Iona

Iona are a Celtic Progressive Rock band. Led from the front by guitarist and vocalist Dave Bainbridge. The band have released a series of hugely popular albums over the last twenty years. They have a new studio album due in the sumnmer of 2011.
The interview below was with Dave Bainbridge who was then promoting their current studio album The Circling Hour.

Interview with Dave Bainbridge:
The Circling Hour

Over the last fifteen years Iona has built up a solid reputation as one of the premier Celtic Rock Bands. Over series of well constructed and classy albums the band has established itself not only across the UK and Europe but even as far afield as America and Japan. Following the album Open Sky in 2001however the band decided to take a break.

The main reason being vocalist Joanne Hogg started a family. During the hiatus the various members all busied themselves with other projects. Most notable of these were the solo albums from Dave Bainbridge (Veil of Gossamer) and Troy Donockley (The Pursuit of Illusion). There were even a couple of albums a DVD and selected live dates from Troy and Dave.

In late 2004 however the band once again picked up the reins and began once again performing selected concerts. It was to be but a short step to think about returning to the studio for the next Iona studio album. That decision was made in summer 2005 and the new album The Circling Hour is due in the summer. With the first album in almost six years ready to go Jon Kirkman spoke to Dave Bainbridge about the new album and the bands hopes for the album and plans for more live dates to promote the album


Jon Kirkman It’s six years since you released a studio album, for those not in the know, could you tell us why the band took a break.

Dave Bainbridge Well basically we had planned to get the next studio album out around 2002 but whilst we were in Japan Joanne (Hogg) announced that she was pregnant and over the next couple of years had two boys who are now 2 and 4. So for the last few she has been being a mother most of the time so that has restricted what we could do with the band,

JK Of course these things do take time and it’s important for most people to spend time with their young children.

DB Well for Jo it was quite miraculous because she and her husband had tried IVF and that had all failed and then out of the blue she got pregnant. It was great really for her. Obviously there were implications for the band but we have tried to be supportive and tried to work around the time she can still work with the band. The writing took a lot longer because she was preoccupied with other things!

JK There were other projects that other members of the band were involved in weren’t there? You recorded an excellent solo album entitled Veil of Gossamer, Troy recorded a couple of solo albums and there was a couple of Troy and Dave albums as well so you weren’t exactly sitting back were you?

DB As soon as Jo announced that she was pregnant for the second time we realised that we wouldn’t be able to do any gigs for a while. I had been planning on doing a solo album for ages so that gave me the opportunity to do that. I started it in November 2002 and most of 2003 was spent writing and recording that. Troy and I also got together to do some duo gigs because we needed the money (Laughs) but also we thought it would be a great opportunity to do something slightly different, with some Iona stuff, some more traditional stuff and some solo album stuff in a format that gave us a bit more freedom. When you play live with a band, the arrangements of the Iona stuff could be quite complicated and have to be fairly set. We found that with the duo we could leave more spaces open where we could just improvise or bounce back off each other live which was really nice.

JK As we are speaking now in April 2006 you are nearing completion of the new album which is called the Circling Hour. When was the decision made to look at a new Iona album?

DB It was really probably last July. We have had a few writing sessions over the last few years so some of the bits on the album have been formulating since the end of the Open Sky album. There is one of the tracks which is called Wind, Water and Fire in which there is an opening section that is keyboard and violin based, we actually recorded that with Troy and Frank the drummer at his home studio. Those were our initial sessions for the studio album so we have had one or two times together. We had a good session in Ireland a couple of years ago where probably four or five of the songs took shape but we have been really seriously recording it from July last year.

JK You’ve played some gigs as Iona and recently released a live DVD. Was any of the new material tried out in a live setting? I know some bands like to do that but did you?

DB Yes we did actually. We would have tried it more if it was Britain. We had three tracks that are on the new album that we played live. What we did was play them on the live DVD recording in London and also on some gigs in Holland and Germany. One track was called Strength, Factory of Magnets for the Soul which is quite an interesting title (both vocal songs) and then Wind off the Lake which is one of Troy’s tracks. It has got some vocals but is a longer instrumental featuring Troy We did that one live but it has mutated into a sort of a huge epic piece.

JK You find that sometimes don’t you when you work songs in live. You think this is a great song, let’s try it live and then it becomes something slightly different when you come to record it.

DB That’s true. The track’s strange actually, when we played that live we didn’t really have a set chorus for the song it was just an improvised vocal line with a bass and guitar riff underneath. Then when we came to record the vocals for it, we came up with this really nice vocal hook line which has really lifted the song up to another level. We got a good reaction from the audience when we played the tracks live so that gave us quite a boost knowing that they were going to be liked.

JK I have listened to some of the album; it’s not finished yet – and if I am honest, some of the tracks on this album are rockier than you have ever attempted before with Iona. Was this deliberate attempt to move in a different direction?

DB Yes a while back, it could be back in about 2001 actually; we had released Open Sky and we had various discussions about the direction of the next album and I have always collected notes I can use when I am writing and I wrote down a load of comments from the band members. The general consensus was that it would be nice to have an album that has a more “up” feel with more rhythmic stuff going on. On Open Sky there was quite a lot of long ambient passages which were great for that album but we did not really want to repeat ourselves. I think it makes more of a statement as well because there hasn’t been a studio album for so long that we wanted it, from the very beginning, to come in with a bang.

JK Do you think that some of the long time fans will be surprised by the direction you have taken? Certain tracks really hit you right between the eyes. It is certainly a statement of intent in some ways isn’t it?

DB Well I think it is still very much Iona. It has got all of the Iona elements; you know Jo’s voice and Troy’s pipes and the keyboard textures and my guitar and stuff so I think fans will like it. It is still unmistakeably the band which is the main thing.

JK With a band like Iona that has a fair bit of history behind it now, how difficult is it to come to a new album? It is like trying to re-invent the wheel? Does it feel like that for you?

DB It’s not like we haven’t been working together for the last six years so it is not really re-inventing the wheel.

JK No, I mean in terms of having so many albums out and having some sort of legacy. There is the need not to repeat yourself.

DB I think there is probably a danger that people are going to expect the same sort of thing and the band gets stuck into a rut of sounding the same. I think that is one of the reasons we have tried to be more rhythmic and more rocky this time.

JK I suppose there is an element of having to give the fans a little bit of what they might expect but something new as well in order to make it interesting for you guys as a band.

DB Really we have approached it more in terms of what the best materials that we have at the time and then tried to interpret that through the band’s musical filter I suppose. Sometimes what you intend to do on an album doesn’t happen. We had two more tracks that we were going to include in the album which we have left off because one of them was quite an ambient instrumental track and the other was a slow ballady vocal track. We realised as we were gathering material that it was becoming too much like the previous album with the amount of slower material so we had to make a conscious decision to prune that a little bit.

JK Is it difficult to take that decision though, after all artists don’t write to order generally. They create and therefore it must be hard to have to lose that track.

DB Yes it can lead to quite heated discussions sometimes. It is usually down to me, being the producer of the album. I think it is good that it is quite a long time before we decided the kind of album we wanted to make. That gives me an overall perspective of how the tracks fit together and if some do not fit into that secure vision for the album then you have to make a decision on whether they stay or not.

JK The album is in the final stages of production now; you are still doing some mixing I believe. Are you looking at an early/mid summer?

DB I would think so yes.

JK I know you have some live dates planned before then. Following the release of the album, what are your touring plans?

DB The band has some live dates in Holland, Belgium and Germany at the end of April and the first half of May. We can’t really commit to doing a lot of touring because of Jo’s home situation. It is sort of three gigs here and three gigs there sort of thing. We are doing a couple of UK stints. We have some gigs lined up in October and November; it could be just about six gigs. We will probably just continue doing that really and fit around Jo’s schedule, maybe three gigs a month in the UK. We do want to try and get to some places we haven’t been to for a long time.

JK How does it feel as a band going out on the road with a new album? I would imagine it is very exciting.

DB Yeah, we can’t wait to play some of the new tracks; we will see how that goes. We have got some rehearsals actually starting tomorrow. There is quite a lot of stuff to learn. We’re not playing the whole of the new album initially any way but we will probably do something like six new tracks.

JK Having heard a fair bit of the album I would say that a lot of it would translate rather well to the live arena. Parts of Wind, Water and Fire would make a really good showcase for part of the concert.

DB Well there are two long tracks on the album, one is called Wind off the Lake which we are doing live. Wind Water and Fire is the longest track on the album, about fourteen minute’s altogether. We are not going to be initially tackling that one because it is too much to learn in a very short rehearsal time. Certainly we will look at doing that for later in the year. By the time we get to the UK gigs we might have that one ready for playing live.

JK I would love to hear that live. I can imagine the lights and everything for that number! I guess you guys can see the potential in that.

DB Yeah, where we can we take our own lighting engineer with us but it depends on the venue and the size of the concert we’re playing. When he is there he is very good at responding to the mood changes and everything.

JK With the situation regarding Joanne and her family commitments and touring other parts of the world, I know you and Troy did some gigs in Japan about eighteen months ago, would that be an option or would that perhaps be too far?

DB At the moment we are restricting band gigs to UK and Europe and we will see maybe in a year or two when both of the children are at school, it might be a different situation then. In the meantime Troy and I are looking at doing other gigs as a duo and possibly even doing countries like the USA. We know about lots of different players in lot of places who are really great players. We would love to be playing Iona music with them. We did this when we were in Japan. One of the gigs we did we had some Japanese musicians; they learned a few of the Iona tracks. We just had a rehearsal in the afternoon then played them in the evening and it worked out really well.

JK For an artist that must incredible; it mixes the elements of the familiar with the unfamiliar.

DB It was strange at the time because we had never even met these Japanese musicians prior to playing with them. We had heard them and knew that they were great. It took a bit of adjusting but after about an hour of playing with them it sounded great. We thought maybe we could extend this idea to other countries in the times that Jo isn’t available, to go on tour and maybe do some of the big instrumental tracks using local musicians in different places.

JK That would be an interesting thing to develop.

DB We have already got someone who wants to put on some concerts in America and in that area we know some great musicians. That is all down to the visa situation though.

JK I hope that comes off. Meantime the Circling Hour is hopefully released in the summer, with some gigs before that and in the UK at the end of the year. There is plenty to look forward to and for those places that can’t see Iona live, there is the live DVD.

DB It is brilliant to finally have that out. We have been talking about doing a live video for years. Now we thought we could do something really representative of the band as it is now. So I am really pleased with it.

© Jon Kirkman 2006 and 2011
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