The Fray: You can only do so much behind a piano
The Fray: You can only do so much behind a piano
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Sunday, 25, Oct 2009 04:06
Daniel Andrews talks to Dave Welsh, guitarist with the Grammy-nominated quintet, about touring, downloading and the future.
Never Say Never
The Fray | MySpace Video
How did your eight-week tour in the US go?
The summer tour was crazy. It was officially the biggest we've done yet, certainly stage production was big – much bigger than two summers ago where did kind of the same tour.
It stretched us quite a bit too because we had two albums to pull from which meant that we could craft a better set finally – we've been waiting for that for a long time. It's tough to play an hour and a half with 12 songs.
Did it improve you as a band?
Quite a bit. [Lead singer] Isaac [Slade] stepped out from behind the piano for a good four or five intro to the show. That was a visually new thing for people and experientially for him it was completely different to what he had done before.
He sits behind that huge black elephant for a whole show and there's only so much movement you can do. The piano wasn't even on stage for the first four or five songs of the show. We had a lot more movement on and off. He had the whole space to wonder around in and we rehearsed for a week straight at home. It was definitely a learning curve. There's kind of a fear, in the same way when a singer song writer stops playing the guitar and just sings without having anything to hold or strum or distract from just 'oh where do I put my hands now'.
Is this something you are hoping to bring into more of your live performances?
Yes. I think for this tour over here in Europe, the clubs were a lot smaller. It felt in a way we took some sort of a step back and it felt like we kind of solidified. It was almost like we felt we were starting over over here. We did a couple of shows that were around 2,000 people most of them were around 1,000, 1,500. So it was really nice club-size. We brought the piano set on stage again and we scaled back from such dramatic shows like the summer was and focused back on just performance. The lights were stripped down. But just by doing that it caused us to over the last week get bored of some of the things we were doing and change it up.
In what way?
With this show coming up we wanted to at least have something that was unique and something different, something that wouldn't stretch us. I don't think you should come into this kind of thing and just play a show. [The Royal Albert Hall] kind of deserves extra from people and you need to give as much as you can at a venue like this.
This little two-week tour felt pretty liberating as artists. As artists, to go back into the catalogue and do a song in a different way. Whereas this summer, just by the nature of the size, it was more rigid. There were more shows and you had to maintain an even level of performance so that you wouldn't get over zealous and fatigue yourself early. It was a two month tour with 34 shows, plus you crack one show and then you basically do it that way for the majority of the summer because so many pieces have to fit to make the show work. Whereas here, there's been basically no limitations set by anyone except us. So we've been pretty agile with it."
What did you want to achieve from playing at the Royal Albert Hall?
We went into the show with big ambitions and we realised that to do everything that we thought we might want to do would just take away from the sheer performance of it and from playing as well as we can and being creative from your end rather than having someone else come in and be creative."
Where's been your best performance?
Last time we played London in May, it was two nights at the Roundhouse. On one of those, I think it was the first night, I don't know what happened but some synergy happened that evening and that was one of our best shows that we've ever done. Collectively we were all on the same page. It's also because that size of a place, from 15,000 to that size is a perfect room to not distract in anyway possible. It feels natural in a way. I think that's also because we're still young. Soldier Field might feel completely natural for U2 now and so maybe they get their best performances there. But I think that we're still young, we're still learning, exploring our own talent and so it's good to play shows in rooms that aren't the size of an arena."
What does the future hold for the band?
It's open right now, strangely. We're without a manager right now, we have a schedule that is pretty open next year, we have a lot of creative ideas coming. Probably just because we have been doing this for five years now, it's just starting to make us feel inspired enough to make us want to create all the time. We've been pretty bad at doing that in the past, that creating while on the road, keeping that side of the brain occupied. We have a lot of new material. We want to get into record that as soon as possible, but these two weeks in Europe were a really invigorating two weeks and it reminded us that these are going to be great places for us to play, these are great cities, the fans are supportive and we don't get there enough so we want to go back to those places.
You've got an album planned though?
Hopefully by maybe by the end of next year. It will be certainly different, we're feeling the pull to do something challenging, much more than we were last time around. Obviously it's not defined yet but it's something that's really driving us to go in some sort of direction and really stretches us and pushes us. And then just keep touring. You can't have a career by just releasing albums any more, you've got to go play them, especially as things are shrinking and over here and in Spain piracy is awful. The only way to be sustainable now is to go play shows, which is the reason why we wanted to do this in the first place. So hopefully I think that kind of aligns, we find a good team of people and play shows until we can't stand up anymore."
What are your thoughts on music streaming sites like Spotify?
I think that there are pros and cons. It doesn't seem like a black and white issue. In a way it feels like there's always change in the music business. There has been since it started. It probably felt this challenging every time it happens, so there's probably always somebody on either side of the argument.
It's exciting to think that you can release music more frequently now. It isn't so much about the album. It can be about little releases you do for different online music things or just through your website. But at the same it's going to be more demanding because you can't sell ten million albums anymore. You can't just go tour on weekends. We're going to have to play as much as we can.
What are your hopes for your coming album you mentioned earlier?
As vague as it is right now - since it's far enough away that it's not stuck in concrete - I hope that the album is perceived almost as a dare to our fans. To somehow find the audacity to make something that's different enough and then to ask the fans to come with us, and try that with us. Because we have to have that as artists and I really do think that fans need that as fans too, fans don't want to hear the same old thing for five albums."
Daniel Andrews