Great Big Sea

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Great Big Sea

Country	Canada
Years active	1993–present
Genres	Celtic rock Folk-rock
Labels	Mercury, Atlantic
Members	Alan Doyle Séan McCann Bob Hallet
Past members	Darrell Power
Website(s)	http://www.greatbigsea.com/

Great Big Sea (often shortened to GBS) is a Canadian folk-rock band from Newfoundland and Labrador, best known for performing energetic rock interpretations of traditional Newfoundland folk songs including sea chanties, which draw from the island's 500-year-old Irish, English, and French heritage. The band also performs original material.

The band played its first official gig on March 11, 1993, opening for the Irish Descendants at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. The founding band members included Alan Doyle (vocals, guitar, bouzouki, mandolin), Séan McCann (vocals, bodhrán, guitar, tin whistle), Darrell Power (vocals, bass, guitar, bones), and Bob Hallett (vocals, fiddle, accordion, mandolin, concertina, bouzouki, whistles, bagpipes). Power, McCann and Hallett had already been playing together with a woman named Jackie St. Croix in a band called "Rankin Street." According to Doyle, Rankin Street owned a PA, and he owned a van, which made Great Big Sea "a match made in heaven." They toured nearly constantly for the band's first several years, sometimes travelling as many as 300 days a year.

Power retired from Great Big Sea in 2002 to spend more time with his family and friends. Supporting members of the band include Kris MacFarlane (2002) (drums, accordion, guitar, backing vocals) and Murray Foster (2003, formerly of the band Moxy Früvous) (bass, backing vocals).

The band won the Entertainer of the Year award at the East Coast Music Awards for every year between 1996 and 2000. (In 2001, they decided not to submit their name for nomination in order to allow other bands to compete.) They have also been nominated for several Juno Awards, including Group of the Year in 1998 and 2005.

The band has also produced a DVD, Great Big DVD, which was released in 2003 in Canada and the United States.

In late 2005, the band released its long-awaited "traditional" album, The Hard and the Easy, on which they recorded their favourite Newfoundland party songs. The title of the album comes from a line of the song "Tickle Cove Pond," one of two songs on the album about a horse falling through ice.

Also in late 2005, Great Big Sea released its first podcast, with clips of the band bantering back and forth in the studio mixed with various songs by them and other artists. They have since released several podcasts.

On February 9, 2006, the band's tour bus tipped on its side into a ditch on the Trans-Canada Highway about 80 kilometres east of Vancouver. Their driver suffered minor head injuries, but everyone in the band was unhurt. The band went on to continue their tour including their performance at The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts several hours after the accident.