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”]

Marc: “That’s one of the things that I love about this track and several tracks on the album in particular is — not only do you have the wonderful arrangements, but it’s also a bright and cheery rendition, which I think is something about your music. Something about the music on this album. You come in with some tunes, and it’s like whoa! I feel so good!”

Greta: “Good! I’m glad!”

Marc: “I think one of the great examples is your Winterberry Set. That’s an original, right? Can you tell me a little bit about that?”

Greta: “Yeah, so the Winterberry Set is a jig and a reel and we wanted to have an original tune set that was sort of hobbit-y, woodland-sounding. Which - I know you and your listeners are fond of that type of song! We love that, too, so we thought this Celtic Christmas album really needs a hobbit-y jig set that goes into a reel. So we were thinking ‘oh, holly berries, or winterberries, or something like that, but it’s like: imagine all the woodland creatures are wandering around to each others’ houses and giving each other presents and it’s all folksy and happy!’ So she [Willow] came up with these jigs and the reel at the end, and then we arranged it to be dance-y and hobbit-y and I think it turned out really well! So we wanted to create something that’s like a frosty winter tune set.”

Marc: “And I think you did a fantastic job. It also makes me think about — a lot of your music videos, I’m not sure if all of them, but a number I’ve seen — they take place in the mountains. Where do you shoot all those videos?”

Greta: “Yeah! All of our videos are filmed here, in Washington state, where we live. The nature lends itself quite well to that. Some are in the woods, and some are in the mountains.”

Marc: “I love that. Do you plan on doing a video for Winterberry Set? I’m not sure how that works.”

Greta: “It’s a little bit trickier to film videos in the Winter because it’s so cold out. We usually film videos in the Summer, which is tricky for the Christmas albums. We might not be able to get another one out — there is a video out for Here We Come A Caroling, but we might not be able to do another video. Maybe one for next year. We’ll think about that.”

Marc: “Well that’s fantastic. I love the videos. Every time I’m doing one I’m like ‘I need more videos like that! I wanna be out in the woods! You know, in the mountains! It just looks… how far is that from your house?”

Greta: “Well, Here We Come A Caroling is pretty close to where we live. There’s a forest nearby. So we did that nearby. But then some of them are over the mountains. There’s a place we particularly like called Winthrop near Mazama and it’s technically on the East side of the mountains so it’s a little bit more dry, but we’ve done a lot of our videos in that area. But all the videos so far have been in Washington state.”

Marc: “That’s fantastic. Alright, well let’s play the Winterberry Set from ‘A Celtic Christmas.’”

[Plays Winterberry Set]

Marc: “Well first off before we get to the final song and we talk a little bit more, I wanted to find out where people can find the album, where they can listen, where they can find you performing live…”

Greta: “Yeah, well you can go to our website — that’s kind of the hub for everything. It’s www.gothardsisters.com. You can get the CD there from our shop and we have autographed ones, too. We also have some bundles of all of our Christmas albums or all of our Celtic albums. And we’re also on Spotify, we’re on Apple music, we’re on all the streaming sites. You can follow our YouTube Channel, and then we’re on the socials, too.”

Marc: “Of course people will want to go buy those CDs, but then if they’re like me they’re gonna be streaming it, anyways.”

Greta: “I mean, I am a fan of people doing both. Because we are paid a tiny bit for streaming, and it does add up when everybody’s listening over and over.”

Marc: “Yeah it does, it does. But ultimately, it doesn’t pay the bills as much as CDs do.”

Greta: “Well, we don’t see it until later, so….we have to wait a while for that to add up.” [laughter]

Marc: “So about five years ago, I think, you posted a Christmas concert in your store, and I downloaded that and just loved watching y’all perform live. And now every year you do a Christmas tour, don’t you?”

Greta: “yes we do! So this is the ninth year, I think, of our Christmas tour and it’s in the Northwest. We don’t really do the Christmas show outside the Northwest. But if you are in the NW area, which is Washington, Idaho, Oregon — we do a Christmas tour every year. It’s lots of fun. It’s completely different from our show the rest of the year, so it’s all Christmas-themed and we do songs and we have guest Irish dancers, and we have a lot of fun. It’s becoming a tradition for a lot of people, so we really look forward to putting it together every year and we love going out on the road and bringing these songs to people.”

Marc: “That is so fantastic. I would love to go see one of your shows one time. Actually, I know every time I get some entertainment director says ‘who should I book?’ I’m like: Gothard Sisters! [laughter] I’ve done that at least three times now. So hopefully I can bring you some more traveling closer here. So that I can see you perform and meet you at long last. Now, we have one final song that we’re gonna share. There’s a lot more on the album. But one final song that we’re gonna share, and I thought I’d ask you to tell me a little bit about the story behind ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel,’ maybe if you have an little tidbits about how that came together, I’d love to hear that as well.”

Greta: “So O Come O Come Emmanuel is one that we had not done a 'Gothard Sisters version’ of yet. So we had it kind of on the list for this album for a long time. But when we started coming up with version of it — it’s interesting, because it’s one of the more somber, serious Christmas songs. And we’re known for doing ‘happier’ arrangements. I really wanted to do it justice, though, and so we figured out an arrangement, I think, that covers both sides: we like to call it a ‘Mona Lisa arrangement,’ where there’s light and dark, and you can’t really figure out which one it is, it goes back and forth. So I really like the arrangement. But I was also surprised when I actually started looking the song up to realize how old it is. I think it’s probably the oldest song that we’ve ever done a cover of. The earliest written down version of it is from 900 — the year 900. Which I find just fascinating, and beautiful that it is a song that has probably been played and arranged performed and sung by so many thousands of people over the centuries. That’s really meaningful.”

Marc: “Yeah. Well, why don’t we hear that — but before we do, I want to thank you so much, Greta, for joining me once again. Alright, here is ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel’ from The Gothard Sisters’ ‘A Celtic Christmas’.”

[ Plays O Come O Come Emmanuel ]