Loreena On Tour

Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

An Interview with Loreena on Tour

Broadcast on KMTT 103.7 FM, Seattle WA, 12th December, 1994 11:30 am

Transcribed By Mark Robinson

"This is from alt.music.lor-mckennitt. A nice fellow named Mark Robison from the University
of Washington went to all the trouble of typing in the transcript of an interview with Loreena
on a Seattle radio station. Here it is for everyone's enjoyment!" Ron Nixon

This interview was conducted during Loreena's American The Mask and Mirror Tour.

Notation:

Interviewer = I:
Loreena McKennitt = LM:
[...] denotes musical interludes
*...* include non-speaking additions

I:	Well, we're very lucky to have a special guest with us in the Mountain Music Lounge (KMTT Studio) this morning, and so early after your show last night. Welcome, Loreena McKennitt.
LM:	Thank you.
I:	How are you doing after the show last night?
LM:	Oh, quite well, quite well...it's been a long but very good tour. We've...Uh, yeah it's been a very, very good tour so when things go well, you don't feel the tremendous stress and strain of it, so it's good.
I:	It was sold out last night. Was it a good time?
LM:	Yeah, we had a great time. The audiences here are really wonderful, and we try to enjoy ourselves on-stage, and being that it was our last performance, the crew were playing a few tricks on us so that kept things lively, you might say laughs.
I:	Sarah McLachlan did that when she was here, too.
LM:	Uh-hmm
I:	They actually played tricks on the audience, too.
LM:	Oh, wow
I:	It was a little odd. Now, you're touring on your fifth CD, is that correct?
LM:	Yes, yes. This was my fifth CD, it's my second with the Warner Group - or Warner Brothers. It's my fifth on my own label. I have a licensing arrangement with Warner Brothers for the last two.
I:	I was wondering if you might perform something a little bit older for us. We get a lot of calls from listeners that say "You know, I know The Visit and I know this new one, but what do her older songs sound like?"
LM:	Yeah, well, I can do a piece from the first recording. It's a Yeats poem that I set to music, and Yeats lived on the west coast of Ireland, W. B. Yeats. This is a piece called The Stolen Child
	[The Stolen Child]
I:	Beautiful! See, and you were worried about playing this early in the morning.
LM:	laugh The playing...it's the singing, you know laugh
I:	It sounds OK to me laugh... So what is a nice Canadian girl like you doing singing old Celtic melodies?
LM:	Well, I began this part of my career in the Celtic 'pool', as it were, in the traditional repertoire... By about 1989 I started writing more of my own material and weaving that in with the traditional pieces. Still very much anchored in the Celtic culture, but as I prepared the material for my fourth recording, *The Visit, I learned that the Celts were much more than this mad collection of anarchists from Scotland, Ireland and Wales. They were this vast collection of tribes that came from middle and eastern Europe from as far back as 500 BC. And I used this whole pan-Celtic culture as a creative springboard for my music. How that connects to my Manitoba upbringing laugh* I don't know. I mean, my household wasn't particularly Irish or even musical, for that matter, But when I became involved or was part of a folk club in 1979-1980, some members of that club were from Ireland and Scotland and as soon as I heard the Celtic music, I was instinctively drawn to it. Since then, I've been traveling in particular to the west coast of Ireland, collecting music...
I:	I heard, also speaking of Manitoba and your upbringing, that you wanted to be a veterinarian?
LM:	Yes, it's always interesting when you end up doing something as an adult, different from what you thought you would do as a child. Yes, as a child, I always aspired to be a veterinarian, and, in fact, entered in the Department of Agriculture at the University of Manitoba. But, I found that, first of all, university life wasn't my scene, but also there were a lot of performing opportunities that had arisen, and I knew that I would always wonder how far I would go with the music, so I'll see what happens. laugh I'm still wondering what I'll do when I grow up laugh
I:	Aren't we all? We're glad you chose this avenue, though. Hey, our favorite album of yours, I think, is *The Visit. Would you mind performing one from The Visit* before you leave?
LM:	Yes, umm, we can do - as we call it in Canada, the Coles' Notes version, here in the US I understand you call it the Cliffs Notes - of the Tennyson poem The Lady of Shalott. tunes harp I'm just tuning the harp, it's tuned in the key of G major, and The Lady of Shalott is in D. So I raise all my C's to a sharp...OK
	[Shortened version of The Lady of Shalott] (This recording was later released on the station's compilation CD, On the Mountain II)
I:	Absolutely beautiful...I think you're the only one who's ever brought a harp into the Mountain Music Lounge laugh. Hey, we played Greensleeves - do you have any plans to do a Christmas album?
LM:	Well, the second recording, which I made in 1987, was a collection of more obscure Christmas carols. It's very sparsely arranged, so it's not a very densely produced recording. I wanted to try to create another variation of that, where it is more elaborate in its arrangements, but also in terms of the concepts, the ideas, so it's possible...
I:	Let us know when you do... Do you get to go home now?
LM:	I do. I left my home around the 25th of October, so I'm ready to see my own bed, and see my own animals. I live on this farm about 10 miles out of Stratford, Ontario, and it's a very beautiful part of the rolling hills in southern Ontario, so that's where my heart is.
I:	Any future plans right now, or are you just going to go home and relax?
LM:	Well, we are going to do a bit more touring on The Mask and the Mirror in the new year in Europe at the end of January, and we might go to Australia and New Zealand in March. I'm creating a television special with a director from Ireland who produced a series called "Bringing It All Back Home: The Irish Music Coming To North America", and then I start preparing the material for the next recording, which I think will be released sometime in '96.
I:	Well, happy holidays, and thank you for stopping by, and you're welcome to come back anytime.
LM:	Thank you. TOP OF PAGE