GC MAGAZINE Dallas, TX, May 2001 -------------------------------- Tempest: Electric Storm Rising When most people think of Celtic music, thoughts of bagpipes and flutes played by men wearing kilts is typically the first thing that comes to mind. When someone hears the term Celtic Rock, a wave of confusion washes over their face. Is it a bagpipe connected to an amplifier or Leprechauns jamming on guitars? Most people aren't sure what to think or imagine when they first hear about a band like Tempest. Once they see the five-piece, they have a better idea of what Celtic Rock is all about…a combination of electric instruments and traditional folk music, telling stories of ancient Ireland, Norway and Scotland. They even include some North American flavor to their storytelling in the song "Buffalo Jump," about the Cree nation, one of their original pieces. We caught up with them at Fair Park during the annual Texas Irish Music Festival, where they performed four sets over a two day period. The first day made spectators feel like they possibly were in Ireland as the band performed under a white tent while the thunderstorms rolled through, balckening the skies and turning the ground into a muddy mess. The second day was windy and full of sunshine, but the muck was still thick as people crowded into the covered tent and sloshed through the wet earth to find a seat and enjoy the musical revelry. The current band features Norwegian founder and leader of the group, Lief Sorbye, who handles the vocals and the acoustic and double neck electric mandolins and mandolas; Adolfo Lazo, the band's Cuban drummer; William Maxwell, who plays both fretted and one of the most beautiful fretless basses I've ever seen; Todd Evans on guitars and backing vocals; Jim "Hurricane" Hurley on electric fiddle and backing vocals. "I founded the band about twelve years ago," says Sorbye. "We didn't start playing Texas until about a year ago. This is our fourth time in Texas in a year. It looks like we have an audience here," he states quite happily. "You should get yourself down to The Emerald Mist (in Richarson) on Friday, June 29th and we'll be in Houston at the Celtic Midsummer Festival on July 1st. We'll probably play in Austin on the 30th of June." Tempest would like to play more of the festivals, but according to Sorbye, their seems to be a prejudice among purists. "The problem with a lot of the Renaissance Festivals is that we're not a 'period' band. We're too modern. We plug in our instruments and a lot of the people at the festivals like to keep it on a pure acoustic-period type level. Jim is our Renaissance man. He came to us (Tempest) from Blackmore's Night." Blackmore's Night is another amazing Celtic Rock style band featuring legendary guitarist Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple, Rainbow) and the beautiful and extremely talented Candice Night on vocals. Their first release, Shadow of the Moon [Edel Records] also featured Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) on flute. "It was a fun band," says Hurley. "They do Renaissance music and they have the same problem that Lief was talking about. They're a little too electric and plugged in for the Renaissance Faires. I think they [the Faires] are going to be a little more open to the electric music because there are so many good bands like Tempest and Blackmore's Night." Unlike most country and folk musicians, the fiddle that Hurley plays isn't amplified by a pickup attached to a traditional fiddle. It's an actual electric instrument that is gaining popularity over the past decade by rock bands such as Kansas and A Perfect Circle. "It's a Zeta. They make them in Oakland, California, where we're from. We can almost throw a rock and hit the factory. They make great electric violins and everyone seems to use them. They work perfect for me and they can get very loud, which is perfect for Tempest." Evans, who cranks out the lead guitars and the crunching power chords for the band's music, uses an old Kramer guitar. Kramer had a great rock guitar sound, but finally went out of business a few years ago. It's rare to find someone still using them onstage. "The tone is really good," states Evans. "I found it used for about $300. It's real light weight and you can hardly feel it when you're wearing it. The neck is real fast so you can play some of those metal shredding licks that I like to throw into Tempest. It's a great guitar all around. I play a lot of power chords. My background is really more '80s style heavy metal. Judas Priest. Iron Maiden. The thing I really like about playing in Tempest is the band can calm down and play some cleaner style stuff and some more sweet stuff. We don't always have to rock our asses off, but that's what I like to do best. It's great! I get to play some real heavy stuff and it involves some pretty technical guitar playing straight from the '80s. I got that Kramer guitar and that's what it is, the ability to do some mellow stuff and some real hard-core rockers." Sorbye plays one of the most unusual instruments. Everyone has probably seen a double-neck electric guitar, made famous by performers such as Jimmy Page or Ace Frehley. It's not everyday that you see a double-neck mandolin. Especially one that has thelook and feel of an electric guitar. "It's my own design," says Sorbye. "When I first started the band, I used acoustic instruments exclusively with pick ups. I would go between the mandola and the mandolin between every song almost. I figured 'Wouldn't it be nice if I could have both necks on one instrument and go between the necks in one song?' That was the idea behind it. Since then I've been designing the concept with electric mandolins with more than one neck on them. My acoustics are made in Britain by Andy Manson. My electrics are made by John Knutson. He doesn't make them anymore because he figured that he's making two instruments and getting paid for one. It didn't make sense. He made a couple of copies of it and he still makes them for me. He went on to create the Messenger stand-up electric bass and that's all he's doing now. I took ideas from different places and made cardboard cut outs at first. We've been working on them for the last ten years and I think we've come up with something good. One guy came up to me today and said 'You're playing Batman's Guitar!' You know what the problem? I designed them out of laziness, but now it's catching up to me. I 've got a bunch of these double necks and I have to tune a minimum of 32 strings before I go on." Some may wonder where the idea to put together a Celtic Rock band may have come from. The style has grown recently, but in the late '80s/early '90s, it was practically unheard of. Sorbye recalls, "I grew up with rock'n'roll and played in rock'n'roll bands. Then I became a folk music purist. I was in an acoustic band when I first moved to the states in the late '70s to the late '80s called Golden Bough. After 10 years of that, I got the itch to combine the acoustic experience and the traditional folk music with the energy of rock'n'roll basically. So I set out to find rock musicians interested in exploring traditional music instead of just traditional musicians just plugging in. A lot of times they don't even know where to plug in," he jokes. "It's all sort of Pan-European music. Our music is either written, based on traditional music, or it's contemporary arrangements of traditional European folk music with an emphasis on Scottish and Irish, but also lots of Scandinavian influences and some American influences. It's easier now to sell it as Celtic Rock because people know what rock is and what Celtic is. At least most people do. You combine them and it gives them an idea of what you're doing. I think that works. That's the thing with the U.S., you've got to have a label on everything you do in order to be able to market it. I think back when the band forst started, we spent a lot of time justifying what we were doing. These days the barriers are broken down. It's just good music. You either like the music or you don't. You're allowed to play what's close to your heart whether you break the rules or not. We love pure traditional music too, but it's better played by the people who really know how to do it. We've got a lot of expertise in a little bit more modern rock stuff, it's cool to combine them both. It's just for good fun anyway. The more we play this stuff and the more we explore it, the more I think we find our own place in the music and we have something to say with what we're doing, which is uniquely our style I think." Hurley just recently joined Tempest, while Evans has been with Sorbye for two years now. "I was lucky enough to come in at the beginning of the album process," explains Hurley. "I'm on the new album and I've been gigging with Tempest a little over a month." "Balance is the name of the new album. It's our ninth album," says Sorbye. "It's our fourth one on Magna Carta (a progressive rock label out of New York). The new one comes out on April 24th." "You can check out www.tempestmusic.com," says Evans. "You can direct order all the Magna Carta CDs directly from the band." Balance is very distinct in it's look amongst the other rock albums in the CD bin. The Celtic cross divided up by two other Celtic pieces of art, reminiscent of the Yin-Yang from the Asian culture. The album features "Captain Ward," the tale of a famous Scottish pirate, "Villemann," a mythical medieval ballad, sung in Norwegian, about a hero battling a water spirit that has captured a fair maiden and a Irish traditional tale called "Two Sisters." there are also plenty of jigs and Irish reels and other original songs that find the band's style so intertwined with the traditional songs that it's difficult to tell which songs are modern and which songs go back 500 years. Balance is a great term to sum up Tempest's style of playing and their fans. "We cater to two audiences," explains Sorbye. "The folk music audience and the rock music audience. A lot of times, both audiences at the same time. We can go play these niche market Celtic events as well as a straight out music event. There's a lot of places to play.That's one reason I moved to the U.S. You never run out of gigs here. It's a big ass country," he laughs.