Cape Breton singer-songwriter to release song about journey to sobriety

Singer-songwriter Danny MacNeil is pictured in Sydney, N.S. (Ryan MacDonald/CTV Atlantic)

A singer-songwriter in Cape Breton is getting ready to share a very personal song.

Danny MacNeil of Sydney, N.S., has been a musician for years and he said there was a time when all of those late nights out came with a problem.

“The music and the drinking went hand in hand but then at a part of my life – probably my mid-twenties – the music stopped but the drinking kept going,” the 36-year-old said in a recent interview with CTV Atlantic.

On May 5, 2019, MacNeil decided to give up drinking for good.

“I had missed work,” he said, recalling that day. “I knew I was supposed to be at work. I was hanging a pretty heavy head. There was something about that day where I was just like, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Back in January, MacNeil released a song called ‘The Plow Just Went By’ about the frustration of when a snowplow fills in a just-shovelled driveway.

Now, his latest single ‘Lonely For Now’ is set to debut on the seven-year anniversary of his sobriety.

“I know that there are people out there that are feeling the way I was feeling when I wrote this song,” MacNeil said.

The song was written during the first few months of MacNeil’s efforts to stay sober. It details the complicated feelings he first had after making the lifestyle change.

Now, he is finally ready to release it because he wants to help people.

“I want this song to reach someone who needs to hear it,” MacNeil said. “Someone who is going to hear it and think, ‘There is someone else that was in that situation, and they got out of it.’”

These days, MacNeil said what he is most proud of is the life he has built with his wife Molly and their three-and-a-half-year-old twins.

“My life couldn’t be any more different than it was,” MacNeil said. “It took a lot of work, but (sobriety) is the best decision I’ve ever made.”

The new song is set to be officially launched Tuesday at an event at Doktor Luke’s cafe in Sydney.

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