Culture
RUNA Album Release Show at the Peoples Bank Theatre March 16
By: Emily Votaw
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Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, nationally lauded Celtic roots music act RUNA is releasing their sixth album, Ten: The Errant Night, at the Peoples Bank Theatre on Saturday, March 16. WOUB spoke to vocalist Shannon Lambert-Ryan just a few days before the performance.
WOUB: So, 2019 marks the 10-year anniversary for the band. I understand that you all are on your 10-year anniversary tour?
Shannon Lambert-Ryan: Yes! We started our ten year anniversary tour in January. Our anniversary officially hit last August, but we decided to start the tour at the beginning of this year and go for the whole year, year and a half. It’s been great so far, we’ve played at some really great venues and visited a few parts of the country and we’ve had some wonderful audience responses.
WOUB: Runa will be releasing your latest album at your show at The Peoples Bank Theatre! Can you tell me more?
SLR: Yes! We intended to release the album in January, but it was one of those things in life where that just didn’t happen. My husband and I had our first child last April, so our initial plans for the release got delayed a bit. But that actually afforded us a little bit of time to develop the album a bit more, including getting some guest artists on the album that we might not have had been able to before. We are also excited that we get to celebrate it a bit more in the St. Patrick’s Day season. The album is called Ten: The Errant Night.
WOUB: I was wondering: what does it feel like to be playing traditionally influenced music for contemporary audiences?
SLR: Well, it’s a really interesting thing. There is something about folk music in general that has always made it the music of the people, and all of the genres that are widely listened to, like pop and rock ‘n’ roll, come out of traditional music at some point. What we find interesting about playing and writing folk music and music that is influenced by traditional music is that we are still writing songs about the same things that we wrote songs about 300, 400, 500 years ago. We might have some different rhythms incorporated into it now, and some more instruments and different technology, but we are largely still writing about the same themes. What we try to do, as artists, is to contemporize traditional music for contemporary audiences, to make it more relatable to a modern audience, but what we find is that even people who think that traditional music is worlds apart from them still relate to the music, and oftentimes they leave the performance understanding that it isn’t so different from them at all. It’s interesting that there is something relatable about Irish traditional music, in particular, even though from a service point it might not seem that way.
The performance will be preceded by a traditional Irish food buffet, featuring corned beef, braised cabbage, and a whiskey mousse dessert, which opens at 6:30 p.m. Auditorium doors open at 7 p.m., and the curtain call is slated for 8 p.m. For more information, or to buy tickets, visit this link.