Dorie Prefers Small, Intimate Venues
By Aaron Cameron (Pictou Advocate)I've been invited to Jim Dorie's home. As I'm entering, Ian Foster is gathering gear, getting ready to leave for Halifax. The night before the two played a show in Glasgow Square's Green Room to a full, intimate gathering. The generally quiet crowd interacts with the pair. It's friendly and it's casual. It's comfortable. It's Dorie's type of venue.
"Shows like last night," he says, "where you have 25, 30 people in a small room where it's quiet and they're paying attention to every word you say, those are incredible gigs. When you get that kind of a rapport with an audience where you can look people in the eye and have a one on one and you know that what you're telling them and what you're singing to them, they get. It's a pretty powerful experience."
Dorie's music rings like distant memories, dusty pearls of wisdom. His voice is weary yet honest and rich with character. There is a welcoming quality to both. While he is from the area originally, having grown up in both Pictou and Antigonish counties, he spent the majority of his adult life working Alberta. Alberta has a definite presence in his songs, cropping up in the form of labour and industry. This is something many of his listeners can relate to. Nova Scotian, as well as Pictou County history and imagery, seem to be his main muse.
Having spent many years away his perspective manages to be both insider and outsider and this gives freshness and motion to what may otherwise be static matter. His songs are believable for the simple reason that they are as genuine as they seem. He lived a full life before he set up the mics and started recording.
" 'Punching Copper' is probably the first song I ever wrote. That's about seven years old," he tells me before continuing, "It was about the time that I knew I was approaching retirement. I knew that I had to have some hobbies and some things to do. I'd seen other people that retired, they bought an RV and traveled North America for six months and when that was over and they came home they had nothing to do. They never developed any hobbies. What they ended up doing was going back to work. So I knew that I had this block of time that I had to do something with."
What he did with his new found free time was to write songs, attend workshops, and network with other songwriters. His new found hobby eventually culminated in Something Happened, his self-released album which features local talents Dave Gunning (who also co-produced the album and co-wrote two of its songs with Dorie), Fleur Mainville, and Jofe MacDougall as well the ECMA award winning regional favourite J.P. Cormier.
Although he may view his music as a way of keeping busy, Dorie is nothing if not dedicated to the craft. He writes often, stockpiling lines and interesting stories, tidbits. He holds himself to a high standard, explaining, "Every song has to be a homerun. I don't want to be one of these guys with one or two cuts on a record that you can listen to and the rest of it is also-rans. I want every song on a CD to be a good one. I don't know if I'm trying to set a standard that's fairly high for myself but I'm hoping that when I do put a song out that it's got a wow factor."
Since releasing the disc last year, Dorie has seen copies of it shipped as far away as New Zealand, Belgium, the United States, and Western Canada. Despite this he remains humble and well grounded. "I have no illusions whatsoever as to where my music will take me because if I was going to do this and seriously do it I should have started when I was 20 instead of starting it when I was 60." He pauses for a moment and adds "Having said that, I'd like to do another CD or two."
