Cape Breton-based Celtic band Còig will be making a stop in Victoria this month as they tour Canada. Multi-instrumentalist Darren McMullen is excited to be returning to Vancouver Island for the second time.
“I love being in BC and Vancouver Island, especially,” says McMullen. “We’ve got great memories from being there.”
McMullen has been a member of the band—who have a Juno nomination in their accolades—since they first formed in 2010.
“Rachel [Davis] and I started a band, and we didn’t really get rolling for a few years because we weren’t really supposed to be a band,” he says. “We were just having fun and playing together… Eventually, we just started getting bookings as the group, so we had to find a name, and then the rest is history.”
Music as a way of connecting has been a lifelong theme for McMullen, who first found his musicality by watching his cousin.
“I have a cousin who’s a bit older than me, but she was a professional musician when I was a kid. So I saw family who was doing it,” says McMullen. “I’m thankful for that… When you’re younger, it’s almost like there’s rock stars on TV, and then that’s it. We don’t know that there’s a whole bunch of different levels to it. So I was lucky to have an example in her.”
McMullen is listed on the band’s website as playing guitar, mandolin, mandola, banjo, bouzouki, whistles, flute, and vocals—and that’s just what he does frequently enough to bother writing down. When it comes to the broadness of his abilities, McMullen gives a lot of credit to the piano and the fundamentals he learned through the instrument.
“[My cousin] was a brilliant piano player, and she could play any style and all that kind of stuff,” he says. “So I sort of wanted to be pointed towards, like, how do I learn how to just fit in no matter where I am?”
Nowadays, McMullen passes on the same wisdom to his own students.
“I do teach sometimes, or do workshops and stuff like that. One of the things I always try to tell [my students] is not to learn an instrument, learn music,” he says. “If you put your head inside what music is supposed to be, the instrument is just a vessel for it. It’s in you, it’s not in there. It’s not on the fingerboard.”
McMullen says that sometimes what served him best on his own musical journey didn’t seem like big moments at the time.
“All the things that led me to where I am were inconsequential at the time,” he says. “I could have said yes, I could have said no; I wouldn’t have thought it would ever matter… What’s the worst that can happen? You have a crap gig, you go home. The best thing that can happen is, I don’t know, if you meet your wife.”
Which is what happened: in June of 2022, McMullen and Davis got married. From founding the band over 10 years ago to getting together at the beginning of the pandemic, living together, working together, and now touring together, they still find they can’t get enough of each other.
“We got together when COVID was starting up,” says McMullen. “So we’ve been a couple the whole time. But yeah, we got married last June… We love it. We get along famous. It’s great, no matter where we’re touring, or where we’re working, we still get to be together.”
Còig
7:30 pm Sunday, April 21
$47, Mary Winspear Centre
celticperformingarts.com