Plenty of Fun in Great Big Sea

The band Great Big Sea has quietly become Newfoundland's greatest export since the Labrador retriever. It has done so by taking music indigenous to its isolated homeland -- traditional, Celtic-tinged folk songs about things such as whaling and courting lasses, -- and affixing pop rhythms popularized in the great big country that sits a few hundred kilometers to the southwest.

A litter of Lab puppies wouldn't have been more lovable than Great Big Sea was during Friday's long-sold-out gig at Lisner Auditorium. Or more loved: By the second song of the night, "Donkey Riding," the crowd was on its feet for good. Fans from the front row to the last waved their arms and chanted lyrics no more complicated than the tune's title suggests: "Way hey and away we go/Donkey riding!" It was as if the Pogues were melded with Up With People.

Guitarist and frontman Alan Doyle, a happy, shaggy sort who comes off as Russell Crowe after a double dose of Xanax, crooned "Concerning Charlie Horse," an ode to an animal killed by falling through a frozen pond -- yet another Great Big Sea song topic not likely to be tackled by 50 Cent. Before taking over lead vocals on a tune about a romance between a whaler and a mermaid, Sean McCann confessed that as a youngster he received from his parents the sort of relationship advice you'd expect from Newfoundland-locked elders: "There's plenty of fish in the sea." McCann then dedicated "Graceful & Charming (Sweet Forget-Me-Not)," a happily-ever-after ditty, to his grandparents and their half-century of marriage. Bob Hallett, who spent most of the night plucking a banjo, squeezing an accordion or bowing a fiddle, pleased the Canuckophiles with "Helmethead," which chronicles the love life of a minor-league hockey goon.

The show ended with an a cappella version of "Old Brown's Daughter," a traditional folk song that talks up the allure of "a proper sort of girl." The tune was interrupted briefly when a few bars of AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" came over the house sound system. Whether that was a soundman's gaffe or a gimmick, only the Great Big Sea knows -- but the fans roared either way.

-- Dave McKenna