(Muso's Guide, February 9, 2009)
Interview
Hope Is Important - thus spake Scot punk rockers Idlewild on their debut album in 1998. A mere 11 years on, and Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble would be the first to admit that that is still the case.
Doe-eyed Woomble has been on loan out from his bandmates for some time. Firstly for his own solo debut, 2006’s My Secret Is My Silence, and then for the recording of a folk record, Before The Ruin, which brings Roddy together with two of the Scottish folk scene’s biggest names - John McCusker and Kris Drever.
So how did it happen that the singer with the punk rock band most famously described as “a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs” became a soft-voiced, tender-hearted folkie?
Roddy says it wasn’t such a strange meeting. “I’ve been friends with John for a number of years. He produced My Secret is My Silence and he had played with Kris for years and produced Kris’ album, so he was sort of the catalyst.”
Was there a feeling that the “Scottish supergroup” might be a lucrative one?
“There was nothing like “Oh, I think we should do this because we can crack the folk and rock market”. It was just a nice idea between us to work on some stuff. We really didn’t know how it would go. We met up just to see if anything stuck to the walls, if we could come up with anything good. And we did - straightaway we came up with some songs that really did sound good. There were a lot of ideas flying around and we knew it was going to be an album.”
So, filled with hope, Roddy teamed up with two musicians widely regarded as Scottish legends…
“They are legends. They have both learned about this playing in pubs, playing everywhere, playing with loads of different people. I learned to be in a band by being in a band. I was in a sort of punk rock band that couldn’t play to begin with! Limitations existed totally within the band. And most rock bands are a bit like that, to be honest.”
Roddy says that is why the past few years have seen him team up with people and push himself - and he really feels the benefit of stepping out of the comfort zone.
“I feel much more confident as a singer and a lyricist now. I think if you’re classically trained or you play a certain kind of music, you’re more inclined to follow tried and tested ways of doing things. I don’t necessarily follow any sort of direct routes or structures, and I think that’s what interests John and Kris because as folk musicians, they’re not like that either.”
The material on My Secret Is My Silence and Before The Ruin is substantially different from the work Roddy has done with Idlewild. He says that the chemistry when he writes with the band compared to when he writes with Kris and John has a lot to answer for.
“It is very different, but there is an element of just hanging out with different people and it moving at a different pace. With Idlewild, we wrote our first song together when we were young, so it feels very familiar. I don’t mean that in a bad way, although it sometimes does have negative effects if you get complacent, but I don’t think we ever have as a band. But also, I really like the change. Working in Idlewild’s practice space you can make really noisy songs. And then I go and practise with John and Kris and it’s sort of one fiddle and one acoustic guitar and we fill that sound out - we find a different route through music just with those ingredients. For me, anyway, just coming up with melodies and words and singing along with them is pretty interesting.”
When Roddy brought out My Secret Is My Silence, it was as a solo record, but he is keen to point out that he worked on that with a variety of talented musicians.
“I put it out under my own name because I thought that was easier than thinking of a new band name or Roddy Woomble with… The songs were written with different people - some with John, some with Rod [Jones from Idlewild] and everyone added so much to it, all the different musicians who played on it. I really love it.”
Because of the list of musicians appearing on My Secret Is My Silence, it was recorded really quickly - a fact which Roddy thinks made it all the most impressive, and which has been mirrored in the recording of Before The Ruin.
“We only had all the people that were going to be on My Secret Is My Silence for such a short period of time that we did it all in about a week, but I think it captured something. We didn’t linger too long on any of the tracks, so they have a real freshness and that’s kind of what we’ve done with Before the Ruin as well, although I do think Before the Ruin is a a bit more - I won’t say slick because that makes it sound negative, but it’s a bit more tastier.
“I don’t mean I prefer Before the Ruin to it because I love them both differently and I think they are quite different sounding records. I think My Secret Is My Silence is much more a big band raggedy kind of sound, sort of folk rock kind of thing, whereas Before the Ruin is kind of smooth.”
It is interesting that a musician who gives such pause to the different emphases of his work is not given to retreading the material after the fact.
“I don’t sit and listen to my records - I do before they are released but after they’re released I don’t tend to. The only time I would listen to them is to reference things for gigs or for other records that I’ve working on.”
Roddy says that he is “pretty intensively” working on the new Idlewild record at the moment and he is definitely “really enjoying listening to the demos”, but he knows that when it is released he won’t listen to it anymore.
“At the minute it feels like I’m making the record for myself, but when you put it out it’s for everyone.”
Off the back of Before The Ruin, Drever, McCusker and Woomble recently played a series of live shows which kicked off in some style at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, as featured on BBC2’s The Culture Show. Roddy says that the live shows as a trio were really good.
“We were really looking forward to because it means that we can actually get into singing and get into playing, because there’s a really nice dynamic on stage, it’s very relaxed and we do some songs from Kris’ albums and some songs from my album and we do some of John’s music. It’s a concert very much in the spirit of the way that the record was written and recorded.”
Roddy says that, although fans of Idlewild may be drawn to his new work, their interest isn’t something he took for granted.
“I never demanded of people ‘you must follow me’, I was just doing something that interested me. If |’m convinced that what I’m doing is good work then I know that other people will like it.”
Roddy’s folk direction is very different to his Idlewild roots, but he insists that he is continuing with - and is very committed to - both.
“This has taken a lot of planning, it wasn’t just like, ‘Aah, today I feel like writing folk songs’! At first, I didn’t have enough confidence to throw myself straight into it. John was great in that he was encouraging me to try some new things. We wrote some songs together first and see if it worked, and then I went and worked on a Kate Rusby record. John was the one who was pushing me towards doing my own record so I’ve got a lot to thank him for in terms of pushing me to do that - getting me out of just talking about it, and into doing it.”
As for Idlewild, the new album is well underway, and Roddy is thrilled to be working on new material - but he is reticent to pin down the band’s sound in recordings.
“There’s always talk every time you do a record about what direction it’s taking and I never really understood that because it’s always going in a direction, you’re never stopping still. I think it’s a bit of an obsession in the western world with originality - everyone has to be the first to do something. Basically, it’s difficult for me to say. To me, we’re just carrying on writing really strong songs. If it’s referencing any records, it’s probably referencing the last two that we did - Make Another World and Warnings/Promises. It’s difficult to sum it up in a few words - it’s quite poppy, I think it’s what people expect from us, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. I think it’s good.”
The last 11 years of making music on his own terms have given Roddy Woomble confidence and success, but as he steps on, he’s filled with hope for the future, as well he should be. After all, it is important.
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