Kinnon Beaton & Friends: Tunesmith

Released: July 2010

All original compositions Featuring Kinnon Beaton with: Andrea Beaton, Glenn Graham, J.P. Cormier, Kenneth Mackenzie, Mike Hall, Rodney MacDonald, Shelly Campbell, Troy MacGillivray, Betty Beaton & Cheryl Smith

01. Deal or No Deal (Kinnon & Andrea Beaton)
02. One for the Minors (Kinnon Beaton)
03. Backstreet (Kenneth MacKenzie)
04. Archie A’s (Kinnon Beaton)
05. The Explorer (Andrea Beaton)
06. About a Week Before (Glenn Graham)
07. Dougie MacDonald’s (Troy MacGillivray)
08. Kermit’s  (J.P Cormier)
09. Mabou River Inn (Kinnon Beaton)
10. The Old CN Line (Shelly Campbell)
11. Chisholm’s Court (Kinnon Beaton)
12. Godmother’s Air (Rodney MacDonald)  
13. The Fortress (Mike Hall)
14. The Society Bull (Andrea Beaton)
15. Twenty-four deer  (Kinnon Beaton, Andrea Beaton, Troy MacGillivray)

About the CD...

“At the start I was planning to do the CD all myself but as I started going over the tunes and practising for it, I started realizing the CD is more about the tunes. It’s not about doing another CD, it’s more of an awareness of my tunes,” said the well-known fiddler from Long Point. So, he asked his friends to join in on the album, entitled Tunesmith, to get the tunes sounding as good as he possibly could.

Helping Beaton bring his own original compositions to life were his wife Betty Beaton, daughter Andrea Beaton, as well as Glenn Graham, Mike Hall, Rodney MacDonald, Shelly Campbell, Troy MacGillivray, Kenneth MacKenzie, Cheryl Smith, and J.P. Cormier, who also mixed and mastered the CD.

“Everyone that was asked to come on were more than willing to take part in it and were excited about it, which created excitement for me. They were almost as interested in the project as I was,” he said. Beaton said he was also really pleased with the recording process.“It was recorded in our house here and it was recorded with the new equipment from the Celtic Music Centre in Judique, and Allan Dewar, who is the director there now, did the recording,” said Beaton. “It’s their first actual recording that was recorded with their equipment and we’re very pleased with the result of (Dewar’s) work.”

The 15-track album features all original compositions by Beaton. The tunes date back as far as 1977 and go right up to present day. Beaton’s recording career dates also dates back about three decades beginning with Cape Breton Fiddle 1 recorded in 1982, and followed up over the years with Cape Breton Fiddle 2, Sprig of Ivy, Saturday Night Lively, Kinnon and Betty Beaton-Cape Breton Fiddle Compilation, Eoghan Dubh, Kinnon and Andrea Beaton, and The Beaton Family of Mabou.

With Tunesmith, Beaton said fiddling fans should expect a little bit of everything. “They’re going to hear tunes that they’re possibly not familiar with but at the same time there’s variety on it,” he said. “I tried to make a variety of different types of tunes that I have written. There’s a waltz on there, there’s a pipe group, there’s jigs, there’s reels, there’s strathspeys, there’s marches.”