JASPER – Having already travelled 5,400 kilometres across Canada in his Subaru as of Friday (June 6), Séan McCann will soon take his tour to a small mountain town still reeling from disaster.
McCann will be bringing The Great Big Canadian Road Trip to Jasper on June 13, where he will perform at the Jasper Park Baptist Church at 7 p.m. with all proceeds going to the Jasper Food Bank.
The Canadian singer described how he had specifically wanted to stop in Jasper after hearing about the 2024 wildfire that destroyed nearly a third of the townsite.
“It’s one thing to see that stuff on the news, and it’s another thing to go there and talk to the people who really were affected, and I’m hopeful I can have a positive effect on people,” he said. “Jasper has been a huge inspiration to me in my life. I’ve written songs in Jasper, I’ve been inspired by Jasper and I love Jasper, and I want to come and give Jasper a great big hug.”
He recalled initially reaching out to the Jasper Anglican Church to see if it was available for concerts, but he soon got a message back saying the church had been destroyed as well as a photo showing the remains.
“It was very sobering to run into that reality, and then I wanted to be there more,” he said. “I just doubled down my efforts until we found a place.”
Born in Carbonear, N.L., McCann rose to fame as a founding member of the iconic Canadian band Great Big Sea. He is now a solo artist and a recipient of the Order of Canada for his mental health and recovery advocacy.
Although McCann hasn’t played Jasper in a long time, he performed there with Great Big Sea many times in the past and recalled his first visit while cruising across the country on their first road trip.
“I was only 21 years old, and I hadn’t left Newfoundland before, and I just remember getting to Jasper and coming in through Edmonton into the Rockies, and our minds were blown [by] how beautiful it was,” he said.
“We knew we were Canadians, and we knew we were in part of the country, but we’ve never seen it, and Newfoundland is a long way away from Jasper, and it’s beautiful and rugged in a very different way,” he added. “It just made us very well aware of how huge the country is, and it’s good to be coming back.”
Initially planning to do his annual tour in America down the Eastern Seaboard, McCann decided to reevaluate his plans in the wake of the current tensions between Canada and the United States.
He emphasized that he loved Americans and felt for them but noted the “division and bitterness” currently in the United States, and he ultimately hoped Canada would not go down a similar path.
“We have a range of opinions and stuff like that, but at least here, there’s still some respect for each other,” he said. “We can sit in a room, and I can lead people in songs, people who are very different on the political scale, and we’re united in the same song, and that matters, and I don’t want to see our country change. I don’t want it to slide the other way.”
With his six solo records and experience in Great Blue Sea, McCann has “a huge quiver of songs” and relies heavily on the audience to sing with him to create “joyful music.”
“When you get a bunch of people in a room, even though they have their differences, and maybe they’re not the best singers in the world, but you get enough people singing and you always end up the same place, and that’s harmony, is what it is, and that’s what this tour is about,” he said.
Tickets for the benefit concert are available at Eventbrite.
