| newest artists | newest fans | community forum | community articles |
|
An Interview with Greencorn Plantation 5.31.09
by HolleyHall, 30 May 2009 06:41 AM |
 |  |  |  |  |
Greencorn Plantation EZfolk profile: http://c1.ezfolk.com/Greencorn_Plantation/info.php I discovered Greencorn Plantation about a year ago in my listening ventures here in EZfolk. I was just in awe with thier overall Folk/Celtic sound of the guitars and Eve's beautiful voice! I LOVE the songs "Green for Grey" and "River in the Pines" although they just recently added several more wonderful songs to thier EZfolk profile page where Brian Murray and Eve do a very lovely duo on "Come Live With Me" I recommend checking them out if you haven't already. Thank you Richard for the honor of this interview! I wish you all much success and look forward to hearing your mini album this summer! Holley Hall: Tell me about your music background? RICHARD GILL: Eve, Brian, Robin and myself were all in a progressive rock band called Moo. We had about 20 band members in our eight years together. It was a pain in the ass for anyone who had to do sound for us with sitars, keyboards, sax and electronics needed to be miced up. When our upteenth drummer left and our keyboardist (who was a major musician for us) moved to England, we decided to leave it. However Eve, Brian, myself and later Robin decided to continue playing together, but replaced our electric guitars with acoustic ones. Brian playing steel- string, Robin classical and I invested in a semi-acoustic bass (double bass wouldn't fit on my bike). We started playing covers of old English folk songs and gradually phased them out with our own material. HOLLEY: Do you prefer to play music as a profession or a hobby? RICHARD GILL: Ideally I think we'd all love to play music professionally but with full time jobs and little money gained from it, that might be a while yet. HOLLEY: When and how did you first become interested in music? How long have you been playing music? What instruments do you play? RICHARD GILL: Robin and I have been playing music together since we were about 9. We were in a band called Gioconda. This band featured our only TV appearance when we preformed Jonney Be Goode on an Irish school's programme, didn't think we'd peak that early, which is fairly depressing. I play piano and Brian plays the banjo for the band now and then. HOLLEY: What are your songs about? RICHARD GILL: Brian and Eve both studied English literature and have a great interest in unusual poetry and pros which we decided to put music to, so William Blake's A Dream, Christopher Marlowe's A Passionate Shepherd to His Love and Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market to name but a few all fell foul of our music. We do write lyrics but we usually decide to leave it to the experts. HOLLEY: Do you write your own songs? Do you have any particular songs you consider your favorites? RICHARD GILL: We all write individually, which is great and then add our own parts. Eve usually writes the melodies and lyrics, Robin writes mainly intricate instrumental pieces with occasional lyrics from old Union songs, we're currently trying to record some but they take longer to learn than Brians and mine. HOLLEY: Who are your musical influences? RICHARD GILL: We all like Pentangle, they are all fantastic musicians in their own right and there is always a lot going on in their compositions. Within contrapuntal lines and changing metres, the music never feels cluttered and Jacqui McShee's voice is quite beautiful. We've a long way to go before we can try to replicate them. HOLLEY: What live performance experience have you had? RICHARD GILL: We were quite grateful to folk duo Leo O Kelly and Sonny Condell (Tir Na Nog), who we had always listened to, for allowing us to support them on a couple of occasions and this gave a platform to go off on our own. Brian is now living in London so we've a couple of gigs lined up there during the summer. But anyone out there looking for support bands give us a call. HOLLEY: What are your musical goals? RICHARD GILL: Our goals would basically involve our music being released on a greater scale and recording our music professionally. HOLLEY: Have you recorded any previous CDs or posted any audio files on the Internet? RICHARD GILL: We made a lot of demos but before realeasing anything we want to record a couple more songs, to make it worthwhile for people to buy it as most of our songs last about 30 seconds. We record all our stuff with a guy called Terry Merrick hes into a lot of the same music as us and has a great ear so he picks us up on everything. HOLLEY: Where do you have your music posted online? RICHARD GILL: www.myspace.com/greencornplantation and ezfolk. HOLLEY: Any Music Videos? If so what are they about? RICHARD GILL: One of our friends put up one of our first ever live gigs on youtube but its recorded through a camera mic and in general not the tightest. HOLLEY: Do you have CD’s/Audio files for sale? If so, where can they be purchased? RICHARD GILL: No all of our music is freely downloaded from our site. Hopefully we'll have a mini-album out during the summer but if anyone wanted a copy of our music I'd gladly post it to them free of charge. HOLLEY: What inspires you to write music? How do you go about composing songs? RICHARD GILL: I can't talk for the others but I like composing on the piano so I don't limit what I can do on the guitar or bass. HOLLEY: Lately what musical periods or styles do you find yourself most drawn to as a listener? RICHARD GILL: I listen to pop, jazz anything really, from a compositional point of view I think we all like Baroque music. I love dense textures and wandering melodies, I'd love to get a harpsichord for the band. HOLLEY: Name a band or musician, past or present, who you flat-out LOVE and think more people should be listening to. What's one of your all-time favorite recordings by this band/musician? RICHARD GILL:I lIke a lot of jazz-fusion music like Soft Machine and Hatfield and the North. Moon In June by Robert Wyatt is a great song. Robin likes Ewan MacColl, A.L. Lloyd's ' The Old Bitch Fox', Eve 'Roscoe' by Midlake. People like Anne Briggs and Shirley Collins, we all like while Brian listens to a lot of old folk and blues such as Dock Boggs, Buell Kazee and Mississippi John Hurt. HOLLEY: Do you teach music? RICHARD GILL: I work as a music teacher in a secondary school teaching boys from about 12 to 18. I've been there five years and its one of the best subjects to teach, as the guys that choose it usually have a love for it, so you're not fighting against them to learn. Although if they had their way I'm sure they'd play the guitar all class rather than learning about cadence points and suspensions. HOLLEY: When is your next live performance? RICHARD GILL: As far as i know its in June in London. Details to follow HOLLEY: Do you have any advice/experience you would like to share with fellow artists you think would be helpful? RICHARD GILL: Not really we're still looking for as much advice as we can. One point:Don't advertise that you play English folk music in a very Irish republican pub. I think thats a lesson everyone can take something from. Thanks a million! | ||||
