Cape Breton confessional folk artist Danny MacNeil revisits “Ten Hour Day,” a song about burning the candle at both ends while making sure we find time for important people in our lives. With a version previously released in 2018 (which featured The Stanfields’s Dillan Tate on guitar), MacNeil leapfrogs from lyric to lyric as he describes the now-forgotten challenges of an over-full social calendar.
As a confessional folk artist, Danny MacNeil describes his songwriting process as being influenced “by the continuous struggle for contentment and true peace of mind.” Which, presumably, means he’s working overtime lately.
“I was in the process of recording my first album when the COVID pandemic began,” says MacNeil. “With only a few songs completed, ‘Ten Hour Day’ was an easy choice for release as it is a relatable song of familiarities in a time of change.”
“‘Ten Hour Day’ is a story of stories that are only suitable for song. With times of uncertainty ahead, ‘Ten Hour Day’ is a glimpse into the social comradery that we now long for.”
The song itself is the opposite of an Irish Goodbye; the act of disappearing, unnoticed, from a party to avoid an unending series of awkward farewells. Instead, “Ten Hour Day” seems to be the lyrical representation of a Maritime Goodbye; a prolonged disentanglement from a social experience that can be managed by as few as two people and lasting for an indeterminate amount of time. And then there’s the even more classic, the soft goodbye of “sure, but just one more” that’s been featured in the song.
Coincidently, there’s no better example of Maritime Goodbye than that of Bruce Gillis and Michael S. Ryan of The Town Heroes. Michael S. Ryan recorded, mixed, and produced “Ten Hour Day” at Hot Jupiter Sounds. MacNeil is joined by both Ryan and singer-songwriter Molly Babin on backing vocals, with Babin taking a spot on piano.