Twenty years ago Bob Hallett was a university student in Atlantic Canada, and music was something he and longtime friend Sean McCann did for kicks. Little did he know then that he was entering into a marriage of sorts.

"It's funny how when you're a teenager and you say, 'Let's start a band,' it turns out to be, 'Let's sign a pact and spend the rest of our lives together,'" the multi-instrumentalist noted last month, while in Toronto promoting Great Big Sea's ninth studio record, "Fortune's Favour."

If there is such a thing as a folk 'n' roll family, Hallett and McCann, who formed the Newfoundland Republican Army before starting GBS in 1993 with lead singer Alan Doyle, surely top the list.

Started in the bars of St. John's, N.L., GBS came along in the mid-'90s with earthy, chin-up anthems that wedded the traditional music of Atlantic Canada with their own kinetic pop imaginings.

Beneath celebratory riffs, were lyrics that evoked an unabashed pride of East Coast music and culture. "No matter what kind of music we've made," Doyle said, sliding in beside Hallett on a couch in a King St. hotel lobby, "our songs live and breathe Newfoundland. We've never made music anywhere else."

With the big labels catching wind of the band's scrappy blend of guitar, fiddle, accordion and drums, they kept their songs gimmick-free, sticking to the kitchen-party, hoot and holler that made them a must-see live act across the country.

"We've never been tied to a trend or a year or summer or haircut," Hallett said. "That's not the environment we came out of. Newfoundland music was made for everybody."

But after 2005's gold-selling diversion through the Gerald S. Doyle songbook - "The Hard and the Easy" - the trio tapped singer-songwriter Hawksley Workman to help them steer their way back to hockey rink-filling choruses.

"We wanted to do a record with Hawksley for a long time," Doyle said. "I've always really enjoyed his fearless enthusiasm."

"After playing nothing but traditional music for a couple of years, we wanted to do something that went in a different direction creatively," Hallett added. "The traditional album was very much the answer to one thing that we wanted to do. But this album is kind of the essence of another thing, which is to be a big bombastic, stadium rock band."

"Besides," Doyle grinned, "my Les Paul was getting too much dust on it."

Tapping influences as varied as Bob Marley, the Clash and Russell Crowe (yes, the actor) the disc's 14 tracks flit between fist-pumping bombast ("Company of Fools") and stoic balladry ("England").

"The whole aesthetic for this album was about pushing ourselves out of our musical comfort zones to try and do something different," Hallett said.

"Our fans have always been a mix of six-year-olds, 66-year-olds and everyone in between," Doyle smiled. "And most bands don't have that, so you want to make music that's pleasing to everyone."

"But as a band," Hallett interjected, "we want to move forward, rather than going backwards or sideways."

While GBS get to showcase their hearty, Celtic-tinged sound on the new record, Hallett acknowledged the fortuitousness of being in a band that has held its own against rap, teen pop, grunge and more. And it's reflected in the disc's title.

"We're always looking for some pithy two or three word thing that will sum up everything," Hallett said. "But that didn't really happen.

"Early on, we surrendered to the idea that this is our career," he continued. "There's no plan B anymore, there was no, 'Let's go back to school,' or, 'Let's open a bar.' Those options no longer existed.

"And 'Fortune's Favour' captures the idea that sometimes luck is just bestowed upon you. We worked really hard," he said, smiling at Doyle, "but we were also very, very fortunate."