The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Pastures new: Roddy Woomble
Rio Community Centre, Newport-on-tay, March 17
Surprisingly, north-east Fife has rarely figured on the well-travelled Roddy Woomble’s itineraries.
Despite having seemingly played all over Scotland on various solo tours over the past dozen years, the Idlewild frontman is looking forward to visiting pastures new tomorrow following a tip from his Dundee-based bandmate Andrew Mitchell, aka Wasylyk.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in Dundee because Idlewild quite often practise there, though I’ve never actually been to Newport, strangely,” he says.
“It was Andrew who knew about the venue and suggested we could play there. I think it’ll be nice.”
Ayrshire-born Roddy, 41, spent much of his early life in the USSR, France and the USA before studies took him to Edinburgh, where he met his Idlewild colleagues Colin Newton and Rod Jones in the mid-90s.
The band’s debut indie single Queen Of The Troubled Teens was released in March 1997 ahead of mini-album Captain creating a signing frenzy.
Major label backing for debut album Hope Is Important further raised the band’s profile in 1998 with subsequent releases 100 Broken Windows, The Remote Part and Warnings/promises cementing the four-piece’s place at the top end of the charts.
Although they’ve since completed just three albums in the last 13 years, Roddy has penned five folk-infused solo offerings over the same period.
Last year’s enigmatic The Deluder eschewed balladry in favour of electro influences and the singer says he hopes to wrongfoot fans all over again at Newport’s sold-out former cinema. “I’m doing the show as a duo with Andrew,” the Isle of Iona resident explains.
“I’ve never really played guitar very much live and I really wanted to do that. I wanted to challenge myself, so Andrew’s joining me on keyboards and extra guitar and we’re going to rework a lot of solo songs and play a lot of Idlewild songs.
“It’ll be quite an unusual show for people that’ve seen me before.”
Amid this flurry of solo activity, Roddy says Idlewild — whose last release was Everything Ever Written in 2015 — are readying their return. “We played some American gigs nearly a year and a half ago now and recorded six songs in Los Angeles for our next album.
“Then we kind of put it on hold because everyone was doing different things. Rod took over a recording studio and was setting that up. So the focus was lost a bit but we’re back on it now and we’ll be recording another eight or nine songs in April.
“Our main priority this year is to finish it. I reckon it’ll be done by the summer but probably won’t be out until early next year.”