There are groups, musicians, singers, who we do not dare dreaming of seeing anywhere else then on stage. It's also difficult to get a short slot for an interview with them because of all the interviewers from big media corporations. 16 Horsepower spoke to them. Nevertheless, thanks to Immylou from Glitterhouse who we would like to render our thanks, we managed to obtain an exclusive interview with 16hp during their stay in Paris, a few hours before the concert at the Bataclan, just before the soundcheck.

Jean-Yves Tola and David Eugene Edwards welcomed me with kindness, simplicity and friendliness because of my mediocre command of the English language. In the small changing room backstage, the atmosphere was reposeful and serene, which destroyed the image we have of pre-concert feverishness. Jean-Yves Tola, quiet, precise and attentive, answers the questions with sincerity and in French (which helped), while David Eugene Edwards leaves several times to go to the stage to intervene with the tuning.

The latter, who seemed to have a pale, battered face as if he had aged prematurely (or was it the lighting?) at the Café de la Danse during the Woven Hand tour, seems rested today. The smooth and pale face of an archangel. Almost transparent lashes and a strange look of inexpressible purity and mildness.

There are only barely 30 minutes to do the interview, to talk informally about current events; the album "Olden" which 16 Horsepower is presenting during this European tour in a three-piece line-up (Jean-Yves Tola, David Eugene Edwards and Pascal Humbert), false rumours of breaking-up and their ten-year career.

Why, ten years after your first recording, have you made "Olden", which contains only old songs? Is this some sort of anniversary present?
Ten years was just an opportune moment. We have these recordings that are ten, eleven, twelve years old. While listening back to them, we realised that they were of good quality and that they constituted the original form of those songs. Songs that we later recorded with more arrangements. There were three of us then and we are touring as a trio now, playing those songs in the original way.

Is the goal of this tour to promote "Olden"?
We do not only play "Olden" tracks to show them performed in this style by the three of us, but also because we only did one tour in Europe this way. The very first one. Few people saw us then. We thought that it might be interesting for our fans to see the original band.

So you deny the rumours of splitting up that surrounded the release of "Olden"?
Yes. But we can't prevent people from talking.

Do you consider new takes of other old songs and making an "Olden 2, 3 ..."?
No.

You're talking about 16hp's original music. How did you choose the musical direction of the band when 16hp started?
I don't know if it is correct to use the word 'choose'. It is the music we play. The music that comes naturally when we sit down and play together. It is not a well thought-out choice that we made by saying: 'what are we going to do?'

There is no musical strategy?
There is only a strategy regarding the choice of instruments we wanted to play. Most of all for David, an acoustic guitar, a banjo, a bandoneon. After that it all comes from the heart and the soul.

So you get together and the music comes into existence like that?
That depends on the songs, the albums. There are three of us, sometimes two. David writes lots of pieces and brings them along, and we work on them together. There are no rules really.

In general, you have stuck to the same musical course. is that the result of a choice?
We play what pleases us, what is very near our hearts, what motivates us. Our influences stay the same. We play what comes from deep inside of us, if I can put it that way.

Mentally, can you imagine your songs played in another style?
We would sooner change the instrumentation, to render an electric part more acoustic, to slow it down. We already did that with "Horse Head' which we sometimes play hard, sometimes just acoustic. Else the songs change while staying in our genre, without adjusting them artificially.

Some songs are very different when played live.
Yes, that is correct, but they stay very similar to the original intention. The only changes sometimes are the instrumentation and the tempo.

Talking about about influences. In 1996 you named Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, Joy Division, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The Gun Club and the Hungarian Band Muzsikás. What are your influences today?
The influences stayed the same, because they are in our minds where they remain. In the course of time, we will discover other music, other bands that will be added to those influences. We wouldn't like that what we are playing today would be the same as what we are playing in five or ten year's time.

How do you reconcile your personal projects (Woven Hand, Lilium) with Sixteen Horsepower? Projects that became concrete at the time when rumours about a split started to circulate? Is this a simple coincidence?
No, not at all. Just at that time we had a break, sort of, after eight to ten years of non-stop touring. We were touring six months every year. Not consecutively, but six to eight weeks each time. And it was time to take a break. But that doesn't curb the desire, the need and the will to write and to continue to make music. David made use of that time to do more personal things and that resulted in Woven Hand. Pascal and me too felt the desire to do other things. But that resulted in projects we did at our places, without press, without touring, well... there is some of that, but less than with 16hp. It is more individual, the process of creating and the production are more intimate, and for that reason we are freer in the use of our time.

Can we deduce from that that 16 Horsepower is going to tour less henceforth?
Yes, definitely...

David Eugene Edwards has toured with Woven Hand. When will Lilium tour? Is a tour feasible with so many guests participating on "Short Stories", the second album?
We would like to play concerts, and we have gotten proposals to do that. But we don't know if we will have the time and the technical and physical possibilities to do so. Of course not with everybody, but with enough people so that it will sufficiently interesting for the audience to appreciate. But we haven't said 'no'. We will give it a try.

Even when 16 Horsepower is touring less, do you continue to write songs?
Yes, all the time.

Will there be a next album?
Yes, but when? I don't know. That will depend on how we spend our time, on this tour, on David's projects. We have other occupations as well. We have to find the right time. That could be in two months, in six months, in a year.

You are touring throughout Europe. In which country do you have the best audience?
We are well received everywhere. We have a faithful audience, attentive, respectful and loyal. We are very flattered. It always goes well, no matter in which town we play. There are countries that maybe 'go' a bit better, but even then, it's a very similar affair whether we play a concert hall of 600 people or when it's 2.000 people. The smaller venues are often just as pleasant and intense, or even more sometimes, than the big ones.

When 16hp decides to go touring, do you come across difficulties organizing tours?
No never. Rather the opposite is the case. And I say this without wanting to sound pretentious. We have more difficulties to restrict our tours. But it is true that we used to tour more, and that we came to Paris, for example, twice or three times a year. And now we come here considerably less often. We try to make more choices taking into account how important and right places are and at the same time how crucial they are for our careers. That doesn't please everyone, but we want to keep the concerts interesting, full of energy and intensity. We don't want to turn into a machine. And we have to recognize that after 6, 7 years we had become a machine. Of course that had its advantages. But a certain fatigue had developed concerning the purity of the intentions we want to convey to the audience. During eight weeks of concerts, we played six nights a week. We didn't know anymore which concert was the 15th or the 3rd gig. With a schedule like that you don't know any longer who you are playing for, where you are, and then you lose your originality and your intensity.

Are setlists made before the concerts?
Yes, but we don't stick to them if we aren't totally satisfied. We settle on a setlist and it is adjusted during the first three or four shows, until it pleases us. Certain songs can be permuted. Then, when the setlist is final, we keep to it for I guess about 80% of the time, with some small modifications. That is necessary to allow us to concentrate on the performance instead of concentrating on the technical aspects. And then there are also technical restraints, because David changes instruments practically every song. Certain songs can't be played after each other and there are also other songs that need readjusting instruments.

How would you explain that 16hp, which distinguishes itself because of its originality and singularity, is not imitated?
There are some that try to do so in the United States. While we are not an easy band to imitate, due to the instruments we play and because our playing style is rather particular. It is not easy to have David's or Pascal's musicality. And besides that, we aren't really a band that is that well known so that people want to imitate us. On the other hand, I believe that we can influence them a bit without a doubt. But create clone groups, no, that's not easy, especially technically.

David, in which circumstances have you written the music for Blush?
I didn't know a thing about the dance world. Tom Barman, who is a friend of us, talked about us to Wim Vandekeybus, the choreographer of the Ultima Vez dance company. He attended the Woven Hand concert in Brussels and after that, he came to talk to me, and told me that he wanted to use my music for ballets. I answered him that I wanted to see his work. I have seen tapes of his earlier ballets, which I liked, and I felt like playing live for this ballet.

Did the songs in Blush already exist before the ballet, or were they composed specially for Blush?
Most part of the music was composed for the ballet.

(Editor's note: The tour manager comes to announce the start of the soundcheck and unfortunately our time comes to an end)

If you had only three words to characterize your music, which ones would they be?
Jean Yves Tola: True, Spiritual, Soulful.
David Eugene Edwards: For the Lord.

Translation by Caroline.