From the Promoter

1967 is the year that a counterculture movement in San Francisco for love, peace and happiness briefly connected thousands of people and turned into “The Summer of Love”. Hippy culture became a phenomenon, everybody wanted to dress like a member of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and music was the glue that temporarily kept the idea together. 3000 miles away, in the middle of the cold and unforgiving North Atlantic Ocean, Séan McCann was born in Carbonear, Newfoundland, a town of fisherman and shipbuilders with a population of barely 5000. Despite the geographical and cultural distance however, his life was about to take shape through a journey that could have been ripped from the pages of that 1967 San Francisco fairy-tale; a journey for peace, love, and happiness through music……but it wasn’t going to be easy.
Séan’s love for Newfoundland and Labrador folk songs shot him to international fame as a founding member of the renowned group Great Big Sea. After millions of albums sold, countless hit songs, and record breaking tours around the world, Séan realized that his 20 years with the band had to stop. Music is supposed to connect, heal, and bring happiness; and while Sean was giving that to tens of thousands of people a night, he himself was lost. Instead of finding truth in his music he was using it to hide which wasn’t fair to his fans or himself. So he left the band and started over.

In 2014 Séan released his first post GBS album; “Help Your Self”. Produced by Joel Plaskett, “Help Your Self” is a collection of songs that helped Séan find his truth and share it with his fans, friends, and family. It helped him find a path towards dealing with issues of addiction and abuse which has taught him to find strength from pain. It helped remind him of the power of music which at one time would have been used to cast a Friday-night spell over a sold out hockey arena on a Monday, but now finds him touring the country as a solo artist in intimate venues where he can connect with his audience in a way he had always hoped to. He has also found himself using music as therapy working with people with disabilities and become a sought after speaker trying to help others to help themselves and find light through the darkness.

The journey to find his own peace, love and happiness continues through music and a new album that will be released one song at a time. “You Know I Love You” is a happy collection of songs~made by a man intent on being happy. No manager, no label, no agent, there is nothing left between Séan’s music and the ears of people who want to hear it other than a smartphone. Despite how small social media has made the world, and how it has included all of us into the same conversation with a simple hashtag # ; the basic human quest for a connection to something real is too difficult to fit in just 140 characters. Luckily, through the years of technological advancement and subsequent social change; two universal energies remain constant: Music and Love.

Produced once again by Joel Plaskett, and with an original piece of artwork per song by singer/songwriter Meaghan Smith, Séan is trying to find a balance somewhere between analogue and Tinder in a world where the connection we all want can’t seem to keep up with technology. Love and music…….maybe the hippies were on to something.