ANAM are midway through an intensive promotional tour for First Footing, their new album for the Japanese-based JVC/Victor s World music label and, to put it mildly, they re dead tired.
We re on the verge of hysteria, says singer and bodhran player Aimee Leonard. We ve all been buying underwear, cause we ran out and we haven t had a chance to go to a launderette anywhere. We had to do a knickers stop yesterday in Sligo!
It certainly hasn t been an easy ride. Singer and guitarist Brian O hEadhra is the sole remaining founding member, having formed Anam with a few mates back in 1992. Orkney Islander Aimee joined up in time for the recording of the band s second self-produced album, Saoirse, in 1995, and later that year Dubliner Treasa Harkin came on board, playing button accordion. Now the group s lineup has been completed with the addition of mandolin and bouzouki player Neil Davey, from Newquay, Cornwall, who met up with the band after their move to Edinburgh in January of this year.
Plans are already under way for a new album, to be recorded in October, and this time round the label is anxious for the band to make a video, a notion that sets the entire group to giggling into their tea.
We still can t see ourselves doing it, says Aimee, but we will do it. So long as there s no shamrocks involved, or spangly tights and tutus.
We re definitely going to push the contemporary side of it a bit more, but that doesn t mean bringing in synthesisers, bass and drums! We would like to experiment with the instruments that we play, to see how far we can push them to make a contemporary sort of sound, because we re living in a modern age but we ll always come back to our roots. We do upset a few traditionalists, but that s okay.
We re getting a push from JVC, and for some reason people don t really like that. Which is a shame because we re still based in the root of the music, all of us are, and I think that if the profile of it is going to go up, there has to be that crossover into the bigger market.
There have been attempts to take us down a peg or two, admits Aimee, and we don t really need to be taken down a peg or two. What do you do? Do you slog away forever, or do you step onto the next level and keep your feet on the ground? We re definitely doing that. God, I m starting to feel like lying on the ground at the moment. We re not a waged band any money we ve made made on this tour has just come from our gigs, which in Ireland isn t particularly much, so we re still skint!
The Japanese have a very different ethos from the Western record labels, Brian points out. It s very spiritually-based. When we were out there, they were saying, So what s it like to play soul-healing music? We said What are you talking about? and they said, Your music is healing music . And for us that was an honour. It was an unusual idea, but very appealing at the same time.
We re lucky, because we re getting the best of the commercial world, but we re also getting the more cultured world and the more spiritual side of things. It sounds very airy-fairy, but I think it s important. n