Canadian Tour
Well it’s the end of the Summer and what a summer its been! We have been busy promoting the new album, “An darna umhail” (the second glance) and we’ve had a brilliant time doing it! After the launch at the 25th Shetland Folk Festival, the band finished off the preparations for their Canadian Tour in July.
This tour was our first visit to the west coast of Canada and after touching down at Vancouver Airport we then caught travelled by sea plane flight to Vancouver Island.
For the first week of the tour, Dochas were guest tutors at the annual “Celt Fest” summer school, we had a great week teaching fiddle, piping, gaelic singing, harp, accordion and bodhran. Within the week we also performed at concerts and partys , meeting great people and having great tunes!
As the first part of the tour came to a close, we travelled to Saltspring Island where we performed in the Arts Spring Theatre, enjoying out first full gig of the tour. It was great to see so many friends from “Celt Fest” in the audience that night and we continued the party in good Scottish style!
For the next few days of the tour we were based in Brentwood college in Millbay, Vancouver Island and had the pleasure of playing in a local church, supported by many local people, we even had a song from a Canadian gaelic choir.
Squeezing back into the van, together with 2 accordions, 3 sets of pipes, 2 fiddles, a harp and bodhran and enough shoes and makeup to last an entire west-end musical!…we travelled to Harrison Hot Springs. The Harrison folk festival was well under way and we stopped over for a night to give them some gaelic songs and fired up tunes! Great craic! With just enough time the following morning we soaked up the sun and admired the views before headed for Vancouver Festival.
Vancouver Festival was amazing and we were lucky enough to share stages with the amazing Karan Casey, Le Vont du Nord, Haggard & Hoirup;..and as you can imagine we had a brilliant time. Looking out from the stage the view was amazing, with the beach, city scape and breath taking mountains over the festival site. As the festival ended we held on in Vancouver for a gig at the Rogue Folk Club which was a great night, complete with a family of Shetlanders in the audience!
From there we headed to Calgary, (via Edmonton and the biggest shopping centre in the world!) on our way to the Calgary Folk Festival. This was our last weekend of the tour so we made sure we finished off the tour in Dochas style, plenty of tunes and songs to send us on our way home to Scotland. An amazing tour and hopefully one we’ll do again.