MUSICAL GUESTS

JIMMY RANKIN (AUGUST 15)

Jimmy Rankin is an iconic Canadian solo artist and the lead singer, guitarist and songwriting lynchpin behind multi-platinum Celtic-Pop heroes, The Rankin Family, who achieved multi-platinum album sales & scores of Junos, East Coast Music and Canadian Country Music Awards.

Jimmy penned The Rankin Family classics including North Country, You Feel The Same Way Too, and the Juno winning single Fare The Well Love, which was recently inducted into the Canadian Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. With seven solo records and an eighth on the way, Harvest Highway to be released this fall, Jimmy’s own hits include Followed Her Around, Here in My Heart, and Cool Car. Jimmy’s the guy who wrote Mull River Shuffle a Cape Breton anthem with an all-ages cult following, jamming dance floors and mosh pits at parties, weddings and raves as the last big song of the night. Awards include: 5 Junos (including Entertainer of the Year), 30 ECMAs, 9 SOCAN top radio play Awards, 7 Canadian Country Music Awards, 2 Canadian Radio Music Awards and 2 Music Nova Scotia Awards.

On Harvest Highway, Jimmy Rankin hits the road again, time traveling and traversing far-flung destinations—along with his native Nova Scotia, of course—through his singular brand of East Coast folk-rock. The Cape Breton icon’s eighth solo album is rich in the narrative songwriting traditions that Rankin has been honing for nearly his whole life, filled with crackling yarns and poignant chronicles about feverish marriages in Thunder Bay, unmoored Newfoundlanders, lovers on the run, and fallen soldiers in France. Bookended by songs about home, the collection roams a trajectory not so different from Rankin’s life, with narrators who relish in adventure while also feeling a yearning for the homeland from which they first pulled their roots up. It finds Rankin at the height of his songwriting powers. “I’ve been working toward this album for my entire career,” he says.

CO-PRESENTED WITH

LENNIE GALLANT (AUGUST 16 & 17)

Recognized by his peers as one of Canada’s best performing songwriters, Lennie Gallant has released 14 albums (10 in English and 4 in French) of original songs which have won him a host of awards and nominations from the JUNOs, Les Prix Eloizes, and The East Coast Music Awards. He has been named ECMA Entertainer of the year several times over and his latest albums Time Travel and Searching For Abegweit received Canadian Folk awards and ECMAs . His iconic song Peter’s Dream was recently inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame.

A recipient of the Order of Canada, Gallant is an international touring artist, who has performed all over the continent, in Europe, for the troops in Afghanistan, and at the Winter Olympics. He has toured with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI Symphony Orchestras and his songs have been covered by numerous artists including The Rankins and Jimmy Buffett, who he recently co-wrote two songs with for his upcoming album to be released this Fall . One of his past albums, When We Get There, even went up to the international space station with then Canadian Astronaut Julie Payette for the crew to enjoy and orbited the planet 248 times. How about that for high rotation worldwide!

Lennie often supports various causes and was given the PEI Red Cross Humanitarian Of The Year honour for his efforts. He has attended many a kitchen party over the years and is pumped to be yet again sharing a few songs and stories with the wonderful gang at the Neptune Theatre!

BETTE MACDONALD (AUGUST 18)

Bette MacDonald is a Gemini award winning actor, a Nova Scotia Screen award winner and a multiple Canadian Screen Award nominee. Her television credits include The Bette Show, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Made In Canada. For eight seasons, she played school secretary, Trudy Walsh, on the hit CBC television series, Mr. D

Her stage acting career began in The Boardmore Playhouse at CBU and she has since toured the country in various shows including, The Cape Breton Summertime Revue. She stars in and is co-writer, along with her brother, Ed Macdonald, of Tis The Season, a holiday themed show that began as a one night stand fifteen years ago and has since toured Nova Scotia and beyond. Currently, Bette is a member of the wildly popular, Island Girls, sharing the stage with Jenn Sheppard, Lucy MacNeil and Heather Rankin.

CHRISTINA MARTIN (AUGUST 19)

Christina Martin is a powerhouse musician, songsmith, and performer hailing from the windswept East Coast of Canada. Her music dances effortlessly through Pop, Rock, Folk and Americana traditions but stays deftly unchained by any one label, unafraid to venture into stranger waters. From her Austin-inflected 2002 debut Pretty Things, to the sweeping cinematic dreamscape of 2018’s Impossible to Hold, Martin is an artist who is constantly shifting, and constantly evolving.

And like all her material, upcoming new album Storm boasts a backbone of raw honesty about the human condition. Be they personal confessions or narrative tales, each song is lovingly crafted, and hits in the heart like a wellthrown punch.

BEN CAPLAN (AUGUST 20)

Ben Caplan is both the roar of the hurricane and the eye of the storm. He has an uncanny ability to channel both wild abandon and quiet introspection. His songwriting pulls from many diverse influences but both his music and his lyrics regularly draw from his Jewish heritage. Often mixing biblical imagery and klezmer inflected melodies, Caplan re-appropriates ancient sounds and themes with a decidedly contemporary twist.

Ben released his first studio album in 2011, and has spent the last ten years recording music and performing to ever growing audiences in music clubs and theatres around the world. For the ten year anniversary of his first release, Caplan has recorded a retrospective collection of stripped back re-interpretations of songs from across his catalogue.