Idlewild's Roddy Woomble talks ahead of Moseley Folk Festival
There was a time when you’d have been more likely to see Roddy Woomble rockin’ out at Wolverhampton’s Civic Hall or Birmingham’s O2 Academy.
At the turn of the Millennium, his band – Idlewild – were habitués of the UK’s top 10 album chart, as they recorded a series of gold and silver records.
Likened to REM, the indie rockers were the nearly-men of alt-rock – the ones who could’ve enjoyed Coldplay-esque success if only they’d really wanted it.
Fast forward to the present and Roddy won’t be playing any towering rock gig soon. Instead, he’s getting ready to play a quiet acoustic set at Moseley Folk Festival on September 3 in support of his new record, The Deluder.
It’s his sixth solo record and his first featuring new music since the 2013 album Listen To Keep.
“This record took me by surprise,” he says. “We recorded an Idlewild record in 2015 that did pretty well and took us all by surprise. We had a real desire to carry on but everyone lives in different places and does different things. So we took a break and before I knew it I’d written four or five songs. Those happy accidents led to other things and suddenly I’d got a record. It wasn’t expected. But sometimes that’s how it happens.” Roddy recorded in Mull and Edinburgh over winter, from November to February. It’s markedly different from earlier solo works. Listen to his 2006 debut, My Secret Is Your Silence, and he sounds like a completely different recording artist. Roddy is pleased to have moved on, to have left the past behind.
“I think sometimes you take stock and think. Generally speaking, if you do creative things, you are always looking to the future, you don’t dwell on what you’ve done. Idlewild was a fluid group. I think it’s healthy in the long term that people came and went because that allowed things to change.
“We were big label, indie label and now we put our own records out. As people stopped buying records, we adapted to the times. We have a strong hardcore fan base, now I’ve got one for myself too.”
Roddy laughs at the idea that his band could have been much, much bigger. “It was one of those classic things, when you think you’re doing well but the people around you want you to do better.
“We were signed to a label with Kylie and Radiohead and the only band after us was Coldplay, who became the biggest band in the world. So compared to them, we were seen as underachievers. We were always on the fringes of the mainstream but I was very happy there.”
