Please tell us about your charity activities.

Ritchie: It’s always a great feeling to do charity work. We tend to gravitate towards animal charities. We do quite a few things there. We sponsor a few animals at home as well. And it’s always nice to be able to help animals. We’re very animal orientated. That’s why we hate hunters!

33. What other charity activities have you been undertaking recently?

Candice: Some of the other charities that we were involved in over the past ten years with this band… We donated some of the proceeds of our shows to the UNICEF. We’ve also donated to the Red Cross during these terrible floods in the Czech Republic as well as in Germany. We’ve also donated portions of the sales of our single Home Again to the Red Cross. So it’s not only about the animals. We help humans, too! But what we also like to do every Christmas holiday we gather a group of people and kinda pass the hat around. And last time we raised a thousand dollars for a local charity. It was great and it was called “Save a pet”. I like to donate at the place where we live because you can watch the thing you are helping and it’s not just to send a check somewhere through a big corporation. Then you cannot be even sure where your money is going… Some of the other things… Just this past summer we were teaming up with the WWF.

Ritchie: The World Wrestling Federation…

Candice: Not the World Wrestling Federation… It was great… I told them that we are coming to Germany and want to help someone special. They asked us to go to their website and look out for an animal we really would like to help… I said that helping an animal is saying no to the other ones. So it ended up being the orang-utans in Borneo…They are becoming an endangered species at this point. So 1 Euro for every ticket for everyone of our shows during this summer went to the WWF. And recently we heard that they were able to actually plant over 6.000 fruit trees in order to save the orang-utans, which also of course helps to save the environment. Of course it gives us all fresher air to breathe when you have more trees…It all works the other way around. I think it’s the best thing to give back some to these species and beings who need it. Sometimes when we’re talking about these things it’s depressing. Mankind is an oxymoron. Humans should know it all better than to just go around and destroying things with no reason and no purpose. They are hurting things and killing things and it breaks our hearts to talk about this subject. But we try to help in every little way we can.

34. On the „Castles And Dreams“ DVD you are jamming in a pub and talking to the people there without any boundaries. What is so special about Blackmore‘s Night fans?

Ritchie: It’s about playing to people. Music is just about playing to people. Not about the money or the show. In fact I know very many people – I’ve played with them – that if you are not playing for money they have absolutely no interest in playing music. What I love to do is sitting in the corner of a restaurant – wherever we are – and to play and see how many people really like what you are playing. Most of the times they really like it and they’re surprised that anybody would be playing. I think that once we had a table where the people got up and left. Because they thought there is too much noise going on. You always remember the one… But I do like playing on the edge. Not making it easy for us. We’re playing new stuff. We’re playing off the wall. We don’t know who we are playing to… I like to be dangerous. It’s easy to play to a pure fan and have the whole PA set up. It’s nicer to play incognito as we do when we go around all these fairs. We visit the fairs in America a lot and we just walk around and play. Now the people are recognizing us more and more which can be a problem because we cannot be ourselves anymore. But it’s nice to sit on an oak tree and to play to passers-by. Sometimes they throw in some coins into the hat.And we are saying that we are not playing for the money. And they say: “just take it.” And we say that we don’t play for the money. And then they get offended. I find it very stimulating to go to a fair and be like a wandering minstrel. And not having all the trimmings and the PA’s worked out. And you can relax and play some tunes and then stop when you like to. One of the problems with playing on stage is that you always have to be in the mood to play. But sometimes the both of us say that we really don’t want to play tonight. And we have a packed house of people… But luckily the energy makes you play in the end. But before you go on stage you think that you really don’t feel like playing that night. Whereas if you are playing a fair where you can play incognito you play when you feel like playing. And I think you play better, because it’s fresh.

35. Do you in some ways „separate“ between Blackmore’s Night and rock-fans?

Ritchie: When we do a concert we don’t really have the Purple fans around anymore that much. In the beginning they were curious but now they know that we are not playing the older songs. It’s more a different kind of fans turning up. But sometimes we do play some Deep Purple music depending on how we feel. It’s nice not to have to play it. And the audience is very happy with what we are playing. Sometimes we throw it in as a kind of a bonus.

36. Radio ID: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

37. Radio ID: New single „Christmas Eve“.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14