Rum Ragged bringing the music of the East Coast across Canada

By Allan Bradbury
Staff Writer
abradbury@fortfrances.com

The final show of the 2024-25 Tour de Fort season features Rum Ragged, a traditional folk band primarily made up of members from Newfoundland, with a Nova Scotian thrown in to help the mix.

Coming up on 10 years together in 2026, Rum Ragged has carried the sound of Newfoundland and other east coast traditional music all over the world.

Mark Manning is a singer and guitarist with the band. He says their goal is to bring traditional folk music from Newfoundland and Labrador and tell its stories to folks around the world.

“The main reason for starting the band in the first place was to collect and record the traditional music of Newfoundland that hadn’t been recorded before and tell the story of Newfoundland and Labrador, and that’s what we try to do,” Manning said.

The performances have been well received across Canada and around the world, he says.

“We find the reception is great, it has been for a great number of years,” Manning said.

“We’ve been lucky to get to spread the music around not only the great country of Canada, but also around the world. People are very much in tune and want to know more about what Newfoundland and Labrador is all about. The cultures that moved to our province with our ancestors and built what we know today as Newfoundland and Labrador culture. Being able to spread that story is something that we care about immensely and being able to bring it to different parts.”

The band is working its way back home after starting a cross-Canada tour back in Newfoundland before heading to B.C. and moving east through B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan before hitting Winnipeg and Northern Ontario.

The band consists of Manning and co-founder Aaron Collis who plays accordion, bazooki/bouzouki, and sings as well as playing other instruments as needed. Zach Nash plays banjo, guitar, bazooki/bouzouki and bass while the band’s fiddle player Colin Grant, hails from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Perusing the band’s offerings on Spotify, there is a mix of lyrical music as well as instrumental.

“We pair the traditional songs that we have with traditional instrumentals and tunes from around the province,” Manning said.

“They may not have words, those ones but they really tell a different kind of story about how people used to have their square dances and how people shared tunes, and you’ll find some of those tunes in different cultures, but ones that are unique to Newfoundland and Labrador that we play, people really get a particular type of exciting energy when we’re playing the tunes.”

Some of the lyrical songs discuss Newfoundland’s past, present and future. A song on their self-titled debut album called “St. John’s Train,” written by singer-songwriter David Francey, discusses the fact that there are no longer trains that run through the island portion of the province. “You can wait by the railroad tracks/ Won’t be no trains comin’ and goin’.”

Another song on that first album talks about what it’s like to be a Newfoundlander who has moved to Alberta for work.

The title track from the band’s 2019 offering “The Thing About Fish” discusses the waxing and waning of Newfoundland and Labrador’s fishing industry and how other natural resources are taking the fishery’s place in the province as primary industries.

Rum Ragged is a Newfoundland and Labrador band who will be bringing the East Coast with them when they stop at the Townshend Theatre to finish off the 2024-25 Tour de Fort season on Thursday, April 24, 2025. The band plays a varietyof traditional instruments used in East Coast music, including
the bouzouki, bodhran and button accordion.
– Rum Ragged press photo

While many Canadians say they’ve always wanted to go to Newfoundland, jumping on a plane can be expensive and driving across to take a ferry to the island can be time consuming, Manning says he hopes the band’s music can inspire folks to visit the country’s youngest province.

“People when they get to travel across Canada, not a lot of people get to make that extra jump over to the island,” Manning said.

“Getting the opportunity to take that music and story of the island and getting that out to the rest of Canada that’s very cool for us and something we always wanted to do and we’re very happy to be in the middle of doing it right now. We’re trying to get out and play that music in different parts of the country, so people do get that extra jab to make sure they make a visit and get to experience [Newfoundland and Labrador] for themselves.”

The Thursday, April 24, show will be the final Tour de Fort show of the year and the lineup for the 2025-26 season will be announced. Passports will also go on sale for the first time.

Tickets for Rum Ragged are available online at tourdefort.com or in person at Ski’s Variety or the Fort Frances Public Library and will be available at the door.