Blackmore’s Night to Play Rare Local Show in Montclair on July 29

Photo credits:

Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night Courtesy Michael Keel

Band photo courtesy Paul Glass

The latest Blackmore’s Night album is a 2CD compilation titled “To the Moon and Back: 20 Years and Beyond.” But while the band’s catalogue spans two decades, its music can be seen as going back hundreds of years. Blackmore’s Night’s brand of stirring renaissance music is full of spirited acoustic and rich minstrel instrumentation and superbly woven lyrical tales of myths, legends and courtship.

The band led by guitar legend Ritchie Blackmore and his wife, singer Candice Night, performs on July 29 at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair. For more information, visit www.thewellmonttheater.com.

Blackmore’s Night’s music is by turns joyful and melancholy, ethereal and worldy, and always enchanting. Blackmore, Night and the rest of the band truly take you back in time.

“To the Moon and Back” features fan favorites like “Shadow of the Moon,” “Spirit of the Sea,” “Fires at Midnight” and “Ghost of a Rose.” There are also a number of new versions of classic material and bonus tracks that make the set a worthy purchase even for die-hard fans who own all of the group’s albums.

These include a breathtaking acoustic version of “Moonlight Shadow” and a rock-pop renditon of Ranbow’s “I Surrender” featuring Night on vocals.

We recently spoke to Candice Night.

When you formed Blackmore’s Night was it meant to be a one-album project or did you foresee it as a longterm band?

Honestly when Ritchie and I first started writing these songs together we did it for ourselves. We weren’t envisioning even an album. The first songs we wrote were an escape from the corporate rock-and-roll world of the 1990s. We weould sit in front of a fireplace and watch the snow come down, sitting and playing and writing songs that we never thought anyone would hear. It was a labor of love.

What changed that led to the first Blackmore’s Night album?

We were talking about it to Rainbow’s Japanese record company and they wanted to hear it. They loved it and wanted to put it out and then Europe wanted it and wanted us to tour. It became this whole other thing. It’s taken us on an incredible journey that neither of us expected. For Ritchie and I it’s become this ever-evolving, ever-changing entity that’s seen the growth of us as partners, as humans and as musicians.

When were you first introduced to renaissance music and what captivated you about it?

I had never heard renaissance music before I met Ritchie. He was the one who introduced me to it. He invited me to his home in 1989 and he had a minstrel's gallery and all he would ever play around the house was minstrel music from hundreds of years ago. It was so different and like nothing I’d ever heard before. I felt like i had stepped back into another time and it was a really magical thing. We have this amazing ability to tap into another time period.

When he and I started writing together we would take melodies from hundreds of years ago but he didn’t play them verbatim. They were transformed in how they came out through his fingers. He’s constantly creating and improvising. He never plays the same thing twice.

You wrote in the linter notes of “To the Moon and Back” that you were inspired by things from another century but never truly felt at home in this one. Can you elaborate?

I kind of feel a great disconnect especially the more we get so technology- based. I know it's needed but I think also we're losing a kind of sense of ourselves. Everybody’s connected by technology all the time and we don’t get the time to unplug and recharge our own batteries. I feel we’re losing socialization skills and it makes me feel alienated. By staring at a screen we’re really missing out on nature and the awe of the simple gifts. At least once a week we go to a local resturant with our acoustic instrmemnts and we just sit with friends and pass the instruments around and get back to that old fashioned forum of communication and rediscovery.

Blackmore’s Night has released 10 albums over the past 20 years. Was it difficult deciding what to include on “To the Moon and Back”?

That was tricky. It's hard to narrow it down. Ironically, I used technology. I went on Facebook and polled all of our fans. I asked, ‘what do you think are the most important songs in your life’? People have played our songs at weddings and funerals. We’ve even heard of doctors playing them in the birthing room.

The album also has a bunch of treats for fans, including rerecordings of some of the songs. On “Moonlight Shadow” you strip the song down to your vocals and acoustic guitar. What was the thinking behind that?

That's how we would play it onstage, just Ritchie and I. But strangely when we went into the studio we tried the whole band but it didn’t really capture the magic of when we played it onstage, just he and I. We just felt we wanted to recreate it one more time scaled back down with that magic.

You’re playing The Wellmont in Montclair on July 29. Blackmore’s Night tours in Europe a lot more than here, so any gig in the area is a special occasion. What are you looking forward to with this show and what can we expect in the set?

The honest answer about what to expect is nobody has any idea. We’ll do the first couple of songs that we normally play but then it’s anybody’s guess including the band members. Ritchie gauges the audience or the venue or how he’s feeling that night. He never plays the same song the same way twice.

It’s always so nice to play home. We play overseas a lot but with American audiences there’s such a different level of energy. We have such a great time here and we don’t get to do it often. This is the first summer in 21 years that we're not going overseas. We get a great reaction from the audience. The songs mean so much to people. We’ve really been so blessed over the last two decades.