McKennitt goes her own way

The artist has stayed in
control of her work.

By WAYNE BLEDSOE

KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL

Celtic-inspired performer Loreena McKennitt’s music might give listeners a specific picture of her as an artist:

“Every once and again, people have a false impression that I’m sitting in the meadow with my harp!” says McKennitt with a chuckle.

The idyllic fantasy is in contrast to an artist who is very much in control of her career and her business.

A multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, McKennitt became an international star in the 1990s.

After starting with a traditional Celtic repertoire, she created a body of original work built on traditional folk influences. To date, she has sold more than 14 million albums.

McKennitt was born in Manitoba. She says she had been a casual musician who planned to become a veterinarian. However, when she heard Celtic music by way of Plaxty, the Bothy Band, Steeleye Span and other Celtic revival groups, she immediately wanted to learn the music. But McKennitt was always after more.

“I had heard that some of the music had political connotations, and it was really hard to appreciate some of it unless one understood those political connotations, so I took a course on Irish history,” she says.

In 1985, McKennitt borrowed the money that her family had saved for her college, and recorded her first album. She sold the resulting cassettes at her shows and raised enough money to record a second album in 1987 and a third in 1989. She also had developed a good tour itinerary in Canada.

When record companies became interested in signing her to a contract, McKennitt was able to keep control of her work.

“I didn’t really need a record company,” she says.

When she signed with Warner Bros. Records to distribute her music in the United States, she interviewed potential managers but found no one willing to work on her terms.

“There was one who came up with the statement, which I thought was pretty revealing, he said, ‘If you think I’m going to work for an artist, you’ve got another think coming!’” McKennitt says, laughing.

She quickly decided she would bypass the typical manager route and set things up in her own way.

Through the 1990s, McKennitt expanded far from the traditional Celtic repertoire, furthering the body of her own original music. Much of it was inspired by historical incidents. Before creating new songs, she reads books, speaks with experts and travels for inspiration.

“I maintain that the recordings are less finished pieces of art than they are a document, a snapshot of that whole process of research,” says McKennitt. “It’s a bit like creating a musical Impressionist painting: ‘And what would a musical document sound like if I tried to represent all of this?’ Just going through this process, even if I never pressed a CD, it would be completely gratifying. So the fact ... that other people would enjoy it, and I could derive a little bit of a living from it, is a wonderful bonus!”