J.P. Cormier

Gahan Beacon Blonde Ale presents J.P. Cormier LIVE at Penzie’s Bistro (Shaw’s Hotel) August 14th!

About this event

Nobody really knows who J.P. Cormier is for sure. That’s to be expected, believe me. In 1974 he was a five year old boy, discovering an innate talent for playing the guitar, I had a little hand in that, guiding him through the beginning stages. He learned faster than I could teach. By the mid eighties, not out of his teens, he was a sideman for bands and artists of many different genres in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and all across the deep south. As he travelled and worked he added more and more instruments to his arsenal of capabilities. He became indispensable to the bands he worked for. In the early Nineties, he became a sideman for one of Canada’s favourite sons, Stompin’ Tom Connors and also became a staple of the recordings at Studio H in Halifax. His work with the CBC there, spanned musical, production and arranging duties. All this before he was 20. In the mid nineties he reentered the musical scene of his beloved East Coast and the Island called Cape Breton. He exploded onto the trad music scene there as a fiddler, performing some of the most difficult music ever produced by legends like Winston Fitzgerald and Angus Chisholm with a facility that stunned onlookers. Especially those who knew he wasn’t born there, but born in Ontario to Cape Breton parents. Somehow, some way, his music was the real thing, sounding like he had been steeped continually in a handed-down brew of family tradition from the old country. Nothing could be further from the truth. His previous gig was in Nashville playing mandolin and banjo in a grammy nominated bluegrass gospel band and performing on the Opry, and playing television shows with the likes of Waylon Jennings. All those people also thought he was one of them, American, reared in the ways of bluegrass, old time and Americana music. They knew he was from Canada, but it just didn’t seem possible. Then in 1997, something amazing happened. An album released in Canada, out of nowhere, called Another Morning. This time it was him as a songwriter and a lead singer. And what a songwriter he turned out to be. Some of the performances on that album are literally part of the musical vocabulary today in the East Coast. Songs like the title cut, and Kelly’s Mountain, The Molly May (co written with his cousin Gervais) and others. It inspired, 25 years ago, some of the biggest names in the business today. People like Dave Gunning, Matt Andersen, David Myles, Joel Plaskett, all of which will tell you: that record changed things.

The Canadian industry thought so too, and it received a juno nomination and won an ECMA.

And that was just the beginning.

Seating begins at 6:00pm (Please call 902-672-2022 to reserve a time slot for dinner before the show. We recommend reserving before 6:30pm if you would like dinner.)

Show: 8-10pm Approx.

Your tickets reserve your table. Please call 902-672-2022 if you would like to sit with another group.

Rooms and Cottages available! Call 902-672-2022 to reserve.