It was the twilight of COVID-19 lockdowns in Nova Scotia, and Keith Maddison and Jeff Mosher were doing what lifelong rock ‘n’ rollers do: Playing some tunes. The two veterans of Halifax’s music scene—the former, a frontman for Maddison Avenue; the latter, a lead singer and saxophonist with The Mellotones—were at Maddison’s home “in the woods” of Fall River, chatting about days gone by. Concert gigs were still on hold. The live music industry felt forever changed. As the two reflected on past bands, Mosher asked his old friend: Had Maddison been writing anything new? It was a question that would spark the beginning of a Halifax Americana supergroup who, in the months to come, would go on to record within the same walls as some of music’s heaviest hitters. And now, in mere weeks, the band will perform live together for the first time, premiering with an album they call “one of the most powerful things” they’ve ever recorded.
The making of Newbridge
A blend of Americana and roots rock, Newbridge is a band of five Halifax music-scene stalwarts: Maddison and Mosher, along with In-Flight Safety drummer Glen Nicholson, guitarist Warren Robert (Myles Goodwyn Band, War & Sin) and multi-instrumentalist Robbie Crowell (Matt Mays, Sturgill Simpson). The group bills themselves as “emerging from the ashes of traditional music.” The band’s new album, Past Lives, comes out Mar 1, along with a launch show at the Seahorse Tavern.
Ask Nicholson, and it was Maddison who brought them all together. The two had run into each other at a lobster restaurant on Prince Edward Island, and done the usual song-and-dance whenever two artists get together: They made promises to collaborate. Not that Nicholson took it seriously at the time.
“Everybody’s always trying to play music. It’s one of the most popular things you hear,” Nicholson says, speaking by phone with The Coast. “But when Keith gets something in his head, I don’t think it’s very easy to get it out.”
“No,” Maddison adds, with a laugh. “It almost haunts me.”
Maddison had been writing songs for a while, and the itch to do something with them was getting stronger. He followed up with Nicholson after their PEI encounter. Mosher did too. Soon, the three were brainstorming who else they could recruit to their newly formed band. Maddison felt Robert would be a dream addition, but worried if his music would connect with the esteemed guitarist who, in his near-40-year career, had played with everyone from April Wine’s Myles Goodwyn to country crooner Lisa Richard. He played Robert some songs. They connected. From there, the foursome started playing out of The Mellotones’ rehearsal space on Allan Street, above Charles Austin’s Ocean Floor Recording studio. Maddison would bring in iPhone recordings of songs “in various levels of completion.” The band would try out different arrangements, working to see what fit—a process Nicholson calls “a choose your own adventure, where the song might head in a direction you’ve never been before.”
It was then, too, that the foursome knew they were onto something. The music became a “melting pot” of influences, pulling from the likes of Van Morrison, The Wallflowers and The Band. Songs like “San Somewhere” and the harmonica-backed “Swinging for the Fences” feel plucked out of an old Camaro roaring down Route 66, while “South Nova Scotia” takes on the salty tinge of a sea shanty.
“It was like, ‘Shit, we could actually do something interesting,’” Nicholson says.
The band sent their recordings to Crowell, whom Maddison calls a “total jackknife” as a musician and producer. Originally from Fredericton, the multi-instrumentalist had lived in Halifax for a decade, playing with both Matt Mays and The Mellotones, before joining alt-rockers Deer Tick and eventually moving to Nashville. Crowell encouraged them to come down and record with him.
And that, both Maddison and Nicholson agree, is where the record was truly born.
Recording with the “Forrest Gump of Americana”
Well before you set foot in the Creative Workshop recording studio, you get a sense of the place’s history. Wander along the quiet street in Nashville’s Berry Hill neighbourhood, and you’ll spy the mural painted onto the fence outside the renovated bungalow, adorned with portraits of the biggest-profile artists who have recorded within its oak-panelled walls. Dolly Parton. Jimmy Buffett. Merle Haggard. Rod Stewart. Emmylou Harris. Roy Orbison. Olivia Newton-John. Step inside the studio, and you’ll find Waylon Jennings’ old bass guitar, along with the piano from The Johnny Cash Show.
“Whether it’s your genre, or whether or not you’re interested in that sort of history, the place does kind of weigh heavy,” Nicholson says. “It was like playing in a museum.”
Built in the 1970s, the studio was founded by rock ‘n’ roller Buzz Cason, a man Crowell calls “the Forrest Gump of Americana.” At one time, Cason—a steely, blue-eyed Tennesseean—was a backing singer for Elvis. In 1963, The Beatles recorded a cover of his song “Soldier of Love.” Cason died last June, aged 84, but the Newbridge members got to meet him during their recording sessions at the Creative Workshop. Maddison calls it “probably the coolest week of my life.”
Maddison spent seven days in Nashville. The rest of the band came down for four days, during which time they laid down the sessions that would become Past Lives. They recorded live off the floor, an experience Nicholson describes as the “complete opposite” of his usual recording sessions, where each instrument is recorded in isolation. You can hear it in the album: The bottled energy of the band playing off each other shines through on cuts like “Centuries.”
“The whole thing, it felt so right and so good,” Nicholson says.
Maddison felt it, too. Whereas, in his younger years, the frontman felt like he “left some meat on the bone” in past projects, the singer-songwriter calls Past Lives “one of the most powerful things” he’s ever done.
“I just felt like I was finally able to express myself with the right musicians, with the right voice, with the right skill set, with the right people,” he says.
Album premiere at Seahorse Tavern
When the band premieres their new album on Saturday, Mar 1 at the Seahorse Tavern, it will mark another chapter at the storied venue for Maddison. This will be the first time his new band has played live for an audience. And it was the venue where his old band, Maddison Avenue, played their last show—back “when it was in the basement of The Shoe”—Argyle Street’s Economy Shoe Shop. (Another time at the Seahorse, a drunk fan jumped onstage, kicked Maddison’s beer and started swearing at him in German. “Good times,” the singer says.)
Nicholson is looking forward to conjuring some of the “on-the-fly magic” of their Nashville sessions on stage at the Seahorse. Charlottetown singer-songwriter Liam Corcoran joins the bill as the opening act.
Tickets for Newbridge’s Mar 1 show at the Seahorse are available online for $21.85. The show starts at 7pm.
This article appears in Feb 1-28, 2025.