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I catch fiddle player Billy MacInnis on a rare night off from gigging. “As long as I'm playing, that's what I want,” he says. “If I can play traditional country music all night long, I'll do it.” And he does it, most nights, whether he's playing for an audience of 30,000 backing up Stompin' Tom Connors (as he has done on the Canadian icon's last three tours), or playing small venues like Stanley Bridge Ceilidhs or local events with his band, No Boundaries.
A third-generation fiddle player, Billy plays solo but has made his reputation locally and nationally backing up traditional country music artists. These artists appreciate that they “can throw anything” at him, from old-time country to good-time rock-n-roll, and his fiddle will find a tuneful response. “Playing back-up has got me a long ways,” Billy says. “You can put a fiddle in anything, and I can make sure it sounds good.”
Billy's East-Coast fiddle style, modelled on Don Messer and others, first received notice while Billy busked a Charlottetown street corner in the early 1980s. Publicity, as much as pocket change, “made the phone start ringing,” he says. He knew he wanted to play as his career “as soon as I knew you could get paid to do it,” he says.
It's hard to draw Billy out on his accomplishments—he's not prone to bragging—but he has already met many ambitions he had as a young player, including recording albums (most recently Fiddle Fingers) and playing in a reunion of Don Messer and his Islanders. Last September, he fulfilled a long-time wish to play the Canadian Country Music Awards show, backing up Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans. He says of the big shows, “I don't get nerved up about it —just goosebumps beforehand, but that's the fun part.”
Shifting gears to play small gigs can be hard, Billy admits. “You take the good with the bad,” he says, “but I don't mean it as bad gigs, not at all. I love what I do. But it's hard sometimes to go back to have to do something you've done a thousand times.”
Billy MacInnis doesn't strike me as someone who repeats himself much. Backing up other artists is constantly challenging: each new song, each new interpretation, and each new audience calls on his creativity and ingenuity.
He describes himself as “really honoured” to play three tours with Stompin' Tom in theatres, arenas, and festivals Ontario and West. He appreciates the diversity of Tom's audience as much as its size: “The audience goes from little kids to 90-year-olds,” Billy says. Billy also played on a Stompin' Tom DVD a few years ago, likely to be Tom's last live recording.
“With him, I always like to talk about the music business, and I agree with a lot of his advice…[about] the ups and the downs of the business, and about sticking to your own guns,” Billy says.
The music business has transformed since Billy put out his first record, on vinyl, when he was just 13. “I envy a lot of the players from the 60s and 70s,” he says. “There were more venues for country music, and more people going out to hear it. I think I would have fit in good back then.
“There are all kinds of artists out there now,” he continues, “and there are all kinds I could probably go on tour with, but they'd be out of the picture in a few months, and I might not like what they were doing anyway. I'd rather be with someone who's gonna be around a while.” He listens for something unique in an artist's style, so “it sounds good, not just in a car, but in a theatre.”
Opportunities to tour are likely all that will take Billy MacInnis off the Island. While networking “isn't easy” from here, he says he wouldn't move his family. “No, I wouldn't put it on them,” he says. “The place to be is here.”