Up Your Glass' and 'Rubber Boots', which Ronalds wrote with his children in mind. Brennan MacDonald wrote 'Hold You So' and 'Everything'll Be Alright' and sang lead on both. Bonny Jean MacDonald contributed two fiddle tunes of her own, 'Prince Albert's Reel' and 'Aunt Elizabeth's Reel', set among strathspeys and reels from the Athole Collection, 'Mabou Coal Mines Strathspey' and the old favourite '(Dirty) Dinky Dorrian's Reel'. 'Dylan's Ghost' returned from the debut, now leading into Jay Ungar's 'Ashokan Farewell'.

The touring never let up. In August 1999 RPM had them booked into Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern, and by October the itinerary ran from Montreal, Ottawa and Kingston through Sudbury, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary and Banff to Vancouver and Victoria. That same month they played Celtic Colours in Cape Breton alongside Jennifer Roland and McGinty. Home crowds were the hardest. Bonny Jean MacDonald and Ronalds both talked about the nerves of playing Granville Green, where the audience knew every tune and expected the dancers to keep moving.

Kilt picked up two more ECMA nominations in 2000, for Group Recording of the Year and Roots/Traditional Group Recording of the Year, the latter against Great Big Sea, Barachois, Tickle Harbour and Christina Smith and Jean Hewson. Sing Out! singled out 'Dylan's Ghost', 'Shift' and the jig and reel sets for praise.

Kilt left two albums, Kilt (1997) and Four in the Crib (1999), before the band wound down. Bonny Jean MacDonald went on playing the Cape Breton fiddle music she grew up with in Mabou.

-Robert Williston