ANAM: DISCOVERING JAPANANAM: DISCOVERING JAPAN

O hEadhra's a man who's found his niche amid the flight schedules, train timetables and highways that the band criss-cross with the agility of a Baryshnikov well-schooled in the intricacies of the dance. Travel, he avers, is both a necessary evil and a breath of fresh air which permeates Anam's blend of traditional and original material. Typically, I catch up with him at the other end of a phone line in Yokohama, Japan.
Signed to the giant Japanese multinational, JVC, Anam are in the business of convincing the punters, and indeed JVC, that there's more to life than manufacturing videos and TVs. One of the best aspects of signing to a Japanese (as opposed to an American or British) label was that the Japanese had far fewer preconceptions of what the band should sound like.
A further carrot was the fact that, in the past 18 months, Japan has turned on and tuned in in incredible numbers to all things Irish. Donal Lunny, Sharon Shannon, Bewley's coffee and boiled cabbage are suddenly jostling for space amid the delicacies of the sushi bar and the delights of the kabuki. It's an awakening that's impeccably timed, as far as Anam are concerned.
"JVC wanted a band to be their flagship," O hEadhra explains, "and although we had never planned on signing to a big label like that, it's worked out incredibly well. When we first played in Japan two years ago, we used to have to explain basic differences like the fact that Ireland and Britain are separate countries. This time round though, interviewers are far more tuned to the difference between regional styles like Cornish, Scottish and Irish music, and they want to talk about the crossover potential for our music to larger audiences than just an acoustic/roots audience."
Their initial gigs were more of a puzzle than a revelation to most Japanese punters, admits O hEadhra.
"I think they thought we were a country band at first," he recalls. "But after a number of gigs, we didn't sound so strange. It's a part of the growth that you can see all over the world where people are beginning to hear the difference between the likes of The Pogues and The Chieftains."
Japanese fans are a touch different to their Irish counterparts, in more ways than one. You can all but hear O hEadhra grinning down the phone line as he recalls one typical encounter.
"They're very appreciative," he remarks. "They stand, they listen, even though they've never heard of you before, and then they buy your CD, queue up and politely wait for you to sign one. One guy came up to me and said: "I saw you here two years ago. You were wearing the same shirt'! And I said 'yeah, I'm a poor musician, that's why! I don't think he believed me, though!"
Anam's impressions of Japan are equally wide-eyed and puzzled.
"It seems to be rush hour all the time, night and day," O hEadhra remarks. "We've found ourselves stuck in traffic jams at 11 o'clock at night, and 11 o'clock in the morning. But it's so easy to get away from the mêlée by visiting these beautiful temples and shrines which are everywhere here."
But getting away from it all was easier said than done at Anam's next port of call, Taiwan, a country that left Brian with far different impressions
"Have you seen Blade Runner?" he asks. "Tokyo is the glamorous side of Blade Runner, and Taiwan would be the murkier, the sleazier side. Not that the people were sleazy, but the streets were darker, and there was lots of fog around, and lots of poverty visible there."
From Blade Runner to The Last Emperor, Anam have stored up images of all manner of alien settings in which their music's been heard.
"We've played the Great People's Hall of Taipei," he says, straining to suppress his amazement at the incongruence of it all, "and we've been greeted with garlands of flowers by the Taiwanese record company on our arrival there. But on the other hand, they left us without any food and we had to fend for ourselves, and with three vegetarians in the band, we ended up living from the 7 Eleven and MacDonald's.
But starvation didn't stop them garnering a share of fans there either.
"I was stopped by a woman on the street one evening," Brian recalls, "and she said 'I saw you play in Cheltenham'! She'd been all the way around the world and she produced her Anam album for us to sign, which she had bought in Cheltenham. It's just amazing where your albums get to. So I'm not surprised anymore, but it's really reassuring when someone asks you to sign a CD that they bought way back when."
Although Anam has assumed a number of incarnations, its present format consists of two Irish members, O hEadhra and accordionist, Treasa Harkin, Scottish vocalist and bodhrán player, Aimee Leonard, and Neil Davey, a Cornish native and master of the bouzouki and mandolin. Not quite the colour-by-numbers line-up that fits neatly into PR packaging, or indeed, into radio station playlists, their image from time to time. Add to that the fact that the band have decided to re-locate to Edinburgh and there's even more ammunition for cloaking them in ethereal mists on picturesque glens.
"I'm not so sure about this term 'Celtic'," O hEadhra admits a touch cautiously, "because I think it's a bit wishy-washy. I suppose we do draw on those traditions, but we try not to put ourselves into one bracket whenever we can. We're not a band playing music from a certain part of Ireland or a certain part of Scotland. We just play music!"
Despite the tendency to pigeonhole, Anam haven't been stymied by the colour of their passports; many of their ports of call cared a whole lot more about BPMs than about the band's genealogy.
"We played a wonderful gig in Freemantle, outside Perth," Brian reveals, "which, they say is the most remote city in the world. They're so laid back and so open. In fact we found that wherever we played in Australia, there was a great reaction to the music."
The days when bands with even the faintest hint of Irish in them would be expected to round off a set with 'When Irish Eyes Are Smiling' are, for the most part, long gone, according to O hEadhra.
"The Australians know better than to ask for that," he says, "but we have encountered that sort of thing in places like Germany where someone will say: 'You vill play 'The Vild Rover'. That's all they want. But Australians and Americans are, on the whole, very tuned in and very discerning audiences. People are now beginning to hear the difference between The Dubliners and Altan, for example. Even the likes of Riverdance has helped people to learn the difference between traditional dance music, sean nós singing and come-all-ye ballads. So the market is much bigger and it's a lot more satisfying, at least for us."
One of the highlights of Anam's travelogue to date has been a flying visit to New Zealand, a country that left its mark on O hEadhra, as well as the rest of the band.
"We only played two gigs in the country, one in the North and one in the South Island," he says, "and it's just a stunning place. The people are lovely and they're much more attuned to the Scottish influences in our music because so many Scots settled there, especially in the South Island. The funniest thing was, that although it was the furthest place from home that we've played, ironically it was the place that we most felt at home. We had a feeling of 'I could live here'. New Zealand is one of the few places that I've felt that way about."
And have the band acquired any curious peccadilloes since they've assumed this nomadic lifestyle? O hEadhra laughs and pauses, wondering whether to divulge Anam's collective Achilles' tendon.
"It's funny the kind of trainspotting habits you pick up," he acknowledges sheepishly. "These days we notice crazy things like the different 'Walk' signs in different countries, and the different kinds of public toilets that different cultures use! In Japan they have built-in bidets in their toilets! Of course Japan is particularly technical!"
And what of their personal lives? Can relationships survive international date lines and jet lag?
"Well, it's difficult," O hEadhra admits, "and one thing I know for sure is that we couldn't survive without e-mail. We've even moved from laptops to palmtops now just so that we can make it as easy as possible to keep in touch. And recently we've made a band rule that we're not going to tour for more than 3-4 weeks maximum. We've realised that, after huge long tours which were really trying on our personal lives. But we've had to fight for that, and we intend to stick with it."