Yes, I have a backstory with The Bardic Depths: spoken word shouts on their 2020 debut album, then a special guest credit on keyboards for the 2022 follow-up Promises of Hope. And the fun continued when, early in 2023, project originator Dave Bandana asked me to whip up another snippet of pipe organ for the third TBD opus!
Out on March 7th, the new album What We Really Like in Stories features the quartet at the core of The Bardic Depths: Dave B. on vocals, keys and guitars; Gareth Cole (Fractal Mirror, Paul Menel) on guitars and vocals; Peter Jones (Tiger Moth Tales, Red Bazar, Camel, Cyan, multiple et ceteras) on keys, sax and vocals, and drummer Tim Gehrt (best known from Steve Walsh’s Streets) on drums and vocals. Inspired by and setting the lyrics and literary reflections of founding Progarchist Brad Birzer, the seven new songs (plus a prelude or two) focus on the creations of authors spanning science fiction (C.S. Lewis, Alan Moore, Walter Miller Jr.), fantasy (J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard) and American realism (Willa Cather). The group’s leanest and lushest effort to date, the music here is equally ambitious and appealing, progressive and accessible, warmly melodic and mightily stirring.
After talking with Dave two years ago, I couldn’t help but think it would be a blast to get all the members of TBD in on the same Zoom call to talk about the new album. It was a blast, but little did I know what I was getting into, as the byplay between the merry quartet crossed the Internet at lightning speed. Enjoy the interview below; a complete transcription immediately follows the jump.
So – we’re going down to the Bardic Depths for the third time! What kicked off the process of creating this new album, What We Really Like in Stories?
Dave Bandana (DB): You want me to answer I suppose?
Peter Jones (PJ): We thought we’d better do another one! [Laughs]
DB: Yeah, it was time! We had some relative success with the second one, and we’d merged into a four-piece band. What happened was that a lot of our contributors, our guest artists, for one reason or another, couldn’t be with us this time, you being the exception. Consequently, we now had a four-piece band and we could start work and create an album purely with ourselves, without any sort of outside contributions from everybody else.
The whole thing seemed to click into place; the songs were written – and they were, in our opinion, good songs, but nice, concise songs rather than being all over the place and lots of noodling that happened on the first album.
Gareth Cole (GC): I think that was a very deliberate choice, wasn’t it? All of us discussed it, and we wanted to go down that road of keeping things shorter where possible.
DB: We wanted to make a more definitive album; not necessarily a concept album, but still a themed album. And Brad [Birzer] came up with the idea of writing about various authors; that’s what he loves talking about. And it all fell into place!
But the songwriting was really nice because, with these guys involved, we can share it out a little bit more. And Gareth got more involved in the songwriting and came up with some really, really good ideas.
And we shaped this album this time ourselves. Rather than creating music and then getting Robin [Armstrong] to shape it for us, which is what happened on the first two albums. This time, we shaped it ourselves and came up with something that was more pleasing to us. In a way that the songs were concise; they were formed. We’re just really pleased with it!
Good to hear! Anybody else want to chime in on that?
PJ: I was just thinking – nothing to do with your question, but I was thinking when you asked that first question. You know one of those early Beatles interviews, where the band is not really playing with the interviewer? You asked a question and we just sat there and went [silence, then laughter all round] “I dunno. We’ll let Dave do it!”
GC: We’ll let Dave do it, yeah!
PJ: I think it’s definitely tightened things up a bit from where we were on the first album. I don’t think any of us realized we were in a band on the first album! [Laughs] Not technically, anyway. We were all just contributing. That’s become tightened up a bit on the second album with less guest stars, but more consistent input from the four of us. And we progressed that with the third album, and I think it’s led to stronger song construction. And a bit less noodling, I guess! Which may or may not go down so well. But as Dave shared, I think the songs are the better for it. And I think you can look at any one of these songs – or we hope so anyway! – and think, “that’s a well-crafted song.” We just hope that the buying public agrees with us on that one! [Chuckles]
OK, thanks for all of that. You mentioned that you put the tracks together much more internally, that it was a band effort. The one question I had with that – and I guess I’ll address it to Dave and Gareth: did the songs come together before you had lyrics from Brad, or were you writing to a brief, were you writing to what he had supplied?
DB: There was a bit of it written musically, before I got the words from Brad. As soon as the last album had finished, I started working on some music. I’m trying to think back now as to whether or not much of that music got incorporated into it, because there was a lot that was discarded. But certainly “Vendetta” started off quite early.
Brad had supplied me with three lots of lyrics; and if I remember rightly, the music was written first, but then those lyrics were incorporated into the songs. After that, certainly the music was written first, and the lyrics were added to the songs afterwards. Because what we did is we went through Brad’s book that he’s written called Mythic Realms, and we took a lot of the lyrics from that book. We lifted them basically from the page, we rearranged them, we re-edited them, we made them rhyme if they needed to rhyme, and then they got added to the songs. So, most of the music was written before the lyrics; however, the lyrics were always there. It was a case of finding which ones went with which song.
The beauty of this album is that we didn’t create a concept album. When we did Promises of Hope, the music had to be in the order that it was written. This time around, it didn’t have to be, and we could move songs around in the running order. Consequently, we could have an album that flowed a lot better, rather than having to be constricted by the lyrics and the songs that we had on Promises of Hope. Does that make sense? [All agree]
GC: There are a couple of songs that I helped write more than the others. And they just showed how good Dave fitting the words that he’s got. He’s obviously got a stack of words ready to go.
And I sent him some ideas that turned out to be “You’ve Written Poetry, My Boy” and “Old Delights”. And he came back with ideas for lyrics and melodies almost instantly. It was really, really quick and really productive to work together in that way. In fact, I was thinking maybe I should move to Tenerife so we could do this more often.
DB: [Laughs] Tenerife? Yeah, we’ll have to fly to different islands, then.
GC: Yeah, but we could get together every Tuesday or something; just meet at an island halfway.
DB: Yeah, that’d do!
So, Dave, once you and Gareth have put it together – actually I should address this to Peter and Tim as well. Once you have the musical basics together and possibly the lyrics, where do Pete’s contributions and Tim’s contributions come in?
DB: Go on, Tim, Pete!
PJ: I’m a bit of a lightweight in this band, really. I don’t pull my weight! But it’s all quite lovely, cause all the writing is done [laughs] by Dave and Brad, and obviously this time a bit by Gareth.
Dave just sends me stuff track by track. On the first album I wasn’t on all of the tracks, but I think the second one I was. And then on this one, obviously, I’m on all of the tracks.
The vocals, Dave has normally supplied a guide vocal of some description or type to work from, and I can put my own stamp on that. And when it’s the sax, it’s great, actually! Because I play sax more on other people’s records than I do on my own. But it’s really nice to just jam out over these instrumental sections. And Dave is always very kind about what I’ve done.
I think for some of these songs on this album, I think I was the first one to put my parts on them, which is nice. And then you get to hear everybody else’s parts coming along, and the track builds, and it’s nice to see that evolution. It’s just an ongoing process with Dave, back and forth, really. I think it’s come out really well, and it’s been great fun!
DB: It was good this time as well!
Tim, are you at the back end of the process then?
Tim Gehrt (TG): Actually, I was gonna let Pete finish, but kind of pick up where he left off.
You know, we’re not together like a lot of bands would be, to be able to sit and work out parts and play together and get the feel on everything. So, one thing different this time – songs progress over the course of a recording, right? You record some stuff: “Hey, here’s how this idea’s gonna work; here’s what comin’ in; there’s this part here, this part’s there.” Those evolve over the months of recording. People add parts; things change here and there.
So this time, as opposed to a band in the past on a lot of projects, you get together, you rehearse the songs, you know exactly what you’re gonna do when you go in the studio. You know exactly the arrangements; “Here we are; done it 30, 40, 50, 80 times; let’s go in and record ‘em over a couple of days” for drums and things. And things might change, but not the core of the song.
So this time, knowing that things would evolve as the songs were written, I got together with Dave early on and just said, “Look, I’ll put scratch drums down on everything, and then I’ll replace all that a little bit later on in the process.” As the songs evolve and different parts change.
And that worked out really well! And things did evolve over the course of it: almost every song. So that was the approach, and I think it made a lot of sense in this situation.
DB: It really did! I remember on “Vendetta”, you gave us a drum track very, very early on. It was one of the first drum tracks you did for me. And it wasn’t until very, very near the end that you did the final recording for “Vendetta”. And your drum track was completely different from the very first one that you gave me! You changed the feel of it; you changed the rhythm and everything! And it made it so much a better song.
PJ: We changed the speed of that one, didn’t we?
DB: We did change the speed as well. [All agree]
GC: You don’t have to tell anybody that!
TG: The speed changed and that changed the groove! So it needed something a little different, being a little bit quicker tempo. Like I said, you don’t normally do that a lot in a band – and I’ll use past tense, where you go out and you play it live. You work on songs when you’re not touring. You get everything ready to record; you know exactly what’s gonna happen. So that approach makes a whole lot of sense the way that we work together.
It does! I was talking with Alberto Bravin last week; I interviewed him. And he was saying that Big Big Train had done the new album completely live in the studio. And he was describing the opposite, the process that you were just describing, Tim. And it’s two different beasts and sometimes you get two different results.
I have to say that I really liked “Vendetta”; for me that’s one of the highlights of the album. And I think some of that comes down to what you guys mentioned. While it has ebbs and flows, it’s more straightforward and more streamlined than on the previous albums.
But also, I love the way Dave and Pete duetted on that! It worked really well.
DB: The other guys are in there as well. You’ve actually got Gareth doing a verse and Gareth does the beginning vocal. And Tim does his vocal as well. We made a deliberate effort on that song that we wanted everybody singing on it. We wanted to create the harmonies. Originally, I just sang the whole lot through. But I didn’t think anybody could put up with nine minutes of just me singing that whole song!
So one morning I just said to Gareth, “Wouldn’t be a great idea if everybody took a voice, everybody took a part in that song?” And that’s how we worked it; it came out really well.
Another interesting fact with that song is that is was originally a minute and a half longer than what it is. It’s one of those songs that we deliberately cut all of the excess out of it, to make it so that it just went boom! Boom! Boom Boom boom! We put the instrumental bit at the end, but before that there were a lot of other bits that we just cut – 4 bars here, 8 bars here, yeah, sped it up a little bit, fair enough – and knocked into a 9-minute song that doesn’t have any filler in it!
I noticed that, too. That the solos, whether they are synth or sax or guitar – they’re very direct, they’re to the point. They have a goal that they get to. And you’re right, that does make everything tighter, a little more – I don’t know if “immediately appealing” is the right [phrase]. But let’s kind of address this “prog/pop” –
GC: Before you ask that question, that’s partially a product of the process as well. Because you’re sitting down and you’re thinking of “How do I write a guitar solo?”, in my case. You’ve got a space to fill; you want to start here and you want to end up there. And you’ve got a couple of ideas of melodies you want to play along the way.
It’s a different approach than if you are Big Big Train and you’re in the studio and you can jam for a couple of hours and see what drops out. Then you’ll get a very different feel of solo than if you write it. The way we do it is composed and set out; everything gets mapped out, and then you record it exactly how you hear it in your head. Instead of just jamming loosely in a room, which would really be fun to do as well, but you would naturally get something different out of that.
PJ: I just imagine that I’m jamming with you all in a room! [GC laughs]
TG: It’s just different rooms!
DB: But the thing with that song is, that song could have been 20 minutes long, OK? The guitar solo in the middle could have been 24 bars; the sax solo could have run on longer; the synth solo could have. All of those solos could have noodled on for ages and ages and ages. But eventually, I think that song would be been forgettable to the listener. Whereas now, those solos punch you in the face each time! It makes it a more compact song.
GC: I don’t want any solos to outstay their welcome either. I want them to be melodic and memorable, not just carry on because there’s space and because you can.
It’s a lot like the subject matter of that particular song, which is very hard-hitting and dystopian, and you really want a maximum impact for it.
GC: True.
DB: Yeah, exactly.
So let’s talk about the whole “prog/pop” dilemma. I don’t think anyone would call this a pop album. Are you expecting blowback from people who are telling you this isn’t prog enough? I would disagree!
GC: Not at all. We’re not hearing this as a vocal harmony group! New Direction, they might not like that. But seriously, we’ve got a couple of long songs on this that people who like prog will enjoy. But we said we wanted to keep the other songs more concise, and I think it works really well. I like lots of other bands that are proggy when they do songs that are maybe only five minutes long. Genesis have got lots of great five-minute songs, but they’re still prog. They just don’t go on forever. And I think the other guys feel the same about this; there’s no need to have long songs unless there’s a particular reason. That you’ve got an idea for structure that needs more time to unfold.
PJ: I think the lines are getting more blurred these days. I’ve got this ongoing joke that I think only I laugh at on my radio show. “What is prog these days? What is it?” Because nobody seems to know; or rather, plenty of people can argue what they think it is, and vice versa.
And I’ve just come from doing my last album, which I would admit my last album wasn’t prog, or most of it wasn’t. I think as Gareth says, there’s plenty of room for shorter songs in prog. But I think it ultimately comes down to what you feel like writing at the time.
Maybe, in the future, if we decided to go and do a really full-blown epic, 20 minutes long – if we thought that was a good idea, we’d do it! At the moment, this is more what we all think is a good idea. We just have to hope that people are listening to it, that the listeners agree.
Peter, I really liked The Turning of the World; I really liked how it was based on, “I’m just going to pick up a guitar and I’m going to write a song.” Because that’s another perfectly valid approach to the thing.
PJ: Well, I don’t want to take over the interview with my album, but I felt that had been missing in my writing of late, so I wanted to redress that balance. And I’m glad I did! Now I’ll probably go back to doing the epics for the next one; we’ll have to see.
And like you said, Gareth, there’s variety on this album. There’s that darker thing like “Vendetta” and “The Feast Is Over”. There’s lighter material …
PJ: Great organ playing on “The Feast Is Over,” by the way!
Yeah, I thought that guy was pretty good!
GC: Yeah, he was that! [Laughs]
That was fun to do; it’s always fun to be part of that. But there’s also lighter material, like “Old Delights”, that you mentioned, Gareth and “You’ve Written Poetry,” the Bradbury song.
GC: As I said before, those two just came out of nowhere, almost! “Old Delights” came about because I had a new guitar pedal that made some nice, interesting sounds. And I came up with the chord sequence, sent it over to Dave, and before I knew it, he’d written a song over the top! Cause as I said before, he had the lyrics ready, and he came up with the melody, and it didn’t take any time.
And the same with “Poetry”; it was a 12-string I’d just got back from repairs, and I just picked something completely randomly that sounded really nice. And Dave and I knocked that into a song; within a couple of hours, it was done and dusted.
PJ: I said this on the last interview: what I love about “Old Delights” is that it’s almost a heresy these days of recording – but you did it without a click! And all our parts were added without a click. I do a bit of that myself; I love that! We’ve come to depend on the click so much, and especially when you’re sharing. It’s integral, really, to keep everyone together when we’re file sharing like this. But “Old Delights” was just freewheeling, and it sounds amazing!
GC: And it speeds up and slows down naturally.
PJ: Yeah, beautifully!
GC: According to the feeling of how it was playing. If you tried to re-record it, as Pete says, on the grid with a click track, it wouldn’t work.
PJ: You can’t tell! There’s no obvious bits where we’re drifting. And the keyboard solo sounds great; it all sounds really smooth.
Yeah, it is the natural sound of a song coming together and the players gathering around it. That’s part of what makes it.
GC: You must have watched some of those clips that were going around, where they for example took a Led Zeppelin track and they tried to align the tempo exactly to the grid, so that every thing was “perfectly” in sync with the grid. And if you listen back to it, it sucks the life out of the song. You think, “This used to be a great sound, and now it’s just fallen flat!” There’s something to be said for allowing people to speed up and slow down a bit. You see a band live and they’re really getting into it, it’s natural that they will speed up a little bit, just to go with the excitement. That’s fine, I think! It doesn’t have to be “perfect”; far from it.
Absolutely! One track that I have another question was about “Whispers in Space”. Because for one thing I don’t remember Brad writing about Robert Rankin in Mythic Realms. And secondly, I thought there might be some Big Big Train/David Longdon shoutouts in the lyrics. Am I mishearing things?
DB: No, you’re not. When that song was originally written, Brad had the last part of the song all mapped out. But we decided that we didn’t want to emphasize the characters that he had written about too much. And so, consequently, we decided that we would change the emphasis of the song. And so, that’s how the Robert Rankin came about, because I’m a big Robert Rankin fan.
So, I introduced that element to it. I also introduced the element of the first verse lyrics, which if anybody notices, are just song titles by The Doors and Talk Talk. Brad had already added all the other influences in there with Big Big Train and everything else. So, no it’s not a coincidence; but it’s not something that we wanted to highlight as such. Pete did that absolutely brilliantly on his album, with his song about David Longdon. [“We’ll Remember”] But any discerning listener and any Big Big Train fan will listen to that song and know exactly what we’re singing about. But if you’re not a Big Big Train fan and you don’t know about the story, then you’re looking at it from a different way. And that’s how we’d like it to be.
Exactly! It works whether you catch everything or not. That makes sense.
DB: And Robert himself [laughs] absolutely loves the idea! I actually wrote to Robert and asked him if I could use that clip out of his book. And he said to me, “Yes, you can use it. And I also want a copy of the CD!” So I sent him a copy of the CD and he’s absolutely thrilled with it. So, happy days. Nice fella.
[PJ and GC agree]
That’s marvelous, and he’s an author I’ve not yet gotten into, so now I have a really good reason. Cool!
DB: As long as you don’t take him seriously, and you just go along for the ride with Robert Rankin books. He writes what he calls “far-fetched fiction”, OK? Which is lots and lots of tall stories, lots of running gags. Lots of time travel and ridiculous situations. Lots of steampunk.
PJ: I got into Brightonomicon when I heard it on the radio. ‘Cause it was giving off massive Hitchiker’s Guide [to the Galaxy] vibes for me, which is a huge plus. I think the Douglas Adams influence is in there, which is all good by me!
And that makes sense. Doug Adams, Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde, those kind of British authors are favorites of mine. So I’m looking forward to it.
PJ: Oh, you should definitely try a bit of Rankin then!
So you’ve released two singles so far: the Bradbury single, “You’ve Written Poetry, My Boy”, and the title track. Have you been pleased with the response?
DB: We have! We were so pleased with the video that Rob Birnholz made for us. Another Big Big Train fan and friend of ours. When he said that he would make a video, we didn’t for one second think that it would be as incredible as what it was! So yeah, we were really pleased with that.
And then we won Prog Magazine Tracks of the Week [PJ cheers] for the second single, so we’d better be pleased with that! And here’s an exclusive for you: there’ll be one more single coming out, and that will be on the 19th of February. And that’s gonna be “Stillpoint”.
Oh, OK! Last time I asked and you wouldn’t tell me. So now I know!
DB: I’ve gotta keep something for the interview!
It’s true. So you’re releasing this on your own, because as you say, this has been more of an inhouse thing for you, both in the recording of it, and now with Robin Armstrong ceasing operations of Gravity Dream, you’re doing the release yourself. What are the challenges involved in releasing this on your own?
DB: It’s not huge. Because although Robin has wound down Gravity Dream as a vehicle for other artists, he’s still got it for Cosmograf. And consequently, he’s still distributing for us. So within the distribution scene, nothing’s changed. People still order through Gravity Dream, and Robin still sends out the CDs.
The only difference this time is that we had to finance it. So there’s been a lot of money invested into this one, and obviously we need to promote it as much as possible to get our investment back! Whereas before, it was done on a different basis; this time, it’s different. That’s the only difference, the financial side of it.
Which is why everybody should go to Gravity Dream or Band Wagon USA and order your copy now, correct!
DB: They should order three copies now! [All laugh]
PJ: That’s where the fun starts, isn’t it, with the promotion? Cause these days, everybody’s doing their own promotion. And you’re just shouting into a sea of noise: “Ooh, look over here!” “No, look over here!” “Look at me!” That’s what we’re trying to get on top of. We’ve gotta do the pushing. Talking to folks such as yourselves is fantastic to get the message out there, and that’s all good, and we hope people like the results.
Yeah! And has it been gratifying that you’ve gotten the response you’ve gotten so far? Again, the first inkling that we had of this was an announcement on the Prog web page. And, as you say, you just won a Tracks of the Week competition. It does seem like there’s more momentum behind this release.
GC: Yeah, I think so for sure. Jerry Ewing at Prog is being really good to us; he’s supporting us in multiple ways, with the announcement of the album and the Tracks of the Week. Dave is hoping that we’re gonna get a review in the magazine and possibly a bit more coverage as well. So we’re talking to them about that.
We’ve talked a lot about what we can do to reach beyond the people we already know. Because we don’t want to just sell a few CDs to people who already know us. We’ve gotta get this CD out to people who never heard of us and never heard our music before.
For example, in America, we’re doing a lot of work with someone called Shel Griffith, who’s helping us; she has contacts at radio stations; she’s got contacts in France and Germany as well. So we are very much trying to reach a whole bunch of new places, talk to new people who don’t know us and do everything we can. Cause we’re really proud of the record; we think it’s a really strong collection of songs. And we think that people who have the chance to hear it, a lot of people are gonna like it.
PJ: [Smoooothly:] We want to spread the Bardic love around! [GC laughs] That reaction from the core of fans, whatever you wanna call them, Bardic enthusiasts that we has been very encouraging so far with the two new tracks. So we hope that’ll continue.
GC: We’ve had a couple of reviews, Dave, as well, haven’t we?
DB: We have! There’s a third one just got on the site today.
And I’m sure more will be coming. And I know that at Progarchy we’re gonna have at least one full-length review, and I will certainly include it in my usual Quick takes column, and I’m looking forward to writing that up.
What I’d like to do in closing is to give each of you a chance to sum up what you think about this album, in the spirit that I was talking [about]: If you like “blank”, What We Really Like in Stories could be really up your alley! Who do you think this could appeal to? Let’s put Tim on the spot first and we’ll go around the robin.
PJ: Good!
TG: That’s an interesting approach, interesting way to think about it. I don’t know how I would put a bunch of “If you like ‘A’, then you should definitely try this.” But I think there’s influences, ranging from Supertramp to some Genesis. I think there’s a little of Pink Floyd influence as well. Maybe a cross-slice of some of those type of artists. An originality, I think, that makes it a little different. It sits in that – category’s not the right term – but it sits within that genre really nicely.
GC: And in addition to what Tim said, I think we’ve also worked very, very hard on the vocal approach on this album. I personally have always listened to, say, the Beach Boys – Brian Wilson’s a complete genius! And I wish I could sing like that.
What we have done is we tried to make space for backing vocals and harmony vocals, close harmonies and different backing vocals that do something different to the main vocals. If you listen to “The Feast Is Over”, there’s a section with completely cascading vocals. It’s not in the Gentle Giant style; it’s more in that Beach Boys-y kind of style. And that’s something that we’ve worked on as part of the more concise songwriting. We’re not becoming a pop band, but that’s an element personally I really like in songs, good harmony vocals backing up a strong lead vocal. That’s something I always love hearing.
TG: Absolutely.
And you’re right; there’s much more of that. I thought of the Beach Boys, I thought of [Todd] Rundgren, all sorts of nifty influences.
GC: Yeah, Rundgren!
But again, it’s all your own. Peter, you have about a minute. Who would you recommend this album to?
PJ: Dave said it’s not a concept album, but in a way it is, talking about all these different writers and stories that they produced. I think, yes there isn’t so much of the noodling, but if you like stories and if you like really getting out in different worlds that the stories make, then I think you’re gonna enjoy this album.
Thanks! And Dave, we’ll give you the last word; maybe 30 seconds.
DB: We tried to stay away from genres if we could, OK? Although we’re a prog band, we like dabbling in everything else. So if you like a bit of electronic, you like a bit of ELO, you like a bit of Genesis in the Duke era, we’ve got a melodic album, with lots of nice songs on it. And it’s got tunes you can listen to! That’s the sort of album we’ve made.
And it is that way; it’s an excellent album of tunes and the title really says it all: What We Really Like in Stories. I’m looking forward to getting my copies in hand; gonna pass ‘em out to my friends. And I wish you guys all the best as we get closer to the release. Thanks so much for talking to us today!
What We Really Like in Stories is released on March 7th; preorder at The Band Wagon USA or Gravity Dream Music.
— Rick Krueger
Progarchy 