The Dave Foster Band
He’s been flying high as part of the Steve Rothery Band, but for The Dave Foster Band’s third album, Nocebo, Foster and co-writer Dinet Poortman have revisited some dark places, and set some ghosts to rest.
Steve Rothery’s best mate on his solo career and “making it”.
Dave Foster turned 48 in January. He spent his birthday in the air, flying out to Mexico with the Steve Rothery Band for some shows. British Airways saw his date of birth in his passport and kindly presented him with a card and a bottle of champagne. A few weeks later and he’s home in St Helens and talking to Prog. The winter cold is aggravating the chronic bone condition he’s suffered all his life, but he’s still sparky, full of enthusiasm and gratitude.
“Steve’s my best mate, and also one of my heroes. He’s a remarkable musician, generous and he’s got a good moral compass. He is
correct. The Rothery Band has enabled me to experience all the things I wanted to as a musician. I feel more like a musician than I ever have. My wife asked me recently, ‘How will you know when you’ve made it?’ Once that meant having a Porsche and a big house, but I found myself on stage in Mexico thinking, ‘Is this it? Is this what ‘making it’ feels like?’ I’m a happier person for it.”
Foster’s work with Rothery has led him to a broader audience than ever, as has his work with Panic Room. He amicably left that band last year due to sheer weight of work with Rothery, as a guitar tutor and session gun. Then there’s The Dave Foster Band, which debuted with Gravity in 2011, released Kickstarter-funded follow-up Dreamless in
2016, and now return with Nocebo, their strongest work to date.
You’d think his own band would be his creative centre, his thing, but no. “I don’t really know what my centre is,” he says. “My own albums have been a sort of bonus for people at the merch desk – ‘This is the guitarist’s solo project’ – and people have bought it that way and started following me online. This is the most accidental solo career anyone’s ever had. My live band is Steve’s band, the only one unique to me is Dinet.”
Dinet Poortman is Foster’s singer, co-writer, and secret weapon. They met through mutual friend Rothery at a Marillion Weekend more than a decade ago. She guested on two of Gravity’s songs, became a major player on
Dreamless, and she’s really come into her own on Nocebo. A lecturer in Neuropsychology by day, she came up with the album’s enigmatic title. A placebo harnesses the healing power of positive thinking. A nocebo does the opposite. It’s a memory or an expectation that elicits negative thought, and brings about harmful physical or psychological consequences. “I used to work with kids who’d get medication for their ADHD or autism,” Poortman tells Prog from her home in Nijmegen, Holland, “and they’d have placebos and nocebos. It’s not a positive word, but that’s what we were going for. It’s not an upbeat album.”
“THAT’S THE GORGEOUS THING ABOUT COLLABORATING. THE OTHER PERSON COMES BACK WITH A NEW IDEA THAT BREATHES WHOLE NEW LIFE INTO THE MUSIC.”
“I FOUND MYSELF ON STAGE IN MEXICO THINKING, ‘IS THIS WHAT ‘MAKING IT’ FEELS LIKE?’ I’M A HAPPIER PERSON FOR IT.”
Maybe not, but Nocebo is no doleful, minor-key dirge. Much of it was recorded at PWL Studios, the platinum disc-clad facility of Pete Waterman, and co-produced by Waterman’s long-standing engineer, Al Unsworth. Foster and Poortman have conjured a diverse set drawing on golden-age prog, neo and catchy, 80s-inflected pop.
The infectious Counting Down The Days has something of Marillion’s Cover My Eyes to it. The sweeping Forfeit is rich, autumnal and folky. Eventually, Everything Connects rests on an assured driving rock groove. Among the ranks are bassist Yatim Halimi, drummer Leon Parr and keyboardist Riccardo Romano, with Steve Rothery, Pete Trewavas and StillMarillion’s Martin Jakubski among the guest contributors.
Foster’s fretwork encompasses solos both lyrical and grandstanding, with some lusty acoustic strumming, plenty of tasteful textural work, and some compelling, Dunnery-esque vocals. Poortman thanks
‘All the 80s music ever made’ in the liner notes, and evokes two Foster favourites, Claudia Brücken and Garbage’s Shirley Manson, with hints of Chrissie Hynde, Elizabeth Fraser, and even her compatriot Anneke van Giersbergen.
“Dinet’s dead clever,” says Foster. “And she’s got this Dutch suaveness. There’s this swagger and confidence to her voice and she doesn’t think too hard about it. Her approach to melody is unusual; she comes up with cool, spellbinding melodies I’d never have thought of. That’s the gorgeous thing about collaborating. The other person comes back with a new idea that breathes whole new life into the music, and I can get excited because it’s no longer something that’s just come from inside me.”
It’s only after deeper listening that Nocebo offers up its darker secrets. It turned out that the writers had more in common than just music. “I was bullied a lot at school,” says Poortman, “as was Dave. We were talking one day and the subject just came up, and we knew then that we could write about that. That’s how the album’s concept began.”
“Yes, me and Dinet both had complicated school lives,” adds Foster. “You’re forced to go because it’s supposed to be good for you, and for us two it wasn’t. I hated school. There were unpleasant overhangs that I found very hard to shake off. The album was originally called Catharsis. It was this outsider idea, songs about not fitting in. Then Dinet came up with the word ‘nocebo’ and that was it. I always wanted this album to have a unique title. There are millions of Dave Fosters on Google, so I wanted a really unique title so we’d turn up on the first page!”
Foster’s not being glib. He just has that very British reflex of capping off any serious talk with a dash of self-deprecating humour. Being Dutch, Poortman has no such compulsion, and is happier being blunt. This cultural friction is part of their musical chemistry.
“If something isn’t working for me I’ll say,
‘No, I’m not going to do this,’” says Poortman. “When we were making Dreamless I could tell when something wasn’t working for Dave, but he didn’t like saying so. But he’s got used to me, and he has learned to just be honest and direct.”
Nocebo’s hard-rocking opener, Pata Dura, takes its title from the Italian equivalent of ‘two left feet’, a poetic metaphor for the pair’s awkwardness at school. Poortman’s favourite song on the record, Karma, broods over the hold past experiences can have over you, and is punctuated by a transcendent Rothery solo. Foster had worked out the chords of Shine On You Crazy Diamond for one of his guitar students, and took inspiration from the way Roger Waters navigated seamlessly through several keys. “I wanted it to be majestic but not epic,” he says. “That Kate Bush thing where there’s not a lot on it but it’s still big.”
Inspired by Pete Townshend’s potent chord economy, Anything veers from a proggy time signature to Who-esque rock, with a defiantly confident message: ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down/It’s all about belief, believe in what you can be.’ “On my last day in school I was left off the system,” says Foster. “I was meant to have a careers interview but wasn’t even on the list. That was it! So I had no idea what I wanted to do. This is me going back in the past to tell myself then that you can be anything you want to be. Dinet and Martin [Jakubski]’s vocals are so brilliant on that.”
Foster sings the quasi-industrial Ghosts, which tackles bad memories and their nocebo effect directly. “Those bullies at school, they’re the ghosts,” he says. “I’m not usually protective of my own songs, but that’s a very personal one and I had to deliver it myself.
The hard riff has that anger in it, but the last line is ‘Close the box and walk away’. It’s about finding an old photo album and wondering what happened to these people who hurt you, then deciding not to get lost in memories and crack on. The ending is triumphant – I won.”
“These experiences do form you,” Poortman adds. “The ghosts don’t go away, but then I wouldn’t be the person I am now if I hadn’t gone through that. It helped make me who
I am now, and that’s fine.” That acceptance is echoed by All That Remains, a beautiful, string-laden piece that gives resolution to the album, and an overwhelming sense of closure.
The Dave Foster Band are scattered and busy, so live work is a tricky matter. They supported Steve Rothery in Uden in 2017, and the hasty hotel rehearsal beforehand was the first time they’d ever heard Nocebo’s music live. By the time you read this they’ll have supported Rothery again in Cambridge, with other gigs to come depending on the album’s reception.
“I genuinely have no expectations, no grand designs,” says Dave Foster. “I just like sitting with the final mixes and thinking that this music didn’t exist before we made it. Even if we sold 50 units I’d be happy, because Dinet and I are both proud of the album. Even if nothing happens I won’t be crushed.”
It’s a good way of looking at things.
Correct, even.
Nocebo is out now via Bandcamp. See www.davefosterband.bandcamp.com.