Is national identity in music a good thing? In conversation with Idlewild

23:21Roddy Woomble:and all those kind of things

23:23Rod Jones:Coldplay were a wee bath I think but it was a Melody Maker article like the sound of today or something and it was like Idlewild, The Unbelievable Truth and Ultrasound that was the sort of the bands that were tipped for that all very different sounding bands there was no kind of like sort of scene that there was like only a few years later with all the American bands and like you're true it's true you say like we felt we were much more part of that than anything else even though we weren't because we were from Edinburgh and well the band were based in Edinburgh and we didn't have the chance. We did tour America a bit, but we didn't have that infrastructure that these American bands have.

23:58Rod Jones:They come over. There was a big wave of them coming over. You'd find an audience straight away in the UK and it would become very popular in the UK. That didn't work like that in America. A band goes to America.

24:12Roddy Woomble:There was that kind of British need, though, wasn't there, to have a scene, call it something. Yeah, there was. Whether it was Bratpop or Rippop or New Rave or whatever it was, which was a very, I think, England-centred thing. That didn't really happen in Scotland. We didn't feel that need to... Well, just suspicious of it. I don't know if that's like some... Well, I don't know if it's like some sort of... Harking almost back to what you were saying before, where the kind of the underdog doesn't feel... They can be proud of where they're from, but they don't necessarily... Not in an arrogant way, I guess.

24:43Roddy Woomble:That's not to say that everyone else is arrogant, but, you know, I suppose... Yeah. I suppose there is a kind of a need to, there was a British need to kind of export this thing of like Britain is best and this is how we're going to label our movement, you know. Whereas in Scotland it was just like, we're a band. Yeah. You know, it didn't feel like you needed to come see us. yeah yeah you know and that's a phenomenon that carries on today you know you've got like in scotland can you know sell it three or four nights at the barrel lands and play to like eight ten thousand people and be completely unaware of the people being unaware from them everywhere else

25:20Rod Jones:you know i remember especially in folk folk music there's lots of really popular folk rock bands in scotland that don't play big places anywhere else i remember which is also kind of nice it's like an indigenous sort of sound you know yeah that's happening everywhere i think that's that

25:35Roddy Woomble:that that desire for that to sort of i suppose regional sort of success has become a thing hasn't it you know you've got like people like jamie wedgster who like is massive in liverpool i mean i think he's big everywhere now but you know you've got all these people who can are starting to realize that actually you don't need to necessarily tour the world to be successful and it's a lot cheaper which is nice you don't have to get on a plane and i think it also speaks to community as well doesn't it i feel like i feel like you have much more of a community as a music scene i i was thinking back to the reindeer section record and how that brought kind of a lot of artists together i know it was gary from snow patrol technically from northern ireland but it felt like a lot of artists came together in a moment in time and um broken social scene i think It did something similar in Canada Of just like allowing you to find These kind of tributaries off of different Artists which I think was quite interesting

26:31Rod Jones:Quite a lot of stuff goes on like that in Scotland That you know not necessarily Recorded work but like People playing with each other and There's kind of gigs when lots of people are involved That's been a recurring thing But there's a festival In January In Glasgow called Celtic Connections Which runs for three weeks I'm sure you're aware of it And that's always got stuff like that going on like bands play you know and so i suppose it's a key keeping that or talking earlier on about kind of spirit of community that there's in scotland um for for music and the creative community and that's you know there's always like places to kind of indulge in that if you want to

27:11Roddy Woomble:one of the first jobs i did when i moved to london was to work for a booking agent um and i booked some of biffy cliro's tour dates and i remember they were playing to like 100 people in Northampton 300 people in London and then they were doing like the Hydro or something within like 6 months in Glasgow it was like this huge jump of just seeing how when a band blows up in Glasgow especially it feels like people really get behind them.

27:38Rod Jones:Well I mean it's a different country really. I used to get annoyed when we first came down to England to London to do press and stuff and Scottish press was seen as regional press so it wasn't like that important or something I was always like that's just not fair It's like it's a different country And if you're popular in Scotland that means something Totally different you know you can really There's lots Like we were just saying there's lots and lots of bands that basically Just tour in Scotland and don't go Anywhere else so you can do that I mean obviously it's much smaller it's not like But yeah

28:10Roddy Woomble:It's like the Cortina's being massive in Manchester

28:13Rod Jones:Yeah I quite like That idea though when you go to Remember the band The Frames yeah they're huge we support we supported them in ireland once and they were playing like 20 000 people and i was like where would you play in scotland and they would just be like a small

28:29Roddy Woomble:venue i think i saw them some people i think i saw them play the spits in london to like 150 people around that time i'm curious about the roles producers have played in your career and rod you've now obviously stepped into that role for the band and for other artists um and i know dave a little bit and i know what a wonderful human he is and i'm curious about the alchemy of that man because i feel like both you and the manics have been able to create your own world your own identities your own something that feels very true to you also littered with literary references as well um what what does someone like dave bring to a band like yours and what are some of the other producers that you've worked with like i mean dave is a very unique producer i think he's in that he's not, you know, like, he's not one of these people who you instantly recognize his sound.

29:23Roddy Woomble:You know, it's not like a Dave Fridman or, you know, someone who's got a real kind of a lane that they're in. Well, it's like, okay, I recognize who's made that record. Or even like someone like Dave Sittick to an extreme, I suppose. Like, I think Dave, his real talent is getting the best out of people. I think almost 70 % of production in the way that he does it and the way that I've kind of learned to do it from him, I think, is people management. It's navigating the dynamics within band, both musically and personally, and making them feel in the right headspace to create the best performance and music that they can.

30:11Roddy Woomble:and then also having the technical ability to make that sound good. And I think that was a real leap for us when we first worked with Dave. I remember it really well, actually, coming out of Jacob's studio for the first two tracks we did with him, which was A Little Discourage and Rosability. Me and Colin were in a hire car driving to Glastonbury and listening to it on a cassette, the sort of rough bounces of it, and being like, my God, we sound like a real band, like you know like a proper sort of band in the charts or something you know like there there it was a real difference for us of having that you know wasn't just someone who could engineer well and make it sound really i suppose impressive it was someone but he'd he'd very quickly figured out the dynamics and the band and how we interacted as people and where you know any problems that would be a guess or any and how to you know give every give everyone what they wanted and make them feel like it was their idea all the time i suppose and that's the that's the genius of a good producer is i guess is almost getting banned to do what you want them to do they feel like it was their idea and a lot of the time it is you know i think that i think that's where he's a real genius He's a lovely, lovely man and one of my best closest friends.

31:34Roddy Woomble:And I think that's why he has that relationship with those bands. There are bands that need someone to come in and be a bit more light a fire and be a bit more creative. For us, we just needed someone to teach us how to use a studio properly, really, I suppose, on how to perform together and how to gel together and it changed the band massively working with

32:00Rod Jones:he's not like he wasn't hugely older than us too i mean he is older than us but not like you know when we met him we were like 23 he was still in his 20s with late 20s so there wasn't a huge this huge we felt like he could be like in the band almost you know and he sort of assumed that rule little bit like a confidant in that way. He wasn't telling you what to do, which we wouldn't have reacted well to anyway. And that was that straight away that diffused all the presumptions of a producer and whatever, what a producer does, and he just became this person. Maybe a bit like Scott Lit with R.E.M.

32:41Rod Jones:became an additional member of the band while he was recording them. And I suppose that's why Dave's been so important to the band over the years and we've done so many great um you know songs with him i even know if we are working on something we'll still let him hear it you know before get his opinion on it oh god yeah i mean

32:59Roddy Woomble:i was sending him the mixes of the records on a daily basis i mean which we do like i mean a lot of us do this and the various whatsapp groups going around where we ping each other stuff and sometimes you're getting sent stuff by really big mixes it's like what do you think of this is this shit you know because everybody i think to be any good at mixing or producing you have to have a really good level of a dose of imposter syndrome like you really want to be feeling like i'm going to get found out on this one it's what drives you to be better like really and i think as soon as i'd mixed the first song and the first person i sent it to was dave before i even sent it to the rest of the band i was like what do you think of this is this any good you know um and i think it's really important to have people like that in your life as a band and as a producer.

33:50Roddy Woomble:We've worked with a load of producers over the years and some of them more successfully than others. Oh, there are many, really, when you think about it. Well, I mean, Lenny and Bob and Paul and Stephen and Dave and Tony, there's quite a few. I suppose, yeah. I mean, I think Dave, obviously, yeah, like I said, Dave kind of in the studio kind of felt like home for us a little bit. and we went on a couple of holidays and we had a great time on the phone. Lenny was a completely different vibe altogether. I don't think we were quite good enough as a band to be able to record with Lenny in the way that we did, but it was a hugely inspirational time for us and what we learned from that and actually what we created from that turned into something that was obviously a pivotal moment for the band in American English he was an amazingly interesting and inspiring guy you know as was working with Bob you know we were we were still you know obsessed with I suppose and to go to Electric Audio and record there with him was a completely a completely different thing you know it was a really exciting experience but again you know not what we were probably used to it was very much kind of like right set up and record and what do you guys think of that one instead of someone going oh we should maybe do one more take you know which is like a live wasn't it yeah yeah i mean at that time we definitely needed someone to be like probably

35:26Rod Jones:one more guys um steven street he was a he was a big producer to record with i mean yes i had produced a lot of my favorite records so i just didn't really necessarily work out um in terms of like maybe the songs we chose and i don't know what it was but like yeah i did really enjoy recording with them and speaking to them all about the stuff we did but it just yeah we went back to and that's when we started really songs kind of found their place so as we're on the subject sound

35:57Roddy Woomble:let's start talking about the new record because i think that i mean it sounds amazing for a start like just as a piece of production like the fact that it can go from all these big gnarly loud songs into it's not even quiet loud it's like a real kind of like shift of emotion that doesn't feel like doesn't feel like the ground's been taken out from underneath you um what what was your role um rod in kind of capturing this record how did it feel to kind of be trying to harness it I mean I think we know each other so well now and we know what everybody's strengths are in the band and I think like Ruddy said a bit already on this record we kind of realised what we were good at and where our sound was and what our strengths were and we weren't trying to sort of look back to nostalgic play but I think we were just like this is what we're good at with everything we've learned over the last 25, 30 years even nearly let's make a record that captures that the best we can and try to do it in as honest a way as possible without really you know just letting everybody sound the way that they sound.

37:11Roddy Woomble:Colin has got a unique way of playing the drums in the same way that I suppose I do in guitar in that neither of us learn traditionally. We just play the way that we play and there's a chemistry in the band that comes from that I suppose Andrew and Lucia you know the musicians that kind of put the rest of us to shame a little bit they're a little bit more technically skilled than the rest of us and so that gives us the opportunity to then elevate those ideas and that kind of vibe to loads of different places so it's really about like I said what I learnt from Dave really just letting everybody be themselves and do what they do best in as comfortable a way as they can and try and capture that without distorting it too much.

38:05Roddy Woomble:That's the simplicity of it. It's not as simple as it sounds, otherwise I'll be out of a job. Make it really loud, just to the edge of distortion. Almost, yeah. I think what I've always, sort of looking back at our band, someone had asked me what I thought, you know what i liked about our band the most i suppose and i think it is that feeling of there is this sort of these fragile but kind of pretty melodies that are on the brink of chaos all the time i think and that's that's sort of harness that's the sound to me it's this this yeah melodic chaos i suppose um and and i was just trying to capture that as best as i could really that that's the opening 10 second preview to this podcast the uh how to capture that yeah that's exactly i guess that's how it feels as a listener like i think people talk about the magic of radio sometimes is you're not really knowing what's going to come next and things feeling like they've got an energy that's kind of where's it going to go and i feel like your live shows often had that sense of everything could fall apart and the pa could fall over any minute and it's like still got that it actually happened a few times I mean there was there was a said we luckily have two really competent professional guys in Andrew and Lucci who hold it together enough that we're on the edge of that destruction at all times but they sort of pull it back in one thing I noticed and I'm wondering if there's any pattern to it is that it's been a few albums since you had a photograph on the cover of the record you've had drawings and design for a while on this record does it does it indicate anything that you've gone back to photography or did you just have fun with design for a while

39:58Rod Jones:no i was actually um one of my solo records that i make um i do all the covers always and um and generally speaking i go back to photography because that's kind of what um i've got a little bit of a background and not really much of the background but i've been taking pictures and i studies it a wee bit so I feel a wee bit more confident with that than other aspects of visual art which I still do love but like so it was just because I was getting a wee bit more confidence with how to visualize what I wanted to do with photos so with this with Idy World Record I said I was saying to everyone and everyone kind of leaves me alone generally speaking to to get on with that I was wanting to do a colour colour photograph and I'd been doing a lot of double exposure stuff with my photography so it was just that sort of idea and then obviously what turned out to be the picture everyone decided to choose for the cover happened to be taken at the exact same spot as the cover for what was important just facing the other way because I was at where my mum and dad live on the east coast of Scotland so obviously there's like a 28 year gap between the two pictures and one's sepia colour but the irony of that is it's all sepia and it's both like an old fashioned picture but it's of two teenagers looking at a decayed ship or boat and now it's vibrant in colour and kind of psychedelic almost looking towards a different horizon, you know.

41:21Rod Jones:So I suppose there's a wee bit of depth there to that, those two images side by side with the 30-year, and a band that have been together for 30 years. But also just in a purely visual aspect, yeah, we've only ever used colour photography once, post-Electric Blues, which was kind of like a, very like non-traditional band photograph it was like over the two sides so I wanted to do something with colour because colour photography is like kind of amazing and it's not used that much really in album artwork really nowadays or there's always a big element of design to it I love album artwork it's a bit like we were talking earlier on about something like Patti Smith or certainly the Smiths bands that the album artwork was part of the band it wasn't like you know he wasn't just like oh this is the record and we've got some of our tour and then we're just going to put something on the cover it's a massive part of the band that's what it's always been like

42:15Roddy Woomble:to me so it was very important i've i felt like the world building around the band especially with the earlier stuff you did was so important but i thought it was really interesting that one of your t-shirts just just said support your local poet and it feels like going back to some of the bits we talked about before that sense of community and location um with this record it feels like there's some reflection going back but actually it's like i think i read somewhere you felt like quite a renewed as a band making this record because i think what is it six years since interview music in that time you've had covid and three solo albums and i'm not sure how many projects you've you've worked on you've had hamish hawk and a few other things road avenue

43:00Rod Jones:you it's like there's been a bit of gaps keep ourselves busy um yeah the gap was just it was partly but really but mainly after interview music and the tour the idea was to record right and record in 2020 and then you know maybe have out 2021 or 2022 but you know obviously two years we didn't see hardly you know we'll live in different places and you weren't allowed to we're allowed to go to the different zone if you know it's all kind of wasn't that it was we really will quickly forget that so we really couldn't do that for two years and yeah we all found our own way to do other things like everyone did so when Mechanic started focusing on the band again around the time of the remote part anniversary shows that yeah we were just at a kind of and they were good catalysts for because suddenly we're playing a record that lots of people love and they're playing it in the order that people want to hear it so it ignites reunites no unites the room, the audience the audience and the band are basically making the show together and when you come off stage from that you're really kind of pumped about your own music almost and that led into let's do another record and let's kind of get this back on so that's why the record I suppose has a euphoric feel to it referencing other music we've made like Broken Windows or Mopar or even more late period records and it's got a sense of like freshness and it's looking at the world with kind of eyes open again and it's like yeah that's why we called it Idlewild and that's why the album artwork's kind of vibrant and looking towards something you know there's a kind of hopefulness about your record as a whole you know it's not too long as well which is always good yeah I was quite surprised when I was like oh has a few more

44:51Roddy Woomble:songs to go and I was like how can you follow this song the end what's the last track called it's the end of the sunrise sunrise sorry yeah it's like I was like there can't be anything after this and it was like nope there was nothing after that you can't follow that guitar part

45:07Rod Jones:yeah also we did we consciously didn't want to make it because I don't read music was like our longest record it was nearly like you know going on 50 minutes to an hour and although I'm really proud of that I think that we wanted to do we didn't want to do that again we wanted to do something that was very concise. 100 Brooklyn Windows was only like 32 minutes or something. So we kind of wanted to do something like that, 10 songs, and a lot of them to be really kind of catchy, as catchy as we could make them, you know, as well as having depth in different ways, but like really catchy. So I think that's what we've done.

45:47Roddy Woomble:So you've just done a show at Black Isle Brewery, yeah and the islands yeah how did it feel to start playing some of these songs live

45:55Rod Jones:is that the first show yeah well not the first show we played a festival called deershed in july so we'll just played two or three of them though like we're really looking forward to getting actually we're doing some outstores and then we're at the tour starts so then we'll kind of get back into playing like a lot more because we'll be in front of like our fans because festivals are always a bit you're always very conscious that people might drift away if you start playing like the third new song that no one's heard so you do tend to sort of stick to songs people know for festivals but yeah I'm really looking forward to I love putting set lists together when you've got a lot of songs now and we're trying to learn a lot of them so we can vary them a wee bit for people that are coming more than one night I think the songs will sit really well with the new songs will sit really well with the old songs

46:40Roddy Woomble:no definitely they feel like they share a lot of the same kind of DNA I guess

46:46Rod Jones:yeah when you play like I had before following discourage or something it sounds like yeah they belong together did um you guys have any

46:56Roddy Woomble:thoughts on why for people keep saying that rock is dead but rock seems so resilient and we're thinking you're making just like a list of essential rock albums in the last 25 years because there seems to be this like i don't know why collectively columnists every about two years Decide to report that rock's dead And then you've got like bands selling out arenas And it's What do you think it is about rock music That refuses to be Kind of usurped or changed Or kids not want to pick up a guitar And make music, what do you think it is about rock It's such a kind of visceral Thing isn't it to make rock music It's like a It's almost kind of tribal for some people And I don't think that's ever going to go away I mean yeah It's always I suppose in terms of rock is dead it's people are looking at like Spotify figures or radio play or any of these things but like actually people go to rock shows all the time like ticket sales for rock shows haven't really changed, people love going in a room and listening to loud music and jumping around that's never going to change I mean probably I could equate that to you know fucking people dancing around a drum in a cave you know what I mean it's like I think that's always going to be there

48:13Rod Jones:It's also something kind of refreshingly anti-establishment about it, the idea of like, obviously it's got a bit more careerist, you can see bands that are a bit more like, this is what we want to do in our life be a rock band, but at its core if you're making music with other people, it's like you're making something together, so it's got that feeling of doing something good together and also you're like yeah it's loud and it's expressive and people react to it instantly so as a form of art it's kind of got everything you need so that's why I'd only go a liver, a liver go away and there'll be people that'll marginalise or whatever and say that but like you know no it's like yeah Rod was just saying like be in a room with live music and the audience and the band are making the spectacle together they're all you know they're collaborating almost in the roles and it's a pure feeling that comes from that, that is something that's like, I don't know, it's very addictive.

49:14Rod Jones:And it will be for humans forever, I think.

49:32Roddy Woomble:what lovely gentlemen and i hope you learn a lot about the band from that interview i really loved when roddy started telling me that the cover to the new record is the reverse of one of their previous covers like that to me is one of those small details that as a fan it's like so lovely to know and I don't know whether they've told anyone that before maybe it's in all their interviews um I found that conversation a little bit surreal because I think they might be like maybe like the second or third band they have interviewed back in the very late 90s when I turned up with some scribbled questions a little bit shaky and a dodgy dictaphone and um I was such a fan then and I'm such a fan now um I will never grow out of being a fan of certain bands um and I think that there's something about just like their humbleness which I think feeds into what they were saying about how Scotland maybe keeps you quite humble um which I could really relate to um and I think really comes across um and like I said there was one answer in there which was like the most ruddy answer possible um there were some extra bits from that so if you follow us on instagram um we'll share those over the next few weeks ask them a few questions kind of relating to the last 25 years so we'll be putting bits out there and on our youtube channel too so make sure you're following it's forward slash at dranninsound on youtube if you're not watching that there currently and i think like there's a button somewhere there or there that you can click to subscribe which is apparently what you're meant to say and be annoying on the internet.

51:13Roddy Woomble:I am in the midst of working on kind of celebrating 25 years of Drowning Sound at the moment. We'll have some editorial running across October and that is when the band's new record comes out. It's a self-titled record. Let me double check the date because I wrote it down and then didn't open my notes before hitting record. The new record from Idlewild self-titled is out on the 3rd of October on V2 Records it's an exceptional record and I hope that that interview has whet your appetite there are a few singles you can go listen to now and yeah pre-order the record catch the band doing their in-store tour across the UK and then they've got some headline dates they're playing Coco in London and they're playing the legendary Barrow Lands in Glasgow which I don't know if that's the equivalent of seeing Dolly in Nashville or Elvis in memphis um i feel like maybe i need to make a trip to the uh land of buckfast to go catch that which i know buckfast is technically made in devon don't be pedantic there in fact do you know what there was one thing in that interview where i didn't let rod finish saying something he was saying i asked him like what projects they've been working on and like what he's been up to and he told me about this band humor that he's been producing they just released a record called learning greek um it's really rock really heavy and um they're going to be opening for idle world on some other upcoming dates so i'd really recommend checking that out rod's also just been working on an ep by lizzie reed um just dive into that and yeah check out the post electric studios that rod runs um it's now become like the home of idle worlds and i think it's he's done some amazing projects over the years hamish hawk's record was something that he worked on he was really proud of um in fact rod like reached out to me when he first started working with hamish going i thought it's been really good you should listen to this which um was really touching to uh to know that i was one of the people on his radar that he wanted to send music to so i don't have too much else left to say today um that interview um was great and yeah you get to talk to one of your favorite bands that's what being a music journalist is sometimes times.

53:21Roddy Woomble:So yeah, I've been Sean Adams, this has been the Drowning Sound Podcast. Thank you to Josh Craggs for producing and editing this. You've been you! See you next time, bye!