An interview with Séan McCann & Andrea Aragon

It is a date that Andrea Aragon, wife of Séan McCann, the co-founder of Great Big Sea and now a solo musician, will never forget—November 9, 2011, when she delivered an ultimatum to her husband: stop drinking now, or lose your family. McCann had been spiralling downwards for years; would he choose the bottle or his family? Aragon wasn’t sure. Nor did she know how they could re-build their marriage after so many hits to its foundation. She only knew she had to draw a line in the sand.

McCann went sober—without Alcoholics Anonymous, without any other quitting mechanisms, just white-knuckled determination. Then he got back on the tour bus with his bandmates. After all, that was his working life, and had been, for 20 years. Except that his life had changed.

“You have to remember, with Great Big Sea, every night was Saturday night,” says McCann. “We were the lovable rogues, the lucky bastards. Got a problem? Here, have a drink! That was our brand—we were Canada’s Biggest Party Band.”

Getting on the bus sober…was a whole new chilly world.

“My last tour with Great Big Sea in 2012 and 2013 lasted 16 months,” says McCann. “I never felt more alone in my life than I did on that tour bus.”

McCann, who says he was “open and clear” with the band that he wouldn’t be drinking (original band members were Alan Doyle, Bob Hallet, and Darrell Power, who left the band in 2003; Murray Foster and Khris MacFarlane joined thereafter) says of that time, “It was the hardest test of my sobriety I ever faced.”

McCann concedes that his hopes for solidarity might have been unrealistic; just because he’d gone sober, didn’t mean his bandmates had to. Nonetheless, he had hopes. “I thought the bus environment would change, but it did not. It was stressful.”

Nor was the couple’s home life without stress.

 
Séan hikes for his mental health, here shown in a selfie with Olympian Clara Hughes.

In the prelude to their co-penned memoir, One Good Reason, published in 2020, Aragon writes: “Séan’s sobriety…is an amazing accomplishment and one that helped save our marriage, and our family….” The journey of change and sobriety “battered” them, she continues, but “we ended up here, in a place of truth, compassion, loyalty, and most of all, love. Together.”

The memoir, with its central themes of music, addiction, and recovery, is candid, even raw at times. With so many rock ‘n’ roll marriages unable to withstand the pressures of fame, infidelity, and constant travel, the reader can’t help but cheer that this couple made it.

Especially when the world and even McCann’s own family would come to know that there was far more to McCann’s troubled past than alcoholism. But first, McCann had to own that past himself.

 

Told no one

It was 2014, at a public event in London, Ontario, at a Recovery Breakfast. Speaker, former abuse victim and hockey player Paulie O’Byrne was addressing the audience on the subject of his sexual abuse and subsequent mental health and addiction struggles.

“Paulie didn’t have a slick, polished PowerPoint presentation,” McCann wrote in his memoir. “He hadn’t used a script or a teleprompter. Paulie had something far more powerful to share that day: he had the truth.”

Galvanized, McCann stepped up to the podium and followed Paulie’s example. “My name is Séan McCann, and I was sexually abused by my priest when I was sixteen…”

It all began to make sense: behind the addictions to alcohol and drugs, behind the out-of-control behaviour and regular blackouts, McCann was hiding a giant’s cache of pain and shame. Séan McCann, a member of one of the most successful rock-folk bands in Canadian history—had been abused by his priest as a teenager. Worse, this local priest was also a family friend. McCann told no one. The inner torment began.

“Living in shame and anger and keeping secrets will kill you,” he says now. “Find someone to talk to. Start to deal with this. You are not alone. Tell somebody if something bad has happened.”

McCann’s someone, Aragon, has never wavered in her support of McCann’s sobriety and recovery. Even still, Aragon, a sensible mid-western American by birth, plays down her part in this.

“Séan likes to call me his Higher Power,” she says, referring to a spiritual concept used by members of Alcoholics Anonymous. “I am happy to be his motivating factor, but none of his journey or sobriety is my doing. He had to make the choice to stop drinking on his own, and look deeper into his behaviour and the reasons for it.”

 

Change begets change

The couple and their teenage sons, Finnegan and Keegan, are now based in Martock, Ontario. Aragon, outgoing and full of energy, works as McCann’s business manager.

“I answer all the emails that come through the website, and deal with all the finances and the scheduling,” says Aragon.  This includes events related to the new book, speaking engagements, and of course concerts.

McCann has applied his new-found wisdoms to every aspect of his solo career.

“No matter what I am doing, whether it’s a speaking engagement or a concert, I ask myself, ‘What is my real purpose here?’ I want to do more than entertain, be more than one-dimensional. And of course it depends on the audience. Are they veterans, homeless, high school kids, addicts—or people out for a night on the town?”

As many who have walked in McCann’s recovery shoes know, change begets change, and some of it stings. Not only has McCann been open about the now-dormant friendships with his former bandmates in Great Big Sea, he has even said that after he quit drinking, he “lost every friend he ever had.”

But his struggles and triumphs have not gone unnoticed by other musicians in the Atlantic Canadian region.

“Being musicians, we know what he went through,” says Lucy MacNeil, of the multi-award-winning Cape Breton-based family group, the Barra MacNeils. “My mother always told me, ‘After every concert, they’re going to want to buy you a drink, to show respect. You don’t have to say yes every time.’ It was good advice! But it’s extra difficult to go through what he went through. He is very fortunate with his wife that they could turn their marriage around. On all accounts, it’s no small feat to do what he has done.”

MacNeil loved Great Big Sea. Once, years ago, they even opened for the Barra MacNeils at a concert in Iona, Cape Breton.

“It’s wonderful to see Séan go on with his career. I admire him as a musician. Certainly other musicians still think highly of him.”

It’s been one busy decade for McCann and Aragon. A major highlight occurred in 2019, when McCann was awarded the Order of Canada for his advocacy work.

“That was a surprise,” says McCann, “and very encouraging.”

To both of them.

“The more people we can reach, the more people we can affect,” Aragon says. “It’s a sacred process to give and receive in this way. Some people have never spoken of their trauma before they speak to us about it, and begin their healing. That’s worth more than anything to us.”

 

New music to spread some joy

Aragon and McCann hope that 2022 is one of the best years yet to “spread some joy,” with music, straight talk, and caring. “We are really looking forward to touring with the new memoir and CD,” says Aragon.

In the last quarter of 2021 McCann, a self-described “folk-nerd,” released his fifth solo collection, a new CD entitled Shantyman. 

“Shanties” are at least 500 years old, and were sung aboard ships to ease the heavy, repetitive workload of the sailors who put to sea. The word itself, shanty, stems from the French word “chanter,” meaning to sing. Its musical form is based on dialogue. The shantyman calls out a phrase; his fellow singers and the audience answer. Shanties even caused a bit of a craze on TikTok in 2021, bringing people together to sing from around the world on one screen.

Shantyman offers ten rollicking tunes, with some serious back-up and great harmonies by fellow Canadian musicians, Hawksley Workman, Gordie Johnson, Jeremy Fisher, and JP Cormier. And the front man? You heard it here—that man from Carbonear, Conception Bay, Newfoundland, can sure belt out a song.

“I have a passion for shanties,” McCann says. “And they are demanding. It’s an athletic process to sing them.”

More than anything, though, McCann loves the purpose shanties serve.

“They’re a Big Feel Good,” he says. “They show us we can do hard things together and in time—the way they once hauled sails, or worked in the woods, in the lumberjack tradition.”

McCann is grateful for the life-changing decision he made in 2011. He is humbled by his sons’ pride and knows he is a lucky man in his choice of a wife. “Andrea is more than just my muse,” says McCann. “She is the source of all light in my life.”

Andrea’s admiration runs as deep. “I will never stop being amazed at Séan’s strength throughout—both for the sober years and the 20 he wasn’t.” She pauses, smiling, perhaps thinking back to a day long ago, when she saw a dynamic man on stage, singing with his bandmates, but for her, there was only the one. “He’s pretty easy on the eyes, too.”