CELTIC JOY
MacMaster and brood coming to town
If her interview with Postmedia is any indication, constant interruptions are a major part of Natalie MacMaster’s day-to-day life.
The musician is on the line from her home in Lakefield, Ont., to preview her upcoming tour of Canada with husband Donnell Leahy and their seven children, which brings them to Edmonton’s Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on Saturday and Calgary’s Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on Sunday. Actually, she hasn’t quite made it into the house yet.
“One more second; we’re always multitasking,” says MacMaster, who pauses to talk to one of her children. “We’ve been in the van for six hours and I’m literally doing this interview from my driveway. That’s why the kids keep coming in to say ‘Hi mommy! Hi mommy!’”
The three oldest children were in the van for the six-hour journey, and the conversation inevitably turned to the upcoming tour and, specifically, the exciting extracurricular activities the brood will engage in between the 24 shows. But the kids aren’t just passengers. They are put to work as well. For the past six years, the MacMasterLeahy clan has been taking to the stage to spread yuletide cheer with A Celtic Family Christmas. Increasingly, most of the couple’s children — which includes Mary Frances, Michael, Claire, Julia, Alex, Sadie, and six-month-old Maria — have been participating to various degrees.
The children play fiddle, accor- dion and piano. They sing. They step dance. MacMaster was nine years old herself when she began playing the fiddle and only 16 when she recorded her first album. Still, the couple certainly did not set out to produce an army of precocious Von Trapp-like kids playing Celtic music across the country. It just sort of turned out that way because MacMaster and Leahy wanted to ensure their children were with them as they toured.
“Mary Frances was our firstborn; I was 33 years old,” MacMaster says. “I remember playing shows as a new mother and all the new things that come with that, learning how to change diapers and feed a baby. By the time she was three, she was trying little steps to imitate us so I thought I’d teach her a real step. She got it and she started playing fiddle around that time, too. She was playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. We’d be going on stage and she’d be seeing me dance and be seeing some of the band dance and she wanted to be part of that. I remember one time I thought it would be cute, I forget where we were, but I said ‘OK, she’s been begging to come out ... Mary Frances Leahy.’ She’d come out and jump around a little bit and it was really cute.”
But as Mary Frances grew, she began developing more of a set routine.
“The next little guy comes along and he’s three and wants to play the fiddle and do something on stage because she’s out there,” MacMaster says. “One thing leads to another. They are here practising stuff and then we go tour. What are they going to do? Sit and just watch the show or just hang out all day? What a waste of their potential.”
As the name suggests, A Celtic Family Christmas will mix the foot-stomping traditional fare both MacMaster and Leahy have become known for with holiday music. As an added twist this year, the couple enlisted the talents of actor William Colgate.
Leahy had watched the actor play more than 20 roles in the theatre production of Billy Bishop Goes to War and was impressed.
“He plays a couple of characters in the show,” MacMaster says. “Through his storytelling and his delivery, he commands the stage. He has great sensibilities and great sensitivity to our show. He wants to complement and support the music in such a way it gives people some nice background and a bit of history. It’s lighthearted, it’s humorous and it’s heartwarming. It’s many things and it connects so well to what we do. We haven’t even seen the show ourselves yet.”
Like her own children, MacMaster grew up surrounded by Celtic music in rural Nova Scotia. It also ran in her blood. Her uncle, Buddy McMaster, was known as the godfather of Cape Breton fiddling and Celtic bad boy Ashley MacIsaac is her cousin.
“It was like eating supper, it’s just part of your day,” MacMaster says. “It’s just something you do. My mom had it on all the time and the community was full of it. Any event you’d go to, there was always music. Any time you would go to someone’s house for a visit there was always a fiddler there. It was very natural.”
Donnell Leahy had a similar background in Lakefield. He was one of 11 siblings, eight of whom performed and recorded under the family moniker, Leahy.
MacMaster was still a teenager when they first met.
“He heard my music and was curious and came to Nova Scotia,” MacMaster said. “He didn’t know what I looked like, he found someone who knew me, got a contact and drove to my college. I didn’t know any of this was going on until one day I got a phone call from him introducing himself and I said ‘I know you, I have your cassette tape at home.’ We met that night and had dinner and dated for two years. Then we broke up for 10 years.”
They married in 2002. As for whether some of their children
will follow in their parents’ footsteps and pursue music as a career, MacMaster says she wouldn’t be surprised.
“We don’t know what the future holds. They have such a unique little way of expressing music throughout different instruments and through their feet and their vocals. So I know that potential is very strongly there. But I want them to blossom into their own thing. But there’s some obvious gifts there.”