ATHABASCA — Celtic music has its own distinctive sound, and few do it as well as The McDades.
The Juno award-winning family band made up of siblings Solon McDade, Shannon Johnson, and Jeremiah McDade have been performing since they were children in The McDade Family Band with their parents Terry and Danielle McDade and they will be at the Nancy Appleby Theatre Nov. 18 at 7:30 p.m.
“We actually finished an album (during the pandemic),” Johnson said in a Nov. 8 interview. “So, that's the new album that we're touring.”
Logistically it took a lot more work to complete the album because the band couldn’t be in the same room to record.
“The whole band doesn't live in Edmonton so it was interesting; we couldn't play together but we did finish the album, we did a lot of stuff individually,” she said. "The album was actually mixed in Montreal, and the engineer set up a link through the internet so we listened kind of in real time to what they were doing in the studio and we could make adjustments to the best of our ability.”
"The Empress" was released Nov. 21, 2021, and has been nominated for three Canadian Folk Music awards — Best Ensemble of the Year, Instrumental Group of the Year, and Vocal Group of the Year, but the group still couldn’t tour so they made more music instead.
“We did a virtual Christmas show,” Johnson said. "We play Christmas shows with our dad every year and so we recorded sort of half of the video with my brother and dad and I in Edmonton, and then my other brother and his wife recorded their parts in Montreal.”
After their Athabasca performance, they head to Vermillion then the following weekend perform with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, but she hopes to work on music for the next album.
“We have a couple of days in between there so we're going to be working on new material,” Johnson said. “So hopefully within the next year.”
For now, The McDades are pleased to return to Athabasca and perform hits off their three albums and maybe mix some older stuff in too.
“I think it's going to be a fun show; upbeat stuff and some puffy little ballads thrown in there, but not many,” she said. “We always love playing that theatre in Athabasca, so we're really looking forward to it. It’s a great little theatre and the audience is always really receptive so, really excited to come back.”
Tickets are available at Value Drug Mart and Whispering Hills Fuels in Athabasca or by calling Harvey at 780-675-4158 or George at 780-698-3957.
