HALIFAX -- It has been a long and anguished decade since the Rankin Family -- the Cape Breton siblings who made fiddle music radio-trendy in the nineties, and became ubiquitous with their Canadian Celtic sound -- last made a record.

It's been eight years since they toured together, and seven since they made a mutual decision to break from stage and studio and pursue solo projects and family lives.

And it's been six years since their beloved brother and band mate, John Morris, died in a winter car wreck in Cape Breton.

And that may be exactly where the latest chapter of the Rankin story really begins.

Last month in Halifax, front man Jimmy, 42, and his sisters Heather, 39, Cookie, 41, and Raylene, 46, gathered over several weeks in the CBC Radio rehearsal hall, a plain, dumpy space marked by worn brown carpet and dull florescent lights, to practise 12 new songs they will soon be performing live.

For several visitors, they ran tightly through a pair of tracks -- a sweet-sounding cover of John Hiatt's Gone and a hauntingly mournful original by Jimmy Rankin, called Departing Song.

You could call it a comeback, and many likely will. But the Rankins prefer to describe this outing, which will be followed by a new record and 22-city tour, as a reunion. And so the new album is appropriately titled Rankin Family Reunion.

The gathering round of the Rankins coincides with the Christmas season, and although it was not planned that way, the timing is appropriate, as sweet and sentimental as a Gaelic hymn. A time for family and song, celebration and reflection: The album and the tour -- and the reunion itself -- embody all of that and more.

The Rankins have reunited at the urging of Calgary music promoter Jeff Parry, a long-time associate who last February was on his way to Calgary when he threw a Rankin collection on the car stereo.

"We were in the car, and I said to my wife, 'We have to get these guys back together,' " recalls Parry. "I felt very inspired hearing their music again. There's nothing like it in the world, and I felt the time was right. The harmonization of the girls and Jimmy is something no one else has out there. Also it's fun music. Aspects are dark, but in general it makes you feel good."

Parry called Jimmy, who in turn phoned his sisters. The Rankins were keen, but also not without reservations.

"My initial reaction was, 'Can we do it without John Morris?' " admits Heather. "He was such an instrumental part of what we did. When he died, I thought there was no chance we would ever be together again. But then, with outside encouragement, it happened. We knew it wouldn't be the same, but many of the elements are the same."

John Morris Rankin was just 40 when he died on Jan. 16, 2000. He was driving the old coastal road in Cape Breton when his truck hit a pile of road salt at Whale Cove and sailed over a 25-metre embankment into the icy, stormy Gulf of St. Lawrence. His son, Michael, and two other children survived the crash by crawling out a window and clamouring onto rocks at the foot of a cliff. They had been on their way to a hockey game.

John Morris's funeral, at St. Mary's, the country church near the family home in Mabou, N.S., where Cookie would later marry Nashville record producer George Massenburg on a happier day, saw nearly 100 fiddlers play and more than 1,000 people gather to mourn. No one was more devastated than his siblings, his band mates. That day, the band played Molly Rankin's Reel, which John Morris had written for his daughter, then 12, who has now emerged as a key and poignant piece of the reunion puzzle.

In 2001, Jimmy was quoted as saying it was unlikely the band would ever work together again, because his older brother had been the nerve centre, both musically -- on both the fiddle and piano -- and spiritually.

"But it really is strange," Jimmy mused recently, "how things work out."

The Rankins went into the studio with the Grammy-winning Massenburg this fall with four songs, but came out with an album's worth, including a cover of Gordon Lightfoot's classic The Way I Feel and several traditional pieces from John Morris that were in the vault.

They also invited Molly to perform one of her songs on the album, and tour with them. Now 19, she dances and plays fiddle, and has been trying her hand at songwriting for the past four years. The Rankins wanted her to be a part of things, just as her father once was.

"She's her own entity, very different than what John Morris was, but she embodies part of his spirit," says Jimmy. "That's a very good thing. She's very quiet, like he was."

Was it difficult to come together without him?

"I really miss him," the girls chime in at once.

"Technically he was the guy who directed everything and finessed the details," says Raylene. "He was the perfectionist. And even though he's not here physically, I feel he's here emotionally."

Adds Jimmy: "Initially you think, 'How could you ever go on?' We've been playing in the same band in one form or another forever. No one could ever fill his shoes. But Molly is a wonderful addition."

For her part, John Morris's daughter, who studies music at Dalhousie University, says she isn't trying to take her father's place -- but she certainly seems to have his musical gifts. She describes her song, Sunset, as a "girlie folk-pop" tune, and working with her musical family as "emotional, but I think in a good way. It's a nice feeling to have everyone around, everyone that loved my father and loves performing music. It's emotional to hear him play, and hear things without him here, but you have to take something good out of it. As long as something positive comes out of it, that's what I care about."

The album, which is being mixed by master Bob Ludwig, sounds every bit a Rankin record, with one exception: It's Gaelic-free. "When we sing Gaelic, we want to make sure we have it correct, and this thing happened so quickly that we didn't seem to have the time to finesse a Gaelic song that we felt comfortable recording," says Cookie. "It was a time constraint, and we chose not to go there. But that's not to say we won't go there in the future."

Indeed, Parry thinks that what makes the new record special is the fact that it sounds more modern -- a little less Celtic -- but hasn't lost the lush, harmonious Rankin sound. "There is a hole in the market for this," suggests Parry. "They waited 10 years to make a record, and the result is a total departure. The harmonies are still there, but it sounds fresh."

There were a dozen Rankin children who grew up in small-town Mabou. Long before they ever borrowed money from an older sister to record their self-titled debut album in 1989, five of them -- Jimmy, Heather, Raylene, Cookie and John Morris -- performed at dances and entertained across Cape Breton. They grew up on music, with a huge record collection that spanned John Allan Cameron, Elton John and Led Zeppelin.

Not long after that first record, they released Fare Thee Well Love, which attracted the attention of officials at EMI Music Canada in Toronto. It was rereleased to international acclaim, helped along by the song's inclusion in the Gabriel Byrne film, Into the West.

Almost overnight, the Rankin Family tuned people's ears onto Celtic music and the Cape Breton music scene, which included Rita MacNeil and the Barra MacNeils. The Rankins went on to sell more than 2 million records. North Country, the 1993 follow-up to Fare Thee Well Love, went multiplatinum and racked up both Junos and East Coast Music awards. In 1999, with seven albums, including the sisters' Christmas record, under their belts, the Rankins decided it was time to take a break.

Cookie now lives near Nashville with Massenburg; the others reside in Halifax. Jimmy has worked steadily on his solo career; the girls reconvene each Christmas to perform live. They get to Mabou often, where the sisters own the Red Shoe Pub, which Heather spends much of her time managing.

And while the record industry has changed dramatically since the Rankins first hit the charts, in many ways, they say, they've come back to where they started -- with a small record deal, and a good old-fashioned tour to help spread the music. "The Rankins broke on adult contemporary radio, but all the formats have changed, the way they program music," notes Jimmy. "Back then, it was nothing to sell 100,000 records. Now it's something to sell [half that many].

"The way to get your music out has changed also . . . There's so many ways to get it out there. It's been a huge shift.

"It's going to be interesting to see who our audience is," he adds. "We thought, 'Without John Morris, will anyone come see us play?' But then the tickets went on sale, the buzz started happening, and the feedback we've heard has been pretty good. It wasn't just a flash in the pan when it happened. It was quality music and a great show and it had a lot of impact on our fans. People tell me they still listen to Rankin stuff and play it for their kids. There's something infectious about the Celtic fiddle."

SHAWNA RICHER
Globe and Mail