Celtophilia

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I have been privileged to correspond with Jay and Abby Michaels of The Harper and The Minstrel via e-mail for a few weeks now. I was intrigued by their music from the first time I looked at their website, and thrilled that they sent us a CD to listen to. I’m completely jealous of their friends, because in addition to being accomplished musicians, these two are ridiculously charming and more fun than free beer on Saturday. They answered some questions about their music and their lives for us, and here they are. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did.
Slainte,
Bonnie
(Mike’s Note: Free beer is fun on any day. If someone wants to send some, email me for the address.)

Bonnie: Your original songs definitely have messages, whether political (Courage) or spiritual (The Solitary Circle.) Do you perform these songs at your events, and if so, have people responded mostly in a positive or negative way?
Jay: We do perform originals at all the events we do, from Coffee Houses to Festivals. People are always very positive about the songs that I write, in fact, about 60% of our CD sales are because of original songs. “Courage” has gotten a lot of support. I hear things like “I feel that way but I like the way that you expressed it in song”. Some folks feel that I have written it about America. Although a woman at a concert we did in Connecticut told me that she liked “that song you wrote about the IRA”. It’s cool that different people take different things from it. If you were to press me for an answer on what “Courage” is about I would say taking personal responsibility. That is the real message.
“The Solitary Circle” is a very personal song about my spiritual journey. We only recently started performing that one live. I think the first time was at the Rhode Island Pagan Pride, which was a spiritual event, so I think that was appropriate.
I feel awkward sometimes playing “The Man That I Remember” in public because it is about my father, I worry that it won’t be understood, but people tell me that they can relate to the emotion. People that I know that never met my Dad tell me they feel like they know him now. I couldn’t ask for a better compliment.
Abby: We have people regularly request for us to play our originals-especially the song ‘The Last Day of the Faire’ (from the CD of the same name)-it just evokes that feeling you get at the end of a faire (or camp or a theatre show) when you have to leave all the friends you have made and spent time with…

Bonnie: Is it more difficult to write an original song, or to adapt a rock song to your particular style? Are there any challenges unique to composing arrangements for the harp?
Jay: I think it is more difficult to write an original song. Adapting rock songs to our style, which is a kind of a mellow Celtic/Renaissance/Folk thing kind of comes naturally. All my life I have always played music my own way. My Piano teacher in college did not always appreciate my musical meanderings on Bach and Beethoven, but it got me started on a path of developing my own style and adapting music to fit it.
When I first decided to do Stings “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” I knew right away how I wanted it to sound; slow, acoustic, kind of romantic. Abby has a great way of understanding what I want in an arrangement, then adding her own ideas that make it even better!
The origins of us playing Led Zeppelins “The Battle of Evermore” are a funny story. It was autumn several years ago. We were performing that year at the King Richards Renaissance Faire in Massachusetts. We caught this concert on PBS one night with the band Heart. They did “The Battle of Evermore” and I said to Abby “I haven’t heard that song in years. I love that song! We should do it…with the Harp…maybe two Harps!” So we worked on it a bit. A few weeks later we were doing our Strolling Minstrel thing at the Renaissance Faire when this kid came up and asked us to play some Iron Maiden. I knew he was just being a smart ass, because people do that all the time, so I said “How about some Zeppelin?” He smiled and said, “Yeah, dude”. So Abby and I are standing in the middle of the path near the food booths and we start playing “The Battle of Evermore”. We had not played it in public before, so we both had our heads down, looking at our Harp strings, a bit nervous. When we finished singing the song we looked up to find quite a crowd had gathered and they were cheering and paying us some very nice compliments. It was a great moment! We played that song last year at the ICONS Irish festival in Canton, Massachusetts and a guy from Dirty Linen Magazine was there and heard us play it. A few months later the magazine comes out with a review of the Festival and he mentions us performing “The Battle of Evermore” and he liked it. We decided right then that we should put it on our next CD!
Abby: Our songs also have a tendency to grow and develop over time…sometimes the tempo changes or a few notes here and there or even the instrumentation can vary until we are happy with the way the song sounds. That is true of both the originals and the cover songs…it is very much an organic process. It’s a lot of fun to play with a cover song and put your own spin on it.
I have to say that Jay has had a difficult time articulating the answer to the question of ‘what unique challenges are there in arranging songs for the harp?’ It just comes to him naturally as he works with a song…the Harp is almost an extension of himself at times. : )

Bonnie: Let me get all sappy on you here for a minute. You two met and then performed together for several years before you married - was it love at first sight or was there lots of musical wooing? (That’s a heck of an advantage, by the way, I mean, who doesn’t want to be wooed by someone with a harp?)
Abby: the story of how we met is indeed very romantic-I was attending a Renaissance faire at Hammond Castle in Glouster, MA and there was Jay in the indoor garden, all in green playing the most beautiful music on a gorgeous harp-and silhouetted in a shaft of sunlight! How romantic can you get? However, we did not fall for each other right away-I was just leaving my ex and Jay was with someone else. Neither of us was really looking for love! We became friends after that-we both worked at a booth at the King Richard’s faire for a few years and then started performing together after that. We were friends for quite a few years before either of us realized how much we really cared about each other…it was a long slow journey from friends to musical partners to husband and wife. It really does help to play the harp as well. One of my all-time favorite birthday presents was a song that Jay wrote for me called ‘Beloved Mine’-which we ended up singing as our vows at our wedding!

Bonnie:  Jay, what’s this we hear about you actually being an animated cow in RL? Doesn’t that make it difficult to play guitar?
Jay: Ok, I’m not an animated cow in real life; I just portray one on the Internet. Actually, just the voice! Seriously, I auditioned a few months ago for a gig doing the new Stonyfield Farms Yogurt advertising campaign. They were looking to spoof the presidential campaign with these animated talking cows that represent new flavors and are running for office. I got the role of “Pomegranate Berry” who is loosely based on Obama. You can see them on the Stonyfield Farms website (www.stonyfieldfarms.com) It’s all good fun.

Bonnie: What is the best/most meaningful compliment that you have received about your music?
Abby: We have had people in tears over our music. At one area nursing home we played at a woman came up to me after our performance with tears in her eyes and hugged me saying ‘bless you’. It was deeply touching.
Jay: I agree with Abby. Music is a very special, sacred and magical thing to a lot of people. When someone says our music touched or moved him or her, it is very humbling. It is like being part of something that is bigger than us.
On a less serious note though, I enjoyed the guy in Florida that heard us play “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”. He comes up to us and says: “You know, I hate Sting! I hate The Police! I hate everything they have ever done! But I really like your version of Every Little Thing!” That made me smile.

Bonnie: Do you have any new covers in the works? Maybe some Nine Inch Nails?
Jay: We have been working on a few more Sting songs. We have been trying out “Message in a Bottle” with just Harp and Abby doing this cool Jazz vocal. We’ve also been playing “Russians” at some gigs with Guitar, Bowed Psaltery and Vocals. It is amazing how that 20-something year old song has become so relative again. We were playing it in New Hampshire just the other day and guy came up and told us that he just arrived from Poland a few weeks ago. He never heard the song before but was really moved by it. I think we also have a few more Led Zeppelin covers up our sleeves!

Massive thanks to Jay and Abby for taking time out of their lives to chatter with us, and if you haven’t done it already, make sure you read our review of For A Moment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.