Roddy Hart
Roddy Hart has been making music for some time, but his new album sees him team up with the band The Lonesome Fire for the first time.
We caught up to chat about the latest single, new album and what lies ahead for the band over the next few months.
- Cold City Avalanche is your new single, so for anyone who hasn't heard it yet what can we expect from the new track?
It is big and dark and gothic sounding, and it is far removed from anything that I have done before; I started off as solo singer/songwriter.
This track is the first single to be taken from the new album; which is the first with my band The Lonesome Fire. It is brooding and dark and wide screen sounding; it has a big wall of noise.
- As you say this is the first single to be lifted off your new album Roddy Hart and The Lonesome Fire so how does this track introduce us to the rest of that record?
The whole record was produced by a guy called Danton Supple; he has worked with the likes of Coldplay for X&Y, and we really wanted to create something that was epic and cinematic.
Cold City Avalanche felt like the great starting point for that because it is all very minary and it has got a big church organ in it. It was very reminiscent of things that we had been listening to such as Arcade Fire and The National.
So it is very much an introduction into the darker themes that the album explores but, hopefully with some light at the end of the tunnel (laughs). There is some optimism and hope in there but always with the big anthemic choruses to lift you out of any darkness that might be there.
- Some people will be coming to your music for the first time with this record, so how would you describe the sound of this album? As you say it is completely different to anything that you have done before?
It is such a difficult thing to put a marker on how we would describe the sound. There are six or seven of us in the band now, and so it is meant to be great epic guitar music, I would say. It has a big sonic wash over it, and it has a gang mentality about it; all of use were working together to create a massive sonic landscape - without sound too pretentious.
It is meant to be dense and layered and something that has real heart and soul to it, but you can almost get lost in it as a listener. Layering sounds was really important to us so listeners pick things up on the fifth listen that you didn’t pick up on the first listen.
We wanted to make something that was less obvious and more of a challenging listen in places, while maintaining the idea of big anthemic songs at the heart of everything.
- How did you find the transition from your more solo based music?
My solo work was very acoustic and started off as me in a bedroom and no one else in a band. I was just putting out records by myself that I had either recorded alone at home or in a studio during a period of one or two weeks.
Gradually, I pulled together the band that I wanted to pull together, and it just became so obvious that I wasn’t cut out to be an acoustic singer/songwriter. These guys are amazing. I am a huge fan of everything from Bob Dylan to Bon Iver, all of these solo projects.
The more I wrote the more I had the vision for the big sound in my head; that was realised by the band. So it is very different, but it is an amazing privilege to be able to work with six other phenomenal musicians, and for them to be able to paint the picture that you want to create.
- What were you looking for when you were bringing these musicians together?
It happened very organically as everyone added themselves to the band over a period of four or five years. I made a record years ago and two of the guys who helped me with that are still in the band, and we gradually added more and more members. There was an element of wanting it to be a gang.
I was reading Keith Richard talking about the Rolling Stones and saying... sometimes you get comparisons with bands being like a family, and Keith Richards said that it is nothing like a family because you go home to your family at the end of the day.
He said that it is like a gang, and it is a totally different mentality. So there is an element of ‘us against the world’ when we were making this record because no one knows who we are, and we want to change that; it’s important to us that we do that through music.
As a song-writer coming from a solo career into this, it does give you great strength and support as the guys are there to help you push the music forward in the way that you want it to be.
- How have you found the response to the album so far?
It has been great, and we have had some lovely reviews. It is hard to tell because we are still in the early stages of the release. But, so far so good. We are very aware that the hard work starts now.
For all the good reviews that you might get, music has changed so dramatically in the last five years that you really have to get out there and gig as much as possible and let people hear it. You are competing with so much that you don’t want to become white noise in the background.
We really have to try to get noticed; the only way we can do that is to make a great record and word of mouth. Hopefully, that is what we have done.
- You have mentioned Danton Supple, and he has served as producer on this record. So how did you end up working with him?
We were very much aware that we need to bring someone on board to work with us because the first three records, I produced myself purely from a financial point of view; I could never really afford a big producer of anything like that.
I still couldn’t afford a big producer this time around, but we thought we would start to send some tracks out. I got in touch with Danton through his management, and he was one of the producers who came back to me saying that he thought he heard something great in what we were doing.
He picked up the phone, and we talked for an hour about the vision for the songs and the album and what we were trying to create. And I just really loved him and thought that he was a really great individual and somebody who has an understanding of what we were trying to do as a band. He got the gig.
We had such a small amount of money and a small budget, but he was so accommodating and just made it work. It really was testament to how much he wanted to work on it, and testament to how much, we wanted to work with him as well.
- He has worked with the likes of Coldplay and Morrissey so how did you find working with him? And what does his experience bring to this record?
It was everything. I was so nervous about working with somebody because you become so self-obsessed - for want of a better word - with your own records, and if you do it yourself, you can lose all objectivity.
So bringing him on board was just amazing freeing experience because he was just able to bring to the table a sense of perspective and objectivity; he could sit and say ‘that doesn’t work’. (Laughs) And that was the biggest thing that helped us.
However, if he loved something he would praise it and say ‘we need to put that in’. He just manned the controls and was the captain of the ship when it came to the overall recording process.
From a technical aspect, he is such an intelligent and talented man when it comes to producing. He just brought us up a level on the sonic side of things.
- You have produced stuff in the past, as you say, so did you have a hand in producing this time around?
No, it was pretty much Danton. I did bits and pieces from my studio in Glasgow - we have got a little rehearsal studio - but Danton was in charge and anything that he didn’t like he chucked out. So he had the final say, and I was more than happy with that.
That really just allowed us to concentrate on the performance and the songs themselves. It is an amazing thing. I use to be so protective of songs and the albums that were being produced, but this was such a huge sigh of relief.
As you get a bit older, you are less controlling, or at least I am, but I have been a control freak all of my life. You have this perfectionist attitude but, on previous records, that has sucked the life out of things.
However, this time around we have been allowed to create something without the confines of trying to produce it, ourselves and all the stresses that brings. To be able to hand the stress over to someone else is an amazing thing to be able to do.
- You tackle themes such as death and religion as well as romance so what inspires you to put pen to paper? And how did you find yourself writing about these subjects?
I keep going back to the first three records, but they were all about girls and break-ups and romance. I was really influenced on those records by Californian troubadours, and so it was quite natural that I went into that wide-eyed romanticism that these writers that I worshipped had.
It goes hand in hand with getting older that I should be writing about bigger subjects; I think that the older you get then that is what you do write about. Nick Cave said there are only three things that a songwriter writes about because there are only three things that people worry about in life; death, sex and money.
So I think that those elements are starting to creep into my writing. I never really saw it happening as I always thought that I would be one particular sort of writer. However, there are some bigger themes on there, and it was interesting to get into as a writer.
- I was reading that you recorded in a series of different places such as Dean Street Studios as well as a Glasgow church so why did you decide to record in a series of different places?
Part of it was purely financial, but we had to use some of the budget on the London sessions; just by its nature it is more expensive. The studio that Danton was working is a place called Dean Street Studios and the likes of David Bowie, and The Smiths made records there.
That was a great experience as you grow up dreaming of making records in London. What that meant was we didn’t have the luxury of a big studio in Glasgow, so we had to improvise.
We went into a church at the end of my street for a couple of days and recorded big organs, backing vocals, hand-claps and all of these big and exciting things to get the ambient and gothic sound of the room.
We have also got a studio in Glasgow, and we recorded loads of things in there as well. It is just amazing that technology has changed so much that you can bring a mic into a room and record and send it down to London; that is what we did all the time. After the initial recording sessions, we sent things down to Danton, and he cherry picked what he liked.
- I wanted to ask you about Dean Street Studios how exciting is it going to a studio that has such a rich music history?
The ghosts of these great artists line the walls and are in every room, and you are very aware of it. It is a hell of a lot of pressure in one way, and completely inspiring on the other as you are creating music in the place where so many phenomenal artists have created seminal albums.
I think Hunk Dory by David Bowie was recorded there, and one of the big albums from The Smiths was done there as well.
However, once you get over that fear, and you are in the room then you are just focused on making the best record that you can possibly make. You are aware of it but it is definitely exciting.
- So where did your love of music start? And what artists were you listening to as you were growing up?
I grew up in a household that was regularly playing Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits. There were also random things such as Sam Cooke, Otis Redding. But I was very much drawn to Neil Young’s and the Tom Waits in the record collection.
I grew up in a household of music and there was always a guitar in the corner because my dad played guitar. It was just a lovely environment to grow up in and when I have kids, whenever that might happen, that is the way that I will bring them up because it such a gift to give music to people when they are growing up.
It’s part of the reason why I am doing this, there’s no doubt about it.
- Finally, what is next for you going through the second half of this year?
We have a whole bunch of shows in Scotland to look forward to. We are playing in The Hydro; which is the brand new venue in the Glasgow, which is the same size as the O2.
The album Roddy Hart and The Lonesome Fire is out now.