“She believed in the singing and wanted me to be able to perform, one day, because she knew that’s what I loved.” Renee MacNeil did not live to see her daughter’s success, but Rita’s song Reason To Believe acknowledges the gift.Īfter a number of unsuccessful attempts to find work in the music business, Rita MacNeil found inspiration in the women’s movement. Her mother Renee “was a great encouragement,” Rita said. As a teen, however, Rita loved to listen to music – Celtic, country, folk, rhythm and blues and rock – on the radio. Rita’s shyness, even during childhood singing lessons when “the teacher did most of the singing,” thwarted her first attempts to express herself musically, so she only sang to her mother in the kitchen. Often chaotic, her youth included the physical and psychological trauma of surgery for a cleft palate, a first love affair that left her with a child and a broken heart, a marriage breakdown and numerous frustrating attempts to kick-start a musical career. Rita grew up in Big Pond, Cape Breton with three brothers and four sisters. On A Personal Note, her book written with Anne Simpson, detailed most of her struggle to succeed as a singer in spite of personal difficulties. The truth is not many could weather what she did and achieve what she has. It was about one person, but so many of us could be there.” And while she enjoyed the attention the production gave her career, she said, “I didn’t think the story was earth-shattering, just something you could pretty well put anyone into. It told MacNeil’s life story through her songs.
On that summer evening she attended the Live Bait Theatre in Sackville, N.B., for a performance of Flying On Her Own. Rita MacNeil had that opportunity on an August night in 2000.
It’s not very often an entertainer can sit in an audience and see herself perform. “(What’s) remarkable is that she can touch on the specific, but it becomes universal.” “MacNeil’s artistry lies in the way she can turn the events of her life into something with which many people can identify,” said Rhindress. MacNeil’s songs are about conversations, friends getting together, community roots, believing in dreams, both good and bad times, working people, taking risks, home and paying tribute to a loving family – things that ring true for everybody.
Playwright, Charlie Rhindress couldn’t have said it better.
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