Loreena McKennitt: Celtic Queen

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Women of Ill Repute with your hosts Wendy Mesley and Maureen Holloway.

Maureen Holloway  0:07  
We're about to meet Loreena McKennitt. I'm not going to lie so when I think of Loreena I think of myths and magic and Christmas and velvet dresses and harps, and her massive red curls and, you know, fairy tales and haunting melodies.

Wendy Mesley  0:23  
Wow. That's one of the worlds that Loreena McKennitt has created. But she's an astute businesswoman, too. She has her own record label she produces she finances her own concert tours.

Did you know that Lorraine is a French night? 

Maureen Holloway  0:37  
No. 

Wendy Mesley  0:38  
She's also a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force. I'm not even making that up. 

Yeah, I did know that one. I think she's an honorary one. But she could probably fly a plane if she wanted to 

Maureen Holloway  0:48  
She could probably ride a French horse too, because she wanted to be a veterinarian originally. 

Wendy Mesley  0:53  
Yeah, so many things. So Loreena McKennitt. She's a composer. She's a singer. She sold millions, millions, millions, millions of albums. Her latest is called the road back home. It was recorded last summer at several folk festivals where Loreena performed with a group of Celtic musicians. 

Maureen Holloway  1:11  
She's real polymath, and she's involved in a huge array of topics childhood development, world issues, puppetry, and the history of hats to name a few.

Wendy Mesley  1:28  
So let's have a look and tap into under that massive red hair and Loreena joins us now so Hey, Loreena how are you? So nice to see you.

Loreena McKennitt  1:35  
I'm very well thank you. How are you?

Maureen Holloway  1:37  
We're good. We're really good.

Wendy Mesley  1:39  
I just asked Maureen if cuz I know she had red hair. So I'm sorry to start with something so trivial, but I am fascinated.

Maureen Holloway  1:46  
But it's a trademark. Yeah, it's a trademark for you. Yeah, I had red hair for about 20 years I guess. 

Wendy Mesley  1:53  
It was real but you dyed it. 

Maureen Holloway  1:55  
Yeah, I did because I have I have the skin condition of skin condition. I have the skin tone of a redhead and I also have the answers I'm Irish of Irish ancestry and I really liked it until it started growing in this color and then but I mean Loreena This is 

Wendy Mesley  2:11  
Were you ever teased for being a ginge?

Loreena McKennitt  2:14  
Oh for sure. I was called redhead with pecker and fire engine and all those wonderful terms. I think I think you know, redheads are renowned for having a feisty well temper perhaps or passion or something. But some of it comes just from defending yourself from your hair And your freckles.

Maureen Holloway  2:35  
 It's true. If you just have to eat it's fight or flight and you got to choose to fight and then that's also an Irish tendency. 

Wendy Mesley  2:43  
Yeah, well, maybe I've been in love with too many Irishmen, but they all seem to love red hair. Don't men love red hair after they finished fighting with you?

Maureen Holloway  3:00  
So you did want to be a veterinarian growing up in Manitoba.

Loreena McKennitt  3:03  
I did. I did. I mean, I grew up in a small town called Morden about 80 miles out of Winnipeg. And my grandparents lived on a farm just a few blocks away from we lived in town. But my brother and I spend a lot of time on the farm. And when we went into high school, those years, we are working, they're doing chores, I remember doing a feeding cattle in the middle of the winter when it was minus 35 or something. So being around animals like that, I felt very much in love with them all. And I would be wanting to bring all the baby once. But yeah, but music really chose me rather than me it I was, I started piano lessons when I was five. And my piano teacher made her a prerequisite for her all her students to be part of a choir. So I started singing at the age of five as well. And so this was before I could read music or read words. And I was building I guess those brain synapses between my ear and my brain through through music. But I did want to be a veterinarian, I still actually maintain I've got the in internal disposition of a vet, I don't really have a huge appetite of being a public person. But that comes with the other sides.

Wendy Mesley  4:29  
I find it so interesting. I mean, you you talk about how music chose you. But I'm also fascinated that you left Winnipeg, you moved to Toronto, you started busking on the streets in Toronto, but you're like this big privacy activist now and and you started keeping emails of like data of of people back when you were busking like how did that all come about?

Loreena McKennitt  4:50  
When I moved to Ontario in 81 to work at the Stratford Festival Theatre, and I worked there for four years from 81 to 84 in different capacities. and all the while I was acquiring more familiarity with the traditional folk music. And then in 85, when I wasn't invited back to the festival, I decided that would be the year that I would make my first recording. So I borrowed the money that my family had set aside for my veterinarian studies, and made my first recording, it was done in a studio that was in a barn, just outside of Elora, Ontario. And I made it in a week, which I'd love to do now, record track and mix recording it. And I said to the engineer said, Well, you know, I want to run out some cassettes, do you know where I can get some sets run off? And he said, Oh, yes, there's a company in Toronto called dynapac. And take the master there. And so I did round off a box of 30 cassettes, I gave about 15 of them away. And then I thought, well, what am I going to do with the rest? And I thought, well, I'll go and do that tried and true exercise of busking on the street. So I parked myself at the St. Lawrence Market on Saturday mornings actually when we'd go in and Friday nights and sleep on somebody's couch and then bus there. And I was able to sell my my cassettes and then people I remember it was Kenny Slater from Sam the Record Man that found found my just dial 411 and asked for my phone number and Stratford and said, we had people asking for your recordings. Could you gave us some on consignment. So that was really the organic way that this all began?

Maureen Holloway  6:31  
Did you bust with your full size harp but my father used to tell this joke, I took my harp to a party nobody asked me to. Because it's not. It's not the most portable of instrument.

Loreena McKennitt  6:43  
I mean, I don't play a full sized harp. I played troubadour harp, it's a harp that a lot of classical harpus Learn to play on before they proceed to a classical harp. But at the time that I was acquiring a harp, I was the proud owner of a 1978 Honda Civic and that sort of dictated what size I liked about but it what's great about it has most of the range of a classical harp it doesn't have the pedal systems. But it it did fit in my Honda Civic. So that's what I know I've I've done a few of those to the door hurts.

Maureen Holloway  7:18  
You're a multi instrumentalist, you have I mean, your latest picture show you with the accordion, which is also a traditional.

Loreena McKennitt  7:24  
Yes, I mean, I play the accordion just a bare minimum of it enough to give the song texture. Usually other musicians are holding the weight of the arrangement. I'm just adding color. And same with tin whistle, my primary instrument is the piano, my voice and then I taught myself to play harp. So I play. I play the harp well enough to accompany myself singing but I wouldn't say that. I'm a fabulous harpist, and in fact, if you put me next to a properly trained harpist, you'd have a good giggle.

Wendy Mesley  7:36  
My husband is namely me, he's, he's Irish. And he wishes I had red hair, which I don't. And he watches Celtic. So I've been calling it Celtic music, but it's obviously not it's Celtic music. So why like the whole Irish thing? How did you fall in love with did you go to Ireland? How did you become what you've become?

Loreena McKennitt  8:17  
So I went to school in Morden until about grade 11. Then I went to girl school in Winnipeg, and for my grade 12th year, and I then I got integrated into the folk clubs. And there was there were these traditional music sessions that were happening in this way, working shop on Main Street on Sunday nights. And many of the members were from England and Ireland and Scotland and people would bring their vinyl recordings and we'd swap them and learn tunes off them and, and come back the next week or the next whenever we came back and play them together. So that was really and when I heard that music, it was like being falling in love with at first sight. It was something really inherently infectious in the in the Celtic music that attracted me to it, less so than it was my music that came from my own family heritage. My father was a livestock dealer. My mother was a nurse and nobody was really musical in my family. But that was really when I got smitten by it. When I moved to Stratford, I was already starting to I realized that it was impossible to fully appreciate the folk music without understanding the social, economic political circumstances from which it spray. So I took a course in Irish history from the University of Waterloo I guess. And then in I also started traveling to Ireland, particularly the west coast. A Country Clare up to Donegal where the music is really the strongest. Yeah, so that's how I came to fall in love with it. But it was really, as the years went on, I realized that there were some really excellent musicians who are playing the traditional Music and I knew that I didn't really think I would do it as well as they. And I was curious to whether or not I could write some of my own material. And then about 90/91 I attended an exhibition. That was the most extensive exhibition ever assembled on the Celts, and it was in in Venice, and I realized that they were much more than this mad collection of anarchists from Scotland and Ireland and Wales and Brittany, but they were this vast collection of tribes that have fanned out across Europe and into Asia Minor, and dated back to about 500 BC. So I then decided I would set my my career course on a kind of act of musical travel writing, which, which found me putting my self in all manner of places over the years, including a Trans Siberian Express from Vladivostok to Moscow in December of 95.

Maureen Holloway  10:56  
Wow, wow. It's just in the west of Ireland was this year when your last three and I've been there several times and I grew up my into my father was from Dublin, I took up Irish folk dancing, and...

Wendy Mesley  11:12  
That's the one where your arms stay straight, right? Your legs move...

Maureen Holloway  11:16  
You be defiant right? Oh, I see. Oh, yeah, that's where the Scottish are all like, we don't care. We'll throw our arms there. But I noticed when I was there, that Irish music as they call it, non Gaelic, or Celtic is, the kids are as much invested in it. As the parents and grandparents, it's a transgeneration, you go to the pub, you go to and there, it's everybody knows the songs. Whereas I think here we kind of relegated it for a while to our, our parents generation, our grandparents.

Loreena McKennitt  11:45  
Yeah, I think it's a huge success story that Ireland has been able to do this, particularly at a time when there's such a proliferation of devices of all kinds, but they're, in some ways, you know, when you're just saying that it reminds me or feels like their traditional music is to them what hockey is to us, there's a real cultural, embracing, and a strong identification of it. And, and I think they recognize that there is a truly a worldwide love of the Celtic music, there's something you know, that infectious quality that attracted me to it is transcends boundaries. So I think it's amazing that they've really nurtured a cultural system, and his system is the right word, but they have festivals, and there's programs on the radio, and so on, there's a whole fabric of me of activities that nurture it, and where people are proud to be part of it. So when the children see this, yeah, they're gonna get burning the tin with some of the fiddle.

Wendy Mesley  12:49  
Well, and you're going back on tour this summer, which is two places in Ireland and a whole bunch of other places. But why? I mean, you're, you're getting up there, you've been around, you've made a lot of money, like, we're still going, but But why are you What is it especially I'm in my basement. So it's easy, but you're like, you're you're getting out? You're financing everything, you're doing everything?

Loreena McKennitt  13:11  
Yeah, I mean, I think this still seems to be people that want to hear what what we're doing. So that's wonderful. Last fall, we went on tour in the United States, I think our attendance rate was about 85%. The spring tour that we're about to do is is about that level of sales. And I think, you know, as long as you can, and you feel well, and you're welcomed, I say why not? The hardest part is actually setting up the tour. It's a design process. And, and I sit kind of like an executive producer on that, because I've never had a manager for all intensive purposes, I am the manager of the production side of the, the widget and the manager. So there's the music production side and distribution, then there's the touring side. And so there's a lot that goes on to but once if you design the blueprint of a tour well, and we've we work with people I've worked with for many, many years, musicians and crew, it's like a well oiled machine. And it's really, it's really quite special to get together with the musicians and play the music. Sometimes I feel like it does do that whether there was an audience there or not. And now we with this upcoming touring, although we're not touring on the road back home, the traditional recording that I just released, I'm singing a song from that recording called wild mountain time. And this is a piece a traditional piece that I signed, one of the earliest days of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and all the artists would get on the stage the last night and they would sing this together with the audience. So this past fall, and this past fall, I actually I put the words in the program, and I invited the audience to sing with me at the end And it was really quite touching. And I was thinking about in this day and age, you know how few occasions, people have now to sing together. And it's very music has been relegated to being so much of a spectator sport, rather than a participatory one, which is what you see so much of in, in the west coast of Ireland.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  15:24  
The Women of Ill Repute...

Maureen Holloway  15:27  
I find it really interesting to know that you have this serial voice, and that on the flip side is you're quite a hard nosed businesswoman. So the practical side is very much part of your fabric. Tell us a bit about how you got involved in producing and putting together the people that you're performing with. I mean, this is a band that you've had a lot of experience with. 

Loreena McKennitt  15:52  
My whole career has been an unexpected, or organic, evolutionary type of process. When I had enough money to be making my second and third recordings, I remember learning about this guitarist who had just come from Edmonton to Toronto, called Brian Hughes and I started working with him in 1988. And I still work with kids, even though he's living in Los Angeles now, that when you find musicians that really, their musicianship is so incredible. There's a kind of creative empathy that, that it can exist, as well as a skill level that that allows for the translation of that that expression is so so special, you're really trying to hang on to those people. So we've gathered them up, as I've gone along Caroline Lavelle of a cellist that she lives in Cornwall, England, I mean, she's incredibly, a beautiful player. And then Hugh Marsh, one of the gems of the Toronto music scene who, of course, plays with all with artists all over the world and works with the top rated composers in Los Angeles. But he's another very amazing musician. So we all we've worked together for, for a number of years, we, yeah, I'm feel very, very lucky.

Wendy Mesley  17:12  
I don't think people realize how hard it is particularly for you with without a manager, you are your own manager, financing a tour organizing a tour, trying to get insurance during COVID, which is impossible. Like I don't think people know, it's interesting how much work goes into that.

Loreena McKennitt  17:29  
It is I mean, I have a team, there's a team of three of us. And I've got another financial person who's essentially part fourth person, she just doesn't work out of my office here. But she works for me in another location. But it's full on the four of us. But let's say for example, this special consideration that you've made, mentioned with respect to COVID, that when we try to get back out on the road again, and we went to the insurance company, as we always do, in case, you know, something happens along the way. They said, Oh, by the way, if you get COVID, or anybody else, but if you get COVID we're not covering your expenses. Well, I mean, I when I've set like the tour that I'm just about to go on, now, I put up a half a million dollars of my own money to get the trucks and the buses and the sound equipment and just get you know, get things rolling. So if I come down COVID, the first week of the tour anytime, you know, I don't get any kind of coverage. So it's it really focuses the mind. So we've been working, we're very, very lucky to work with a doctor in Canada, who's who's very well known and an expert in this field and developing protocols. So do we diminish the chances of me getting COVID Or anybody when he last fall, Hugo COVID. So he parked in a hotel for a week, the previous year when we were out in Ontario and Quebec, Caroline came down with COVID. And she sat in a hotel for a week. So you have to adjust the arrangements. I mean that we can do that. And that's the least of my worries. It really is. And I think because I'm an employer, I also hold a lot of duty of care for the other members of the band and crew were living in little incubators, those those tour buses with their bunks, you know, we crawl into those those buses that night and we travel overnight. So if anybody's sick, there's a good, good chance everybody will be sick. And yet at the end of the day we're standing in front of are amongst 10s of 1000s of people. So it's a very severe industrial setting a high risk setting. And so that's why we've tried to identify and adopt as strong protocols as we can.

Maureen Holloway  19:46  
Loreena you're privacy activist so we just thinking how do you ask a privacy activist about that without them saying well, it's none of your business. But I am I am asking how we, what does that entail? 

Loreena McKennitt  20:01  
Well, I wouldn't say I'm a privacy activist, you're probably referring to a landmark privacy case I fought and won in the UK, who gets bought back in 2006 2007. It's a subject that I hope is even of greater interest to the general public than ever, because we now have surveillance capitalism in the, in the guise of all our devices. It's why I have this very simplified flip phone. I don't I'm not on social media. I mean, I followed along the Cambridge Analytica story with the 2016 US election quite carefully. And I thought, well, you know, this is this is devastating. So I do try it every corner to remind people that their devices and many of the platforms that they're on are surveilling them and it's being weaponized against our societies.

Wendy Mesley  20:57  
I interviewed Carol Cadwallader, who was from Wales, who had no idea we she was a big part of revealing the whole Cambridge analytical thing. And for so many years, I was really careful and didn't let anybody know anything. And I scoffed at everyone who said, Well, if you don't have any secrets, then who cares? But now I've kind of given up like, there's just so much going on in that world. And it's almost impossible to stop it, can you still so you say you're not an activist, and yet, you obviously still care, I still care. But I've kind of given up.

Loreena McKennitt  21:32  
My concerns live far beyond just privacy, which of course, is a human right? That is spoken to the European Convention, the UN, the UN Declaration was the other way around. You know, when you come to unfettered, unregulated technology, you've got a great list of perils. Privacy, of course, is one, but you've got all a whole list of things to do with Child Development, or you've got bullying, sextortion, suicide, human trafficking, addictions, I mean, there's just a massive laundry list. And so we've been trying to work with the school boards here in Stratford in this area to encourage them to get the smartphones out of this out of the classrooms and so on. And this was actually before the Surgeon General in the United States came out with his his report this kind of spring, but he had to devastated the unregulated technology. Of course, the music industry was the first industry to be struck by that. So would you Oh, I know intimately because that one half of the industry is broken. Now. It used to be so when the one half meaning the side of the industry where you make music, and you can commodify it, the other half is the touring side. So on the first half a back in the day, when it was just CD or vinyl, artists such as myself would get paid, let's say 25 cents per song. Now in the streaming services, like Spotify, which went ran many, many years without even making a profit, so it was quite predatory. You might make or artists might make about 10 cents per 1000 plays, or Google Play, you might get point 00013 cents per play. So if you're, you're up at the Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber League, you can actually make some serious money. But it's really killed the creative large part of the middle creative class of the music industry, that whole ecosystem. I remember making a presentation to the heritage committee in Ottawa with respect to copyright reform and setting out this massive ecosystem of suppliers that and people whether they are the studios and the engineers and their suppliers, administrators, the graphic designers, the photographers, the caterers, the tribe, this whole ecosystem that is just more or less gone. And it's put certain genres of music under threat, not unlike species, you know, and I worried that there'll be a different version of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as a result of this. So I have pretty harsh feelings about the unregulated technology companies. It's been somewhat gratifying to see that they're now appearing before Parliament's in Congress. I finished reading a fabulous book called Blood and Machine by Brian Merchant, and he's the technology writer for the Los Angeles Times. And he writes about the parallels of our current state with these companies and the industrial revolution. And when people had their autonomy of their lives and it might not have been very rich, but they were able to feed themselves and know their neighbors and do business when fossil fuels with certain technology came along. They were ripped from those countryside cottage industries and into these harsh workplaces. And I think we're I think the employment side and now with AI coming so fast I think this is just going to get Raven. 

Maureen Holloway  25:05  
Wow, happy very very happy...so you moved to Stratford you've been there I guess most of your adult life now. That's true. Yeah we know Stratford because of the festival but and I'm sure that's one of its draws for you but what speaks to you about Stratford? What does Stratford say to you? 

Loreena McKennitt  25:26  
As I mentioned earlier, I moved here in 81 to work at the festival Festival Theatre for years, and then set off and making my first recording. Initially, I couldn't have afforded to live in Toronto, so I just stayed on. But over the years, I've come to realize that there there are parallels between my small hometown in Morden, Manitoba. And here, more than is about 80 miles to Winnipeg, Stratford is about 18 palaces strata to Toronto, in Stratford is a very, very beautiful place. This building that I'm in is a redundant school house I bought in 2000, and converted it into a family center. And it's quite close to the, to the river. And of course, there's all the wonderful things that come the restaurants and those add ons from the festival. But I also like the fact that there's it's still mixed, you know, you feel that agricultural texture, you still have them, the manufacturing sectors, it's not all dolled up. It's real, you know, and for me that I like.

Wendy Mesley  26:30  
It's almost as important and focused as the red hair question. 

Maureen Holloway  26:36  
Let's hear it. Yeah. 

Wendy Mesley  26:37  
Now you go on the road, you've put the half a million dollars towards an insurance policy. It's a big deal. And I'm wondering, how do you keep your voice like, do you gargle? Are there certain secrets? I warned you it was it was a big

Maureen Holloway  26:53  
Wendy asks the tough questions. I tell you. 

Loreena McKennitt  26:56  
I can tell that. In actual fact, as they also mentioned earlier, I sang in a children's choir from the age of five. But when I was a teenager, I took about four years of classical voice. So I learned how to project my voice without in a way that would not I wouldn't harm it. I knew what it would be physically like if I sang incorrectly. So that I think that being armed with that at an early early age was was half the battle. But when I'm on tour leading up to a tour, I go into kind of trade meaning that I'll go running and just make sure that I'm as strong and as fit as possible. And very very careful about my rest and and what I eat and that's really it. So, when we're on tour I have a routine about three o'clock or 230 I'll go for half an hour run up, go to the back to the venue and have a shower. The band is there doing soundcheck I'll meet them on the stage for soundcheck, separate six and sort of sort of like that.

Wendy Mesley  27:59  
So no sex and drugs and rock and roll you don't like party.

Maureen Holloway  28:07  
Back in the day the album is called The Road Back Home. And it should be out when you're listening to this. And you're on tour. And we're you're touring in Ireland as well.

Loreena McKennitt  28:21  
No.

Wendy Mesley  28:22  
I made that up. I'm sorry.

Maureen Holloway  28:24  
I didn't think so. In the

Loreena McKennitt  28:26  
Netherlands, we're in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, England.

Maureen Holloway  28:30  
Sounds fabulous. All those lovely places.

Wendy Mesley  28:34  
And it's wonderful to hear that you still care about issues. You still care so much about the music and it's been lovely to talk to you. And I'm glad you still have red hair.

Loreena McKennitt  28:44  
With a little help from my hair dresser.

Maureen Holloway  28:47  
Loreena McKennitt The Road Back Home. Thank you so much for talking to us.

Loreena McKennitt  28:51  
Thank you lovely to speak with you.

Wendy Mesley  28:56  
So she's not in Ireland. Oh, well, she's Irish.

Maureen Holloway  28:58  
You know what? You actually said, you know, wow, you're touring. decrepid pretty. Wow, you're getting up there.

Wendy Mesley  29:08  
Yeah. Well, she's in her 60s. So you know...

Maureen Holloway  29:10  
She's the same age as us...

Wendy Mesley  29:12  
No, I'm 12. And so are you here? You're 13

Maureen Holloway  29:15  
She is a little bit older. But no, you know, old, decrepit people still work.

Wendy Mesley  29:20  
I just find it so fascinating that there's so many interesting people in their 60s and 70s. And oh, yeah, who are like still out there. And they're still like getting in a bus and they're still appearing on the stage. 

Maureen Holloway  29:34  
Im looking forward to 78. And I mean, you look at Julia Louis Dreyfus. She's got a podcast where she only talks to women. Dare I say it elderly.

Wendy Mesley  29:43  
No, I don't think you're allowed to say that word. No, she's still got red hair. No, she doesn't. But yeah...

Maureen Holloway  29:50  
Red hair is very hard to maintain. That's one of the reasons why I didn't hang on to it because it fades to pink very quickly. And...

Wendy Mesley  29:56  
Well my aunt tried to have red hair and she and it came out green for her wedding.

Maureen Holloway  30:01  
She was, like terribly wrong. Because they're opposites of the color wheel. But anyway, no, she's very cool. We were going to ask her about her son, but we didn't.

Wendy Mesley  30:14  
Yeah, because I had a child later in life. I wasn't quite elderly, but it was later in life. And so did she. And yeah, I wanted to ask her about that. So especially being so careful about the media and I have sort of given up so it's nice to hear that people still really care like I still really care and I think that the world's gone nuts but I'm, I'm also able to click here. Yeah, I'll click here.

Maureen Holloway  30:39  
Yeah, yeah, I know. I hear you. Also. One of the reasons why she got involved with this privacy thing originally is that she had a dear friend who wrote a book which was kind of a tell all it's not that she had anything awful to say about Loreena but she felt that she had been betrayed and that makes you very antsy when you're talking to somebody who is you know very understandably protective about their privacy and if she wanted to talk about her son then she would have so but it's no like you to back down Wendy Mesley you tend to get in there like a terrier and...

Wendy Mesley  31:07  
 Yeah, well I'm a terrier but I also have secrets. So please don't tell anybody.

Maureen Holloway  31:11  
Okay. Think one that the world doesn't know. But you can trust me most of the time.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  31:19  
Women of Ill Repute was written and produced by Maureen Holloway and Wendy Mesley. With the help from the team at the Sound Off Media Company and producer Jet Belgraver.