Amazon.at

Hubert von Goisern has purified and newly recorded his "favourite tunes". For each person there are definite key songs which, when listened to, they have already known for a long time and they live in as "homeland" - with his newest CD release Trad, Hubert von Goisern divulges some of his key songs which have accompanied him since his youth in the Salzkammergut. The 48 year old tradition rebel and mountaineering enthusiast talks to Amazon.at about the background to his current folk music album.

At the beginning of the nineties, you drove the folkloric seriousness out of folk music with ironic winking and hard rock guitar, barely ten years later you are releasing an album with fourteen classic folk songs - have you become a mature traditionalist in the meantime?

No, definitely not. I actually wanted to do this album five, six years ago. But after the end of the Alpinkatzen, I had the feeling that the time was not right and after that other projects became more important to me. So I had long had the material in reserve. They are all originals, some of the songs are more than one hundred years old. If you want to interpret them appropriately to today, you must accept them lyrically as they are. If there is winking, then at most musically.

When did the Trad project become relevant for you again?

After the work together on Fön with the new band, the old spark was suddenly there again and we recorded the whole album in my studio in Salzburg in just a few days. I have fulfilled a long cherished wish with this production - that I have hesitated for so long probably has something to do with the intimacy that these songs have for me.

What does it mean for you to now sing rather puristic songs on stage next to your old and new songs?

These songs are something like the prime substance of my musical expression, my ABC in notes. By playing and singing a handful of them simply and free from dust on this album and also on stage, I simply want to show from which source I draw. Without this source, there would not be the stream, and I dedicate this recording to all the unknown musicians who have given us these simple but masterly songs.

Wolfgang Koenig