Anthony Herron interviewing Rod Jones

I’m Backstage with Rod Jones at the Birmingham Academy just before the gig . . . How are you doing Rod?

I’m excellent thank you.

Are you looking forward to your set tonight?

I am indeed yep; it’s going to be good fun.

Are there any specific places in the UK that you like to play gigs?

Birmingham’s always good actually and I’m not just saying that because I’m here. Yes for some reason we seem to be popular in Birmingham, here and Manchester, Glasgow as well is really good fun. I think its going to be really good, last time we played here was fun.

Apart from your confirmed four UK festival appearances, are there any more that you’re planning to do?

Not at the moment, it’s just the Isle of Sky Festival which we’re headlining then the Isle of Wight Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival and hopefully the acoustic stage at Glastonbury, but I’m not sure if that’s been sorted out yet.

I hope so, I’ve seen you at Glastonbury twice (in 2002 and 2003). I think it was you played there . . .

Well if we do it this year it will be extremely different because it will be in our alter-ego as a bearded cardigan-wearing folk band.

Again have you taken a new acoustic approach, we know you started off with an acoustic set tour?

I think we’ve just realised we could do that . . . we kind of surprised ourselves and a lot of other people by the way we carried it off I think, really not just playing the songs as they were acoustically, really turning them into folk songs with a violin and accordion and stuff. I think we realised that it was a really cool thing to have in your arsenal. I suppose being able to turn up somewhere and decide to play whether it’s sort of twenty acoustic folk songs or whether to play sort of twenty foot-on-the-monitor rock songs or a collection of both.

Recently on your website Roddy Womble (lead singer) has described the band as ‘what you’ve always wanted it to be . . .’ Are you talking about your progression from the early days of CAPTAIN and HOPE IS IMPORTANT to the tight west folky sound you have today in your new album or something else?

Well no… I mean an element is the fact that our musical horizons have broadened. I think we have become educated in music as we’ve always been in this band. It’s not really through any master plan that this record is more laid back and quieter than the previous ones, it’s just that out of the sixty songs that we wrote for it (a lot of which were just noisy rock songs), these ones were the ones that fitted more together and were the best songs. We still enjoy making noisy rock records as well as folk music there’s just less room when you you’ve got so many different things that you want to do with your record. So there’s less room in the record for the noisy rock tracks, that’s not saying that we might not have another noisy rock record in us. I think we’re happier that we’re actually a band now rather than like three people and a dysfunctional character. Bob’s our friend but it was becoming quite an awkward situation through sort of erratic behaviour, mainly brought on by just drinking too much because he was unhappy. Now he’s a lot happier doing what he’s doing and now we’re a lot happier as a band, five people that get on and five people who contribute and who feel like part of a band.

And so you’re happy with the current five-piece setup you have now?

Yea, I think that everybody’s sort of developed into a role in the band and everybody’s sort of seems to contribute to everything which brings everybody’s personality through to this record. Certainly I think the fact that it is stripped down to the point where you can hear all five people playing and that you can hear five different personalities.

Gavin Fox (bassist) was in a band that previously supported you if I’m correct?

Yea, he played in a band called Turn who supported us a couple of times. From when we first met him we became really good friends and we kept in touch and we used to go and hang out with him in Ireland. He’s a great bass player and a really, really lovely guy. And he can also sing very well so he seemed like an obvious choice.

**page*



The new album is WARNINGS & PROMISES. What influenced you more between writing in the Scottish islands at the end of 2003 or America, California, Tony Hoffer and Mexican beer?

I think everything affects what you do. I think music is an expression of your personality, and so everything you do in your life, everything you listen to, and look at affects you. And everywhere you are affects you and thus your music, but I think writing songs in the Highlands and taking them to California they have a completely different meaning and I think the Highlands had a big effect on that way that we wrote songs and what we were writing about. The way that we recorded them was completely affected by where we were - in a completely alien environment to us really, hanging out in a mansion in the Hollywood hills recording in this sort of legendary studio where The Doors and Fleetwood Mac and all these people had previously recorded. It was quite an unusual experience for us and an extremely fun one as well. It was refreshing you know, a good change and something we needed to do, and although it kind of came by accident it now seems like it was the logical thing to do.

Does Idlewild have any long-term plans at the moment? Or any direction anyone would like to take in the future?

Not really. I think that really we write by trial and error, and we kind of do things by trial and error. But we’re defiantly starting to think about what we want to do in the next record in terms of what sort of ambitions we have and the way that it will sound. But I think we really just have to start writing songs and see what happens, and probably write twenty songs to get the point where the fresh ideas come. You do tend to have to sort of sift through the quagmire of songs that could have been on your previous record which quite often are good songs which make good b-sides. But I think we defiantly do have to go through that process of writing a bunch of songs before we can get to a place that we are ready to write a new record. It’s a weird process when every now and again we write one straight away that ends up enduring and making it onto the record - it is a definite trial and error thing with us. I think that because we don’t really have any sort of master plan as yet.

I there anything the band do before you go onstage or as a way of chilling out?

Nothing controversial… We sit down and play some songs acoustically and just warm up. In that way it’s just good to sort of get into the dynamic of playing and also just to warm your voice up. Obviously we don’t do anything controversial, there are no group hugs or anything like that…

Are there any bands you’d like to cover or you do cover, I know that you’ve covered The Cure in the past??

Well on this tour we’ve been covering Neil Young and a song called Looking For Love and I Want To Be Sedated by the Ramones which we’re going to do tonight I think. We’ve covered a lot of things such as Bob Dylan songs and obscure Hibernian folk music. I think on this tour we’ve realised we get to do something a bit more fun, bit more well-known. On our acoustic tour a couple of nights we did a cover of Don’t You Forget About Me which was quite funny but I don’t think we’ll be doing that one too many times more… But definately we’re working out a bunch of covers electrically which is more fun, you know, fun songs to play whereas acoustically you have the liberty to be a bit more sort of weird I think. There’s quite a list of songs we’re thinking of working out and I think it’s a good thing to have in your arsenal to be able to sort of pull a cover out for the encore or something. I think it’s better to play your own songs the majority of the time but every now and again it’s good to surprise people.

Thanks very much Rod for your time

Thanks.

Anthony Herron

SETLIST

Birmingham, Carling Academy

24th April 2005

1. Too Long Awake

2. Little Discourage

3. A Modern Way Of Letting Go

4. Welcome Home

5. Love Steals Us From Loneliness

6. You Held The World In Your Arms

7. I Want A Warning

8. These Wooden Ideas

9. El Capitan

10. American English

11. The Space between All Things

12. Live In A Hiding Place

13. Not Just Sometimes But Always

14. When I Argue I See Shapes

15. I Understand It

16. The Bronze Medal

17. Roseability

——————-

18. Self Healer

19. I Wanna Be Sedated (Ramones cover!)

20. I’m A Message

21. A Film for the Future