Interview: The Celtic Christmas Music Podcast
The Gothard Sisters were featured on Episode #72 of Marc Gunn’s Celtic Christmas music podcast. Greta appeared in an interview to discuss the band’s latest Christmas album, “A Celtic Christmas,” along with stories about the songs and the recording.
Listen here! Interview begins at the 15:18 mark.
Interview Transcription Below:
December 10th, 2023.
Marc Gunn (Irish and Celtic Music Podcast): “Welcome, Greta! Thank you so much for joining me!”
Greta Gothard (The Gothard Sisters): “Yes, thank you for having me. Glad to be here!”
Marc: “I’m so excited to not only interview you but also do an interview for the second time since last time I had a technical error. SO. [laughter] But I really appreciate you coming back on so we can talk about your new album “A Celtic Christmas,” which just is fantastic. It’s already in regular rotation for me at my house.”
Greta: “Oh yay, thank you!”
Marc: “Yeah I’m loving it. Especially now that it’s all on all the streaming sites, too! Which at the time we talked, you know, Halloween, it was not. So let’s get started. You know I’ve been following you since - what did we figure out, it was like… 2009 or something like that? 2008. Some long time ago when you first got on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. What I’ve never done, is I’ve never said “hey, tell me about yourselves.” So, why don’t you… tell me about yourself. [laughter]
Greta: “Thank you so much for having me back on here for the second time. My name is Greta, and I’m the oldest of three sisters — my other sisters are Willow and Solana, and together we make up the Celtic group called the Gothard Sisters. We’ve been playing together (Celtic music) for almost fifteen years now and just released the 10th album that we’ve recorded, which is '“A Celtic Christmas.”
So we do a lot of Celtic music, we do traditional songs and tunes and we also write a lot of our own music, both tunes and original songs, lyric songs, in a Celtic folk style. It’s influenced, of course, by our own musical beginnings. We began playing in classical music and we listened to folk music growing up from all over the world. So we have world, new-age, classical influences on our Celtic music. We also have loved doing Christmas music over the years, and doing Celtic Christmas music. So this is actually our fourth Christmas album.”
Marc: “It’s your fourth! Ok, for some reason I got it my head that it was your third, but it’s your fourth Christmas album. Fantastic. I was really excited when I got to hear album. There’s always a bit of a joy when you get a new album and it’s from someone who you’ve been following for years. And one of the things that’s always impressed me is the way your band has progressed over the years. ‘Cuz you started off, again, more traditional, and it was lovely. But it got better. And then it got better. And it got better! [laughter] I mean, your latest album, Dragonfly, is just fantastic. It’s definitely another favorite of mine. And I’ve enjoyed all your music videos that you’ve done. And now here we are with your fourth Christmas album, which again, I absolutely love.
One of the things that I’ve been really impressed with is the arrangements. Not only do you capture what it is to be a Celtic music group, but here you are again doing mostly traditional Christmas songs, and yet you’re able to capture those arrangements. How does that all come together for you all?”
Greta: “Well thank you so much, for one thing. It’s really been a bit of a musical journey because over the years not only have we been learning together, we’ve also kind of been growing up doing this. When we first started we were pretty young and as we move along we learn a lot and do a lot and do a lot of shows and learn more musically, and so it’s always nice when the latest album — you know, you’re always learning something new and moving in a new direction with each new album.
But thanks — about the arrangements. That’s one of our favorite things to do. Besides original music, that’s our favorite thing to do. But the other one is to take these songs that everybody knows, or they’re traditional songs, maybe, that are very old and have been done in so many different ways, and try to figure out a way that we can do it in a new way — in a Gothard Sisters way.
But there’s always a balance there — you don’t want to change it so much that it changes the intent of the song. You have to keep that intact, but we like to add on musical commentary, like grooves or themes or bridges in between that match the original intent of the song. That’s what we always try to do. But it’s lots of fun. It does take a long time, though. Our process is a lengthy one.”
Marc: “And it seems like each of you puts your own different things in the group, right? Is that accurate? Or do you do things collaboratively? For some reason, following your newsletter and such, it sounds like each of you has your own little specialty.”
Greta: “Yeah, we do. Actually, we don’t do a lot of the arranging together. What we usually do is we decide the mood that we want, and then we go in our separate directions and think about it for a while. We’ll usually get together and play through the song in order to figure out the order that we want the song to be in — the structure. And then we’ll do a demo of that. A very acoustic demo. Then we’ll each take turns adding things, tweaking things, making changes. Once we all three have gone through it a couple times individually, it really starts changing a lot. So it’s always very interesting because we each have something different to bring to it, and I think that’s what makes that “Gothard Sisters sound.” I don’t think it would sound like that if just one of us was doing it.
Marc: “I think a great example is the first track you were talking about playing, which is “Here We Come A Caroling,” is that what it was? Because I like the typical “love and joy unto you” — you’ve got this very structured, but you give it a little break — you have little breaks thrown in, too, which I think is just absolutely beautiful. So why don’t we start the music aspect and let people hear that song, how ‘bout that?”
[ Plays "Here We Come A Caroling”]