A Vulnerable State
By Kerry Doole

Transcribed by Tracie Pascoe

When Stratford songstress Loreena McKennitt released her seventh album, 
The Book of Secrets, last fall, she took a gamble in deciding not to tour to
support it.  The tough decision hasn't hurt the record commercially, since it's
selling strongly in Canada and Internationally.  That also reflects the loyalty
of McKennitt's fan base, who seem supportive of her decision to devote more 
time to her personal than professional life.

McKennitt's wonderfully rich, atmospheric music does reflect her love of foreign travel and exotic sounds and themes, but she remains a country girl at heart.  She studied to be a vet and has missed being away from her farm.  This charming and eloquent conversationalist admitted as much to Profile as she relaxed with Spanish red wine in Stratford, Ontario, office of her own label, Quinlan Road.  "I bought a wonderful farm house here four years ago but it sits like a hotel I own.  I'm out of the country researching, then recording, then touring.  I'm at a point, instinctively, where I need to make a lifestyle change, starting now.  I haven't learned how to cook, I haven't set down my roots in this community very well, I've starved a side of my personal life."

"I feel I've been living in a tiny topsoil of events, data and information; and I want to put my roots in some kind of experience, I'm on the verge of feeling I'm on a treadmill in a gilded cage."

Such a decision is good news for her friends and Dalmatian dogs, but possibly disappointing to fans craving more of her.  They may number in the millions, but artist and audience share an intimate relationship.  "I sense people come to my music for the right reasons," says McKennitt.  "I don't want people using it as fashion commodity.  They like it for what it is."

Prior to launching her recording career with the 1985 independent tape, Elemental, McKennitt was active in the theatre scene for which Stratford is world-famous.  But theatre's loss is music's gain.  Back in the mid-80's, McKennitt was a harpist/singer in a more conventional folk vein.  She'd perform old folk ballads and Christmas carols while busking outside the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, selling her tapes on the street.  With a mass of red hair cascading over her shoulders as she plucked out haunting melodies, she sang so ethereally, McKennitt made a striking sight.  Her following increased steadily, then in leaps and bounds once she embarked upon a label partnership between Quinlan Road and Warner Music that has seen her career soar internationally. 

Parallel with her musical accomplishments, McKennitt has  become something of an authority on Celtic culture.  She has traced the roots of her ancestors back from Great Britain through their fascinating history in Spain, Eastern Europe and Asia Minor.  Such study has provided lyrical themes and musical ideas for her 90s albums, and the Book of Secrets is no exception.  One track, 'Skellig', tells of an elderly Irish monk in the 7th century; 'Prologue' is inspired by the travels in Greece of a monk a century earlier; and 'The Mummers' Dance' investigates an ancient folk custom.

McKennitt admits The Book of Secrets " is not the recording I had aimed at.  When I set out, I decided that one pragmatic thing I'd do in the recording would be to make it sparse and simple.  But it has ended up quite heavily layered and dense in many respects."

Recording at Peter Gabriel's famed Real World studios encouraged McKennitt to stretch herself musically.  "I wanted to learn about the idioms of different instruments and also more about the recording process itself.  This whole recording was mixed two-and-a-half times.  All of that takes a long period, and then you have to bring it to a close.  This record is less a finished product, more of a document of a whole stretch of exploration."

McKennitt's own travels inspired this album, especially a 1995 Trans-Siberian rail trek.  "I love train travel and I was looking for the longest possible trip to give me uninterrupted time to try to plot the recording and the themes and then digest some of the research I'd done.  But ultimately what happened is, I was so drawn to the human drama outside the train windows and inside the train.  I felt that prior to that my life had become an international mono-culture of hotels and offices.  I missed traveling in a more vulnerable state.  That trip on my own gave me that," she recalls with a hearty chuckle.

An earlier trip took her to Morocco.  "We were advised to go on organized tour, but I said no and we rented a car, and went further into the desert.  The end of the formal road should have been a sign, but we headed out into sand and followed the telephone poles!  I f your psyche is prepared and you need that kind of risk and exposure, it can whet your creative appetite.  I think creative people have a constant need to stimuli."