Natalie MacMaster: Well, after an introduction like that, yes.  It’s funny when you mention all those things, you think, “Gosh, I forgot about that, I forgot about that. ‘ You know, it’s amazing all those things you do in the course of years and just when you collectively look at them you think,yeah, maybe I am.  If I am, it’s certainly not intentional.

CIAT:  You’re just going with the flow.

Natalie MacMaster: I’m just doing my thing.  It’s all about the music.

CIAT:  Very organic. You’ve been through some changes in the past year or so.

Natalie MacMaster: That’s right!

CIAT:  I notice that Leahy is currently touring, and they’ll be in Vancouver on Sunday March 21st.  Do you have an agreement with your husband that you’ll both tour at the same time so you can both be home at the same time? 

Natalie MacMaster:  We haven’t gone to the point where we have to make agreements yet. I think what we’re doing is following our career paths and once it starts becoming a problem then we’ll have to start changing it.  It’s not too bad I have to say.  The most we will have been apart is three weeks so that’s tough but if we don’t have to do it too often it’s OK.

CIAT:  That might keep some of the magic going.

Natalie MacMaster: That’s right, there are good things about it, too, you see.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder. 

CIAT:  Any joint projects in the works?

Natalie MacMaster:  There will be.  Just because it will be a shame for us to leave this earth and not have ever recorded together or toured together or something. 

CIAT: We’re going to look forward to that. I checked out your website, Natalie Macmaster dot com.  I’ve never come across a musicians website with recipes on it before.   I particularly liked the Celtic Cousins Cocktail with maple syrup in it. I think you’re really a homebody at heart.

Natalie MacMaster: I am, I do enjoy the simple life, I enjoy country, I enjoy being alone with my husband in our house.  We have a house on a dirt road so we’re very much out of the way and we like it like that.

CIAT: You gathered some very talented musicians to play with on Blueprint.  Jerry Douglas, Victor Wooten , Bela Fleck and you produced it yourself.  Tell us a bit on how it all came together.

Natalie MacMaster:  Well, I can’t take all the credit.  Certainly I did have a co-producer and that is Darol Anger and he was a huge help and a part of the project.  The whole thing came together after I phoned Darol and I asked him if he would produce the record for me.  He’s been in the business for years, he has played all styles of music.  He’s a fiddler himself, he loves Cape Breton fiddling. He knows everybody and everybody loves him.  And I certainly enjoy working with him.    So I figured that’s the guy, that’s the guy I want.  And from there we talked about what we wanted the project to be.   I was absolutely wanting something that was very musically strong where the musicians on the record were heard and noticed and not just in the background.  I wanted production that was very simple, very clean sound and very acoustic.  We went to Nashville and got some great musicians in the bluegrass field and in the jazz field and recorded “Blueprint”.

CIAT:  Award winning piper, Matt MacIsaac, is touring with you, fresh off his own tour with pop idol Aaron Carter.  Is this another cousin?

Natalie MacMaster:  No, not a cousin actually.  I am related to MacIsaacs but not this one.

CIAT:  Who else is travelling with you?

Natalie MacMaster: We have Brad Davidge who I think everybody knows.  He’s been in my band for five years now.  But the rest of them I think may be new.  They’re Miche Pouliot on drums, Alan Dewar on piano, John Chaisson on bass, and of course Matt and Brad.

CIAT:  I caught you on’telly with Conan O’brian.  Is the sophisticated Big Apple audience ready for a down-home Cape-Breton girl?

Natalie MacMaster:  Yes!  It’s amazing!  Like well first of all considering that you can get everything in New York and there are people that will encompass all types of living and all ethnic background and religions and cultures and everything.  So there are people in the big city that do love fiddling and they do love more of a down home I guess, I don’t know what you’d call our show, but whatever it is, people in New York like it.  And we’ve played there four times in the past four months.  We did the performance on Conan, and then we did Good Morning America, we did our own show at Joe’s Pub and then another show at a theatre called Merkin Hall.  And low and behold, Peter Jennings was in the crowd.  So we’ve got a fan down there.  Actually Peter, everyone knows he’s Canadian of course, so I think he particularly takes to Canadian music.

CIAT:  We’re going out with Eternal Friendship from the album.  When I heard Jerry Douglas play that poignant dobro on that song, I thought he was playing on our heartstrings.

Natalie MacMaster: Well, it’s a tune I always wanted to have dobro on, and I’d never recorded with dobro before but it is a beautiful instrument.  And of course, who better than Jerry Douglas, he’s the best.  And he actually couldn’t be there to record it.  He did all the other pieces on the record live, but that was an overdub.  The record, amazingly, only had four or five overdubs on it which is really, really minimal.  So everything was taped live off the floor and Eternal Friendship was taped with the piano, the violin, and the bass. And we left a little opening for Jerry to record.  And Jerry went out of his way.  I was like “Jerry, you have to be on this particular track”.  And he was touring with Alison Crouse, and he went out of his way to find a studio, to find an engineer, and do the track for me on his day off in the middle of a tour.

CIAT:  Well, that sounds wonderful.  Now it’s even more about friendship.

Natalie MacMaster: There you go, well put.