Good King Wenceslas

Ritchie: There is a long story about this one in fact. It has nothing to do with King Wenceslas. Those words were added much later to that melody. I forgot who wrote it. Most of them are anonymous anyway. That was again one of my favorite tunes. I always liked that one. And then I did find out it wasn’t about Kind Wenceslas at all. It’s a rather ambiguous lyric. Whoever wrote it.

Candice: We love story-songs. Songs that have these characters involved. Songs that have a start and an ending and a plot. So when we are writing them ourselves we are drawn to songs that incorporate these ideas and character references. It’s almost like mini-theatre within songs. I think that’s the only song where we added a melody of our own. That’s probably my favorite on the album.

Ritchie: We went into some adlibbing in that one. We didn’t stick to the melody. At first we did but then we put a different arrangement in the middle-part. And then we invented a kind of a different melody to that.

15. –Lord Of The Dance / Simple Gifts

Ritchie: The tune has been around for a long time. It was originally called Simple Gifts back in the 1850’s. And somebody else – I forgot his name – rewrote it in 1963 I think. So we didn’t quite know how to call it. Simple Gifts was the original melody. But the words were different. So we also called it Lord Of The Dance. We have the original melody with different words. It was quite tricky and we had to call the publisher to get to know who initially wrote it. But it was originally written back in 1850 by a shaker. You know what a shaker is? A shaker is someone who believes in a very puritanical upbringing, simple way of life. Almost like the Amish type of person. And this other person came around in 1963 and wrote the same melody and put Lord Of The Dance to it. So we where confused about who wrote what. So we put both of the names down.

Candice: I think that song is probably the most representative what we are trying to stand for as a band. Because the original – I think his name is Joseph Brackett, who was the original shaker who wrote the section Simple Gifts – was talking about everything important life stands for. Not about always wanting more and more, just being happy with what you have. Not about worrying what your neighbor has. Not about having a bigger car and a bigger house. Not about the jealousy. Just really to be happy what’s around you. About your friends and your family. Things that are right there and you can touch. That for us – when he wrote Simple Gifts – we very much related to the lyrical part of the song. The second part – when Sydney Carter in 1963 made Lord Of The Dance out of it – that’s the other side of what we try to do in this band. Which is basically get everyone on their feet. Enjoying the moment, dancing and everybody clapping and singing around. That’s what we try to portrait during our concerts as well. So putting those two songs together seemed like the perfect marriage of the lyrical and musical side.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14