Never mind the bucolics

Last month saw the physical release of To The Pine Roots, the latest record by former Snow Patrol man Iain Archer. The album – originally available as a download exclusively from Archer’s website – has a decidedly rustic vibe, so it comes as little surprise to learn that it was chiefly recorded in a cottage in Germany’s Black Forest. How did Archer end up making his album there?

“My father-in-law is from that area,” he explains, sitting backstage at the Dublin O2 before his recent support slot with Snow Patrol. “For the past number of years I’ve been going out there; there’s a little bungalow that the family have. I discovered that it was a great place to go to escape London. I started to write some songs out there, and it felt very different. It was away from the industry and the hype, and it was maybe somewhere to rediscover what it’s all about.”
To The Pine Roots is notable for being book-ended by a couple of character songs, ‘The Acrobat’ and ‘The Nightwatchman’. Did the songwriter consider this to be new creative territory?
“Maybe so,” he considers. “I was inspired to read Richard Bach by John T. Davis, who’s a great documentary filmmaker from the North. We teamed up on a couple of things, and there’s an uncanny synchronicity going on in some of our work. So, John had kind of talked to me about Richard Bach, and I read a couple of his books. ‘The Acrobat’ and ‘The Nightwatchman’ probably stem from that; those characters are somehow strange little metaphors for life. There are some really great ideas in Jonathan Livingston Seagull that I think might have found their way in.”
Earlier this year, Archer organised a tribute gig in London for the late John Martyn. The gifted folk artist was obviously someone whom Iain admired a great deal.
“I first met John when Miriam (Iain’s wife and collaborator) and I supported him for a month in about ’95,” he reflects. “We got to know him and his band, as you do when you’re on tour with people. Afterwards, we crossed paths every now and again; I’d meet him at gigs and bump into him in various places. His death was a tragic thing, it really hit us pretty hard actually.
“The music is just full of such beautiful sorrow that you already associate everything that he did with that – the minute he goes, it brings all the feelings that you had wrapped up in the record down on your head.”
Whilst a member of Snow Patrol, Archer co-wrote the band’s breakthrough hit ‘Run’. Was he surprised by the song’s success?
“It’s always surprising. You kind of get it drilled into you, to have a certain degree of realistic pessimism about things. So you never create a piece of music and make any assumptions; that would be foolish. It’s definitely been amazingly surprising to see what’s gone on with that tune.”
Snow Patrol would eventually receive an Ivor Novello Award for ‘Run’. How did Iain find the experience of winning the prestigious gong?
“It was terrifying,” he recalls. “The rest of the guys were in America, so I went and picked up the award. Lou Reed was sitting four feet in front of me as I tried to make a speech. It was mildly intimidating!”