On Harvest Highway (Out Oct. 13), Jimmy Rankin hits the road again, time traveling and traversing far-flung destinations—along with his native Nova Scotia—through his singular brand of East Coast folk-rock. He nods to Nova Scotia’s Highway 101—running through the fertile Annapolis Valley and down the southern shore of the Bay of Fundy—with the album’s wistful title track, an Americana-tinged road tune with one eye on the asphalt and one on the figurative rearview mirror.
Rankin teamed up with fellow East Coast hero Joel Plaskett, who produced and played multiple instruments on Harvest Highway. Recorded to tape with vintage mics, the expertise of engineer Thomas Stajcer, and contributions from studio session all-stars JP Cormier, Ron Hynes, Dale Murray, Jordan Murphy, and Madison Violet, its organic feel comes from its almost entirely live-off-the-floor takes, along with Rankin and Plaskett’s combined love for classic production.
The Cape Breton icon’s eighth solo album is rich in the narrative songwriting traditions that Rankin has been honing for nearly his whole life, filled with crackling yarns and poignant chronicles about feverish marriages in Thunder Bay, unmoored Newfoundlanders, lovers on the run, and fallen soldiers in France. Bookended by songs about home, the collection roams a trajectory not so different from Rankin’s life, with narrators who relish in adventure while also feeling a yearning for the homeland from which they first pulled their roots up.
In his early years with Cape Breton’s favourite musical brood—Mabou’s The Rankin Family—Jimmy established himself as a torchbearer of East Coast folk and one of the most well-respected songwriters in Atlantic Canada, with songs like “Mull River Shuffle” enduring for decades through traditional renditions at Nova Scotia weddings and dance nights, and through the countless cover versions that pay homage to the Rankins. In 2013, CBC listeners voted the 1994 JUNO Award-winning single “Fare Thee Well” the #1 East Coast song of all time, and it was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2020.https://open.spotify.com/track/0uNPLTS9jxonHMCdi35fcj
