I Saw Three Ships

Interview CD

1. It has now been almost 10 years since Blackmore’s Night was founded. Did you ever think the band would be so successful and so long-lasting?

Ritchie: When we put this project together we didn’t do it for success reasons. Or for commercial reasons. We just put it together because we wanted to play the type of music that we are playing now. And in fact we had people like agents and managers from the old days saying “why are you playing this type of music? You’ll never make any money out of this music. You’ll never be successful.”

Candice: And they were right…

Ritchie: Yeah… So… It was… We never did it for commercial reasons. So I never thought about it as “being successful”. I just thought of it as about playing what I want to play. And we’re keeping doing it and we’re trying to reach more people. But in fact we don’t like to play to too many people. We rather play to a concentrated audience of a smaller amount of people. So… Being successful is unlike probably most bands… I’m personally not interested to be so-called successful. It’s nice to be successful, of course. But that was not the main reason why we have put it together for me. I don’t know how Candice thinks about it…

Candice: I think that when we first started this band - as Ritchie said – we kinda did it for us. Because at that point Ritchie had been playing rock music for almost forty years. So for him this was a sort of departure and escape just from that box of rock music that he had been “kept in” for such a long time. And he really just followed his heart and we started to write these songs together just out of love for the music and for the songs. More as a hobby than a profession or real shift or career move into this direction. Really only when our friends started asking us about playing these songs more often and then they would ask us to play standards, then we said “maybe we should it put out for other people to hear us also”. And that’s when record companies started to pick it up and distribute it worldwide. And then many kinds of people all over the world started enjoying this different type of music. The sort of music that we are creating. I think one of the great things about the band is that… We never thought we would be so long together as a musical act because we never thought we would be a musical act at all at the beginning. So ten years on… It has always been more about the journey than the destination of the music. So we never really had a set direction or a set lap of time. Everything has been done very spontaneously. With a lot of spontaneity. We kinda just follow our hearts and kinda braving our path through the woods and are enjoying the musical moments of each day. So in ten years time I hope we will still be doing this. But… You never know. Ten years ago we never thought we will be on this path where we are now”.

2. Do you think the listeners like the fact that you undertake a kind of time travel with them through your music? You are bringing them to the Renaissance times. Into a very special era.

Ritchie: I think so. I think that we like to take the listeners with us through a time travel. Because otherwise they wouldn’t be our listeners I suppose. And… Some people say it’s a form a fantasy. Everything’s a form of fantasy. Everything’s a form of escape. Like escapism. People drink sometimes to access. Just to get away from life in general. So for me it’s a form of fantasy but at the same time it’s my favorite fantasies. Of course I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t love it. I love the lifestyle and of course I love the music from the Renaissance times which is a theme that goes through all of our music. Doesn’t mean that we are playing all the correct instruments and the correct music from the 1500s. Not that anybody would know what is the correct music from the 1500s… Although some musical snobs think they know. What we do is that we just interpret some tunes from those times. And to me… I love the 1500s. How do you feel about it?

Candice: I’m always happy by the people that are drawn by this kind of music. Because we look out and see in the audience that there are five-year-old children and their parents and they all come dressed-up. That’s great because little kids have the innocence and they want to pretend. The little boys want to be “Robin Hood” and run through the woods. And the little girls want to be princesses so they come dressed-up. And their parents… The men have usually been fans of Ritchie for many many years so they followed his career for twenty, thirty and sometimes even forty years at this point. But now they are older so their musical taste has matured a little bit. They still like to rock but they like other things also. And now the men are married to women and their wives really like the lyrical content. The romance and the fantasy. The love aspect of it. And the softer female vocal and the legends and fairytales that we try to integrate in some of the lyrics so we still have the parallels to basically hit your heart emotionally and still carry that on through today. So that’s that family. And then their parents come because they are just looking for melodic music. Good old-fashioned melodic music that not a lot of people write or create. Or at least you don’t hear it in mainstream today. I think a lot of times you turn on the radio and there is a lot of repetition going on. There is a lot of songs you hear that are played repeatedly. You hear the same song for a hundred times at each individual radio station because a major record label or some corporation is pushing it. You can hear it very very often and then it becomes sort of brainwashing after the people hear it so often that they remember it. Not because they like the song but because they have no other choice than to remember it. Anything that you repeat often you’re going to remember. So… There is a lot of psychology going that goes on behind some of the marketing for a lot of bands that are out there. We find that most of the bands that are getting played on MTV or on the radio are either very aggressive or it goes into a different genre… The dance music. Beyoncé, Christina… The low-cut shirts, the high-cut skirts and the dance-moves. So… Our music kinda defies either of these categories. It’s really much more about mystery and innocence and magic and nature and I find that many people in our audience are independent thinkers. They won’t be told what fashions to follow, what to listen to, what to think. They’re going to find their own way and find their own path. I think they are so happy right now that there is something different out there. Something that won’t fit in a box or in a package. So our fans actually must be the most loyal fans. Because when you’re not a part of a fashion or part of a trend then you cannot be out of fashion. So the people who end up listening to our music… I think they fall in love with our music for what it is. Not because it has been repeated at the radio stations over and over again. And really word of mouth is our main way of telling people about our music. Friends tell friends and they tell more friends. And if they fall in love with what we are doing they become very loyal and stay with you for many many years. Instead of following whatever fashion and chasing your tail. I think we are really lucky as far as our fans are concerned. And it’s just growing and multiplying so much over the past then years that it’s amazing to look out and see that what used to be a couple of hundreds people are now thousands of people on this journey.

3. Could you explain the title of your Christmas album „Winter Carols“?

Ritchie: The word “Carol” comes from the 1500’s. It really means “dance”. To dance in a circle. And then all the pagans and heathens – the folk people – would dance in a circle and sing these tunes. And now they’re known as Christmas songs to come out in December. But… Actually most of them are Spring Carols. They are songs that were danced to in April or May. Because people were so happy it’s sunny again – good weather - back in those days. They really didn’t have good accommodation. So basically the word “Carol” is a dance. We know it as a kind of a song. It’s a repeat of a chorus and things. In those days it was actually a dance. What I like about it are the melodies of course. These are incredible melodies. Some of the words were a little bit strange so we changed them sometimes. I’m not sure if you know about what happened in the 15^th and 16^th century. It was not allowed to sing these tunes because most of them were about dancing and drinking. Now the church didn’t like that so they try to stamp it out. And of course they couldn’t. They tried and Christmas was banned for twenty years. And all of these tunes… They tried to get away all these horrible drinking songs. The church was very crafty. They changed the lyrics to more religious themes. And that’s what we know them as today. It’s the religious side of things. And people go: “they are just December tunes”. But they are not… Again like I said: they are all through the year. They are not religious songs at all. Half of them maybe. The very late-ones maybe. The ones by Mendelssohn maybe.

4. What do you connect with the word „Christmas“?

Ritchie: Money… Lots of money… As a kid I think of all these presents obviously. And the trees and the decorations and everybody bein’ happy. My mother and father would give me and my brother lots of presents. That stays with you I suppose. Now I basically have everything I want. So it’s no longer about presents. To me Christmas now is playing and singing these tunes. I love to do it with my friends. Whether it’s outside or around the fire or around a tree. Wherever in the snow. So it’s… They’re very meaningful tunes that take me back into my childhood. We went around and were singing these tunes with my friends and making pocket money. We used to make quite a bit of money. So I hope now we will make even more money. That’s of course meant as a little bit of fun…

5. Why is Christmas so special?

Candice: I think I get more involved with it at holiday time. It’s the visual part. Of course the fairy lights on the trees. It just seems at that time – maybe it’s an illusion – all seems to be right in this world of turmoil that we seem to be dealing with every day. All the stress and pressure are gone. Holiday time for me it’s almost made aware that you don’t take the things that you have for granted. You try to spread some peace, joy and healing and you hear the children’s innocent laughter. You are thinking of Santa Claus and the fantasy of that. And it’s of course also the incredible warmth and security and just the spreading of love that you have in your family around you and all the people that love you and people that you hold very near and dear in your heart. It’s also remembrance times for those who aren’t with us anymore. So it’s all of these wonderful feelings put in one. I don’t think there is anything as magical as looking out and see the first snow fall. Just those crystals coming from the sky. And everybody remembers being a child when you see it. You then pretty much go out and makes snowmen and dance in the crystals. It’s just really such a beautiful time of year. I think it’s just the innocence and the remembrance. The memories that you have. Not only these that you want to continue to have in the future. The joy, the peace and the healing that goes on at the moment. When you can hold on to these moments throughout a year, that’s an incredible gift!

6. How does a perfect Christmas look like for you?

Candice: Usually what we do in our house… We have “three main steps to Christmas”. The first that we do is that we make a little concert in a local restaurant that friends of ours own. We invite people from our fan-clubs, our street-teams, our friends, our family. Everyone dresses up in Renaissance clothes. It’s completely for free. We just want to play this music. These holiday songs. And at the end of the night we have a box that we leave by the door and we ask the people to make a donation if they can. If not, that’s fine. We collect funds and give them to local pet shelters. Try to get them through the holidays. Just to help animals. That’s the first stage. The second stage is the crazy party. That usually lasts from 9 pm to 9 am. And everybody leaves very drunk. But their hearts are full as well as their stomachs. That’s the second stage. But the third stage is really my favorite stage. And that ends up being usually on Christmas day. After all the madness and chaos are over we just bring the inner circle of the people that we love and are very close to and we sit around the fire and roast chestnuts and tell stories and we just enjoy the pleasure of each other’s company. And we take out the acoustic instruments and just play. To me the third stage is always the perfect Christmas. The perfect holiday time.

7. Where do you usually spend Christmas?

Candice: We usually do at home, don’t we?

Ritchie: Our home is in Long Island, New York. And we always stay there during most of the Christmas days. Cause we have the animals there. We have all the badgers and cats there.

Candice: Ritchie usually takes three weeks to decorate the house. We have all these Christmas trees around the house. It’s basically decorated like a Renaissance kind of castle. Even though it’s a contemporary house we’ve converted the inside to look like a Renaissance castle. It takes a long time setting that up. It’s really the perfect place to have the holidays in. It’s our sanctuary and it’s a wonderful warm embrace from a home.

Ritchie: Yes!

Candice: What we usually also do… Around the corner there’s a seaside village. And in December they have a Charles Dickens festival that goes on every year. And people dress up like in the Victorian times. And sometimes we are bringing the twins who are our harmony singers and maybe one more acoustic guitarist and we go on playing on street-corners dressed so that we can fit in there. Possibly so that most of the people don’t know at all who we really are. Just that they enjoy our music without really recognizing who we are.

Ritchie: The last time we did it by the seaside where we live. We thought we will just go out and play. We chose a spot near the road and we started playing. My fingers were so cold I could hardly play the guitar. And the traffic passing was making so much noise that nobody could hear us anyway. And on top of that a choir that was paid by the local town came and started to sing their songs just a couple of yards away. So we were competing against a thirty-pieces-choir. They drowned us out. That was the end of that.

Candice: That was a happy ending to your story.

Ritchie: It was quite funny. Because we decided to go home because it was quite cold. On our way there we passed a hot chestnut stand. And the two girls they didn’t know what chestnuts were. They never had them before in their lives.

8. Can you remember the most beautiful Christmas during your childhood?

Ritchie: Most of my Christmas days… I was very lucky to have parents that would make it a big event. So it was always very exciting. We didn’t always have snow but it was nice to wake up to all these presents and lots of food and cakes and ice-creams. It was all about eating and presents in a way when you are younger.

Candice: Eating and presents… We didn’t have a Christmas tree in our house. So we would go to our neighbor’s house and decorate their Christmas tree. My Christmas days were very different. Back there we celebrated everything in one. It was just a big holiday for us at the time. But I don’t think one of them stands out specifically. The growing up with my brother, my sister, my parents and my grandparents had a lot of security before going out to the real world and to deal with all the problems you have today. It’s great and special to have memories of the innocence that each and every holiday had back there.

9. Could we talk about the songs on „Winter Carols“ in depth:

- Hark The Herald Angels Sing/Come All Ye Faithfull

Ritchie: Hark The Herald Angels Sing has been written by Felix Mendelssohn I think. It’s one my favorite out of these tunes. Again: it’s all about the tunes. I don’t listen to the words. And the other one, Come All Ye Faithful is another one of my all-time favorite melodies. They are just my favorite songs.

Candice: I think they are just the most bombastic songs on the album. Almost party-ish type of feelgood songs. That’s why we began the album and its track listing with these songs. We really wanted to start with a “bang” and have a heraldic type of introduction.

I Saw Three Ships

Ritchie: I Saw Three Ships I think is one of the oldest carols. It’s very simple. I like it. We adapted it in a very authentic way. I played the nyckelharpa on that and Candice played the shawms. And I played the mandola as well. We tried to keep it very authentic and how it could have sounded back in those days.

Candice: I tried to keep to the organic-ness of the actual song.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14