Hello My Name is Candice
Coronavirus
( COVID-19 )
Update
For the safety of our community and its people , Impact Fuel Room will be closed and all shows rescheduled and postponed for the time being .
We are grateful for many of our customers who have purchased tickets to these shows , and we will be reaching out with updates as we learn more .
Check www . impactfuelroom . com for updates . Thank you for your patience , stay tuned and stay safe !
04 • 2021
Fingers crossed , President Biden is hoping for some semblance of post-vaccination national normalcy around July 4 weekend . Candice Night wished for a reprieve just a little sooner , around May 1 , when the vocalist and her guitarist husband Ritchie Blackmore usually hold their traditional — and well-attended — May Day festival balls . The couple — which also records and tours together as the medieval folk outfit Blackmore ’ s Night — customarily goes all-out on the Long Island home get-togethers , once held as an ancient spring fertility rite . “ We used to have a maypole erected , and we ’ d have a big bonfire , and at the end of the night , everyone would grab a ribbon and dance the maypole , and somebody would always wind up tied to it at the end ,” she says with a resigned sigh . “ But we ’ ve had to scale it way back due to the pandemic . If we ’ re going to do it , we ’ re going to do it right .”
That applies to the music they make , as well . For two sub-rosa decades , and on its new 11th effort , Nature ’ s Light , the duo — backed by a gallery of similarly retro-minded musicians — has been unearthing ancient European folk melodies , updating them with new acoustic instrumentation and arrangements , and playing them in concert halls and on a thriving Renaissance-fair circuit , worldwide . Former Deep Purple and Rainbow axeman Blackmore , 75 , long ago traded his heavy metal electric for more courtly instruments like acoustic six- and 12-string , mandolin , mandola , hurdy-gurdy , and Swedish nyckelharpa . Night , 49 , accompanies him on “ Greensleeves ” -intricate melodies via her vintage double-reeded woodwinds ( shawm , cornemuse , rauschpfeife ), Sandy Denny-evocative vocals , and original Arthurian , fairy-tale lyrics . The only things missing are a lute-strumming minstrel and a jousting tournament .
“ With our genre of music , we ’ re taking melodies from the 1200s to the 1500s and just blowing the dust off of them because they ’ re just incredible melodies ,” says Night , who also released a more pop-flavored solo album in 2011 , Reflections . ” So , in a way , we ’ re educating people because listeners might think they ’ re our original songs , but if you do your homework and research where the roots of them are , they ’ re going back hundreds of years .” Where do these archivists find their relics ? Sometimes they ’ re introduced to a lilting refrain by fellow medieval and Renaissance outfits that they tour with , Night says , and they ’ re not above a little poaching . “ We ’ lllisten to their sets and think , ‘ Oh — that ’ s a good one ! We ’ ll take that !’” she laughs .
Other material reaches Night in a more roundabout fashion , like the song “ Fugu Fugi Continued on page 8
6 illinoisentertainer . com april 2021