(singing in foreign language) - Selkie weaves the sounds of flute, fiddle, harp, guitar, and more to create traditional and original Celtic music.

(singing in foreign language) Well, today I'm talking with Cara Lieurance, along with Michele Venegas and Jim Spalink, members of the Celtic trio Selkie.

Thank you so much for talking with me here today.

- Thank you.

- So let's start with your name.

Where does the name come from?

What does it mean?

Where does it originate?

- Selkie is a mythological creature from the Celtic Isles.

It's a seal, but it occasionally will come ashore and shed its skin and go for a swim.

It'll hide the skin in the rocks.

The Irish believed that the dark-haired, dark eyed Irish people are descendants of the Selkie.

- Oh, what a great story.

I love that.

And in seeing your band perform, because you were recently at The Clover Room, I mean, you take like multi-instrumentalists to a whole other level.

How did this all originate?

How did you all come together and with this massive amount of talent?

- We've all sort of been were swirling around each other.

You know, it's a very small, the Celtic music community in West Michigan is quite small, but we had played together, well Cara and I played in a group, it was an all women group called the Merry Sisters of Fate.

And that's how we met probably about 15 years ago.

And then Jim was in Puck Fair for years.

And so our bands would always play.

And then we started playing as a group and then it kind of morphed and yada, yada, yada.

Here we are, Cara's with us and we are now Selkie.

But I think because of our relationship with each other, the non-musical relationship, like we're really our favorite people, that translates musically.

(bright Celtic music) - And you all play so many instruments.

I want you to go down the line and tell me what you play.

- Anything with strings is what I play, but I perform with Selkie primarily fiddle and banjo.

- Celtic harp, bouzouki, and mandolin.

You know, the cittern-shaped instruments, I guess.

- My first instrument was flute.

My father taught me when I was nine.

Picked up the button accordion, a BC, two row button accordion.

- I know recently you played at The Clover Room, which is a very small venue.

You know, I've seen other performances where you're in front of large groups of people.

What was that like playing at The Clover Room?

It seemed like a very intimate setting.

- That's our favorite.

Playing for big groups of people is really fun too, but there's something so nice about that intimate setting where you kind of feel like, you know, you're in somebody's living room and we can just chat and play and have really more of the tradition of the music is that small little places, not a ton of people, very intimate, and squished together.

- And recently you did some studio work too.

- That was an incredible experience and this setting was just really cool.

It's just- - [Kim] It was warm, it was intimate, it was just beautiful.

The lighting, everything.

- [Michele] All of that, all of that.

It was great.

Like we would like to do that again and come in and do maybe another handful of tunes 'cause it was just a great, great experience.

- You know, I had the revelation recently for myself.

I mean, I've always loved music, but music for me, it was the glue that like held my whole life together.

It got me through things when I was a kid.

It gets me through things now.

And so I was kind of wondering like, what does music mean to you?

- Music is my religion.

It has the whole gamut of spirituality, community, celebration.

I couldn't imagine being without it.

- They say that music is the skin that holds your emotions.

And so this is why you hear music from your childhood or music moves you in the way that it does.

And you know, and people at the end of their life who may not remember their family, but they'll remember songs that they sang when they were kids.

- It's one of the few places where everything makes sense.

It's an absolute, it's always gonna be there and it's always gonna be consistent.

(singing in foreign language) If you are enjoying yourself and having fun and the people listening do.

And I think the goal is just to relax and have fun and then vicariously people will join you.

- One is if you see people dancing and what's always so great is when little kids are there because children don't have this filter that grownups do.

And they hear the music and it goes straight to their heart and straight to their feet and they don't care.

You know, the grownups are like dances if nobody's watching.

Well kids really do that 'cause they don't have that yet.

So it's beautiful.

So I always love it when kids are there.

- So let me ask you like, what sets Selkie apart from all the others?

- I think that some of our playlists would cross over with other traditional groups who love the same tunes that go on for hundreds of years.

But then we have Jim Spalink here who just writes some really beautiful tunes, usually while he is sitting on a beach or in a forest somewhere.

And to me they really, I feel honored to play them.

And also I feel connected to our beautiful state when I play them too.

- [Speaker] Yeah!

(audience applauding) (light Celtic music) (light Celtic music continues) (light Celtic music continues) (light Celtic music continues) (light Celtic music ends) - [Announcer] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of Greater Kalamazoo.