Highway 1561 Revisited / By Scott Cooper

Few would credit Bob Dylan with pioneering Celtic rock. However, by performing 
with electric guitars at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Dylan opened the 
flood gates through which new forms of traditional folk music could be expressed.

Lief Sorbye, founder, singer and double-necked mandolin player from Tempest, is 
an indirect product of that historic day.

"I grew up with rock being the folk music," Sorbye says from his adopted home of Oakland. 
"Then one day as a kid, I figured out that I was always tapping feet to fiddle tunes 
but I never tapped my feet to a guitar solo."

Named after Shakepeare's play, Tempest is now one of the most inventive and colorful 
Celtic rock bands in the world. By draping traditional Celtic themes in rock 'n' roll, 
Tempest delivers a sound big enough to please both rock audiences and traditionalists, 
and especially those who like the fusion of the two.

"There will be a lot of situations where we would take a traditional melody and 
write new lyrics to it, or we'll take traditional lyrics and write a new melody 
to it," Sorbye says. "A lot of our songs, you can't tell whether they're traditional 
or original, because it's got elements of both."

While traditionalists can find solace in the meandering fiddle romps and bouncy rhythms, 
fans of rock 'n' roll, particularly progressive rock, can also sink their teeth into 
Tempest, who has often been compared to Jethro Tull.

"There's enough time changes and key changes to satisfy those people," Sorbye says of 
the prog-rock crowd. "If they always look for intricate arrangements, we tend to play 
some fairly large pieces of music."

"There's enough rock energy to satisfy the rock audience and there's enough traditional 
folk music to satisfy the folkies," he adds. "We try to keep a good balance of original 
and traditional material."

Not coincidently, "Balance" is the title of Tempest's new CD, their ninth overall and fourth 
for Magna Carta records, home to unabashed prog-rockers like Kansas and Steve Morse.

"I love to listen to old field recordings, but I also realize it doesn't have a great 
entertainment value in the year 2001," Sorbye says. "I can respect preserving the very 
strict traditional form. At the same time I'm always eager to take the next step. It's hard 
to have a purist viewpoint in this day and age."

Not so long ago, however, those purists existed, critical of Tempest for messing with a 
formula that has survived for ages.

"I don't get that negative thing about bastardizing traditional music they way we used to. 
In the beginning, nobody else seemed to be doing what we were doing and it was a new thing. 
We got slammed a lot," Sorbye admits.

Influenced as a child by Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band, 
Sorbye founded Tempest in 1988, immediately after leaving the traditional Celtic band Golden Bough. 
Tempest has gone through a few line-ups but none as robust and talented as the current one. 
Virtuoso fiddle player Jim Hurley has played with zydeco diva Queen Ida, rock legend Ritchie Blackmore, 
swinging oddball Dan Hicks and new age/world music band Ancient Future. His jaw-dropping fiddle 
runs are matched by hot-shot guitarist Todd Evans, a graduate of the esteemed Berklee School of Music. 
The group is rounded out by bassist William Maxwell and Cuban drummer Adolfo Lazo. 

"I wanted folk music to be played in a rock band with predominantly rock musicians' viewpoints, as 
opposed to folk musicians plugging in, which is what really I am," Sorbye says.

He may be a folkie, but Lief Sorbye is not actually Celtic; he was born and raised in Norway. 
"Scottish and Norwegian music are so close, both geographically and musically," he explains. 
"In Norway, there's a strong fiddle tradition in folk music. I did record a solo album of just 
traditional Norwegian folk back in the '80s, but it goes so well hand-in-hand with the Celtic stuff. 
We've got medleys of tunes that combine the two cultures really easily."

Similarly, with such ease is precisely how Tempest balances the traditional and the modern audiences.