The Lucky Ones

Hailing from the Yukon Territory in the far north of Canada, The Lucky Ones took their name from Alistair MacLeod's novel, No Great Mischief, which recounts the saga of a Scottish clan linked through generations by blood and a common Gaelic culture, particularly its language and music. For the band's debut album, singer-guitarists JD McCallen and Ian Smith, singer-mandolinist Ryan West, banjoist Aaron P Burnie, and fiddle player Kieran Poile have compiled eight songs, many of which were passed down by their parents and generations before them. The opening track, ‘Fool's Gold’, a dark ballad with woeful lyrics, harks back to the Klondike Gold Rush. Other songs, such as ‘Since the Farm Got Sold’, ‘Waitin’ on a Paycheque’ and ‘Drunken Goodnight’, while possibly inspired by contemporary events, nevertheless perpetuate old lessons learned the hard way. The music, adeptly performed with palpable emotional sincerity, is conventional bluegrass filtered through a distinctly Canadian lens, tinged by isolation, melancholy and hardscrabble living.