Striking a balance between original songs and arrangements of traditional music is important to Luke and Sarah. Luke says, “We take the knowledge we have from studying classical music and apply those ideas to the music we make. We really love arranging old traditional songs and coming up with our own flavour. We also love writing original material, and songwriting has become a big part of our musical life.”
Their latest album has seen a change in the band’s musical line up. Luke says, “Last fall, our bass player and flute player decided to leave to pursue some other projects. We’d already decided to record in December, and had a lot of work to do and songs to write. We didn’t know how it was going to happen without them, but decided to follow through anyway and do the best we could.”
He continues, “We ended up contacting all the folks we wanted to record with us, especially people on the west coast because the plan was to record everything on Bowen Island and work with two of our favorite sound engineers from Vancouver. We had different guest musicians come in and record on one or two tracks at a time, so each track has a slightly different line up.”
In terms of the album’s sound, he says, “The writing on the album is distinctly Bombadils, but we like to think it’s an evolution from the previous albums. We are more at ease with our singing, our writing and our instrumental playing so it ended up being a more confident album.”
One of the major challenges that Luke identifies for he and Sarah is learning how to deal with the business side of making music. He says. “You’re essentially running a small business so you learn as you go; you learn marketing, accounting, to reach out and ask for help and to look to see what other people you admire are doing and emulate them.”
Another challenge for Luke and Sarah is finding a balance between touring and having enough time at home. Luke says, “It’s a matter of finding a healthy balance between work and rest. We want to keep going strong for the next few years and not burn out, and that requires knowing our needs and limits.”
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