f28


touring and I really wanted that. But I think the interest in the band wasn’t the same for everyone. So we kicked out the drummer and the bassist and we rolled into this trio.”


Three siblings is frequently a winning combination in music. It’s clear why that would work with singers but is it the same with musicians? Do you instinctively know what the other will play?


“Kind of,” thinks Hartwin. “It’s defi- nitely easier than with someone else.”


“People always say, ‘This brother thing has something magical on the stage,’ adds Ward. “I think we felt this when we played for the first time as three. And also we had the same taste in music that we were listen- ing to at the time.”


“Apart from Koen. He was listening to techno.”


“Hey, there are parts of techno in the music!” laughs Koen, having finished eating his baguette and joined the conversation.


“I more easy.” “When we kicked out the drummer


and the bassist I realised it hadn’t been the music that was in my head,” says Hartwin. “When I started composing my own tunes I discovered that the things I compose in my head, I already heard what’s now on the CD. I heard all the parts. The tunes I made in my head already sounded very acoustic and that’s when we said we’d need an extra melody instrument. So let’s take something people have never seen before, something crazy…”


“I thought about the violin but it was too late to start learning. We thought about bagpipes then we were like, ‘No!’ That’s even worse than the hurdy-gurdy, where at least you can play in different keys. With bagpipes you can play in G and C – end of story.”


And there’s an interminable amount of tuning involved.


“Or not!”


“With the hurdy-gurdy that’s not a problem. I’m always in tune!”


“How do you tune it?” “I don’t know.”


The band Aedo was cited earlier as having been part of the folk revival. How does your revival compare to ours in the British Isles?


“If you talk about the revival in Flan-


ders it’s not about the young bands hearing the old music and then we start playing,” Hart win explains. “It was bands like ’t Kliekske which was the oldest band we know, or RUM. That was the revival, they started it. Then you had the second genera- tion with Laïs, who were on the cover of fRoots a long time ago. You had Ambrozijn,


n the beginning I started on guitar and now I play hurdy- gurdy. Ward started on accordeon and now he plays guitar. Hartwin started on


chromatic accordeon and changed to dia- tonic. So it’s all changed and in the begin- ning of Trio Dhoore it was Hartwin on accordeon, Ward on guitar and I played the upright bass.”


“We tried everything!” they laugh.


“Maybe write down that when Koen was five he had a mini hurdy-gurdy and that he’d tried the violin but you have to prac- tice for a long time…” jokes Hartwin.


“So I chose a violin with buttons – it’s


Fluxus… And then I guess we are in the third generation of the revival. Of course it became very modern. The first generation was very traditional.”


What would you define as very tradi- tional in this context? Your albums aren’t exactly post-modern fusions of electronica and grime.


“Just reading a melody that they’ve found somewhere and playing it,” reckons Ward.


“And trying to play it as much as possi- ble on traditional instruments,” says Hartwin. “These were the times when bands were recording an album of 24 tracks. One track would be like a minute and a half. They’d play ten tunes on ten different instruments, all out of tune, but just to show that there are traditional instruments. If you listen to it now you’re like, ‘Serious- ly?’. It’s just to prove that this instrument is a traditional Flemish instrument. Nobody wants to know this!”


“I think it was more like making an archive so the tunes wouldn’t be lost. And they did very well because on our album we have two traditional tracks and I took them from one of these albums. But it’s such a pain in the ass to listen to it!”


“There were no arrangements,” says


Koen, “only A/B. No changes in the waltzes or polkas… just ‘oompah oompah’!”


“It took 40 years to go a bit further from this literal playing, to rearranging things and allowing other influences,” adds Ward. “But now it’s about getting back to it and finding how we want to play it.”


“A question that gets raised a lot from certain folk musicians is, ‘Why should you make your own melodies? There’s so much made already that’s so good.’ Yes, but tradi- tional music was written once as well. We need to write new tunes in the idea of the old ones. The generation before us made their own melodies and when you go now to a Belgian jam session, all the young guys are playing these tunes but they’re written in this century. It’s making a new tradition.”


“Back then it was about showing that this music was traditional Flemish music but with the third generation it’s much more about being influenced by it,” says Hartwin. “We are definitely the generation who grew up in a very multicultural Belgium with a lot of influences from all over the world. With Trio Dhoore we are one of three bands, together with Surpluz and WÖR who actually have a link with this first genera- tion somehow. The others are very modern. It’s acoustic folk music with traditional instruments and modern influences.”


“I have the feeling that there have been some bands in the last ten years who went very far away from the traditional Flemish music. So then came some bands who thought maybe we should go a little back. And it’s always about the balance, in traditional music. That’s what we’ve said for a very long time, and I still believe it. What are the most popular kinds of traditional music playing now in all festivals? It’s the oldest traditions. Maybe the generation after us will really make it interesting and be able to play in bigger festivals.”


Where the current generation of Flem- ish folk musicians are and aren’t booked to play is a source of vexation for the band. Their striving to reach an international audi-


ence has as much to do with feeling under- appreciated at home as it does wanting to tour the world.


“In Belgium you have music bars, like pubs with singer-songwriters or DJs,” Hartwin explains. “And that’s hobbyist; they don’t pay. And then you have folk clubs and music venues, and that’s where we’ve played the most. And then you have cultural halls and they have full government support financially. They have full time staff, pro- grammers, sound men… but they only book you if they’re sure they’re gonna sell out. So they book only things that get radio airplay.”


“A year and a half ago I decided I could easily live in Estonia because it looks like Flanders isn’t interested anymore in folk music; they don’t want to give it any airplay or put it on in cultural halls. And 90 percent of the gigs we play are somewhere in Europe, so I can easily go and live in Estonia. And of course karma is a bitch. I’m one year in Estonia, cultural halls starts booking in Flanders and I’m away all the weekends – going back!”


“Yesterday I got two emails from peo- ple at cultural halls who saw the album launch at English Folk Expo. They saw that it was working in England so now they feel like they should book us! But it’s all good news; no complaining here.”


L


istening to the band’s three albums back to back, 2013’s Modus Operandi, 2015’s Parachute and their latest Momentum, released at the end


of last year, their progression is clear but so is their distinct musical identity – that’s been there since the start. What are the essential elements of a Trio Dhoore tune?


“Balance!” shouts Hartwin. “I like the word. It’s everywhere.”


“After Hartwin composes the tunes and brings them to us, the ones we start to play within ten minutes together are the ones. It’s the excitement of the moment,” thinks Koen.


Ward sums it up as “The ones without questions.”


“Yeah,” agrees his brother. “Hartwin starts playing and we join in and the arrangement makes itself.”


There you go kids, it’s that easy.


“Sometimes we have made tunes out of a sound check. One of us is just checking the instrument, playing a riff or a pattern and the others are just picking in without ask- ing. And then a tune comes out of it and I think these are the very good ones.”


That’s how they happen, but what are the ingredients? Apart from the aforemen- tioned techno.


“There’s not really any techno. I think a big ingredient, especially on the last album is the harmonics.”


“Maybe we should start from the first


album actually,” ponders Hartwin. “I think on the third album there is the foundations of the first and second album. Everything we learned in those albums we also have it on the third album with something on top. So it’s really growing. If I listen now to the first album I can hear I was really influenced by French music. And I was trying to compose melodies that were strong enough that you don’t need chords under it. I still love that. For me that’s a very important element in making folk tunes. The reason why tradi- tional tunes survive is because they are very


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84