Jack Clark

Albion and

Jethro Tull

Interview  by Ron 'Brew' Brouwer

Jack Clark   

Albion and Jethro Tull

On September the 4th British Folk-Rockers Albion played a stunning gig in the beautiful ParkVilla Theater in Alphen a/d Rijn.

Before the show my good friend Ron 'Brew' Brouwer did an interview with guitarist  (and Jethro Tull guitarist) Jack Clark. Here it is!

Ron

Hello Jack, welcome back to Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands. It's not an entirely new place for you. What makes performing in the Netherlands, and especially at ParkVilla where we are now, special for you and Albion?

Jack

It was our first international gig as a band, two years ago in '24. And yeah, it's just a great place. We really enjoyed it last time. I like the Netherlands anyway. Been visiting Amsterdam a few times personally. With Jethro Tull we're going to the Netherlands later on this year, so we've got loads of places that we're going then.

Performing here is just validation, I guess, that the band is doing something cool. We play in the UK a lot, and I guess the next step for a band like us is to try and venture internationally. So to come back here again and play to the same people, and hopefully some fans that we won over last time, is really cool. So it'll always have a special place in my heart because we played here first.

Ron

About the origins of Albion, Albion of course started with the EP ‘Pryderi’. And since, Albion has developed into a band with two full-length albums, a third coming up. How has the band's sound evolved over these few years?

Jack

Joe does all of the writing and composing. When we first started Albion, we'd been in a band before that was, I guess, a grunge metal type thing. Completely different. But we'd always been into folky stuff. Our favourite band when we were growing up was Iron Maiden, and it doesn't scream folk straight away, but when you listen to a lot of the melodies, they're really folky. And we grew up listening to acoustic music and recently came across Stan Rogers and all the sort of folk guys. I think it was in 2018 Joe started sending me some tunes that were sort of folk at heart, folk metal, not quite folk rock like it is now, but folk metal. And we were like, this is cool, and I think no one's really done it this way before. There's lots of sort of folk metal bands, I'd say, that kind of have a pirate edge or a Scottish edge or something, or they might dress up as folk people, but the music is still metal. But I think that we are one of the only bands, who really blend traditional folk music with heavy metal.

So we started doing that with things like Visions of Albion. Sort of the tiny spark that created the flame. And then Joe started working on ‘Pryderi’, really well composed. He took a long time writing that stuff and making everything work, but I think it's the best crafted thing he's ever done. And that was really the idea. I'm not sure where he got the idea from. I think it was from a Thomas Tallis thing maybe, and there was one nugget of idea and he developed it into this whole 25-minute piece.

I don't know if it's a concept album, but all four pieces sort of blend into one another and it's the same thing. And then ‘Lakesongs of Elbid’ happened, and that was just more of the same, where it was just really going down the sort of folk metal route. ‘Pagan Spirit’, one of the first ones that was written, ‘Finding Avalon’. They were much heavier, I think you can hear where the writing over two years had developed, because you have the really heavy stuff, and then you have things like some of the acoustic moments on it that are really light, really nice. And then you had a tune called ‘Silvaplana Rock’, which is more of a folk rock tune that's a bit heavier. You sort of hear the progression of the writing in that. And then obviously you've got ‘It was in the month of May’. Joe wrote enough material for two albums. The next album will be the sister album to this one. It's all in the same vein, which is sort of folk rock music. It's not a heavy album, I don't think. There's heavy moments, but it's more of a folk rock thing because we were really trying to get the most out of the folk sound. And I think to get the most out of the folk sound, you maybe dial back the distortion a little bit and see what we can do. So it's developed over the last few ideas.

Ron

‘Lakesongs of Elbid’ received a particularly enthusiastic response in the Netherlands. When did you first realize that the Dutch audience had really embraced your music?

Jack

I think when we got invited to come here. Obviously we tracked the Bandcamp orders and stuff, and we'd seen that quite a few people had bought from the Netherlands, and Joe was sending loads of CDs out to the Netherlands. And on our Spotify, you can track where people are listening, and I think other than UK and maybe Germany, Netherlands is always third or second or something like that. So we're like, okay, interesting. And then Arne got in touch and said, we want you to come over and play a show in the Netherlands. We thought, great! So then obviously we've come back again, so I guess we've got a small but loyal following here in the Netherlands.

Ron

And this spring on May 27th, ‘It Was In The Month Of May’, let's say part 1, was released. What does the month of May mean within the story behind the album to you?

Jack

The biggest track on the album is ‘Calan Mai’. Although the song is sung in English, the title is the traditional Welsh name for May Day. It's the final song on the album. And then you have the song at the start, ‘Mis Mai’, which is sung in Welsh and means ‘the month of May’. The album sort of was really contained within May, I guess. So I don't really know how I feel about it, other than that I just really like the music. I don't think much past that. I guess the album cover is the coolest we've ever had, by Travis Smith. It just looks amazing, it really captures what the album sounds like, so he's done an amazing job with that. The way I feel about that album is that album cover, because I think it speaks to what the album sounds like.

Ron

So this time around you can judge the ‘book’ by its cover.

Jack

I think so, yeah. So if you like the album cover, hopefully you'll like the material.

Ron

You are now also a member of Jethro Tull. What do you take from that experience into Albion, and vice versa, like musical similarities between the two bands listeners might not immediately notice?

Jack

I think personally what I've taken from it is the live experience. Playing in front of 2,000 people with Tull translates to being able to come here and play to 100 people, just because you get better at your playing to people and understanding what it's like. I actually get more nervous for gigs like this than I do for bigger gigs because I can see everybody. It's very intimate. When you play with Tull, you're quite far back on stage and the audience are over there and you perform, but you're not really thinking about— because I can't see people. These smaller gigs always feel a little more nervous. 

There's instrumental similarities in terms of the instruments that we use. Obviously we have a flute. The main instrument of Jethro Tull is a flute. I think our music's quite different though, in terms of how it's composed harmonically, melodically, we're quite different. I see Tull as quite a rhythmic heavy band, they do lots of interesting time signatures and things like that, whereas we don't do so much of that, but we focus more on the harmonic content that's there. I think a lot of people assume that we are Tull adjacent. One, because of the connection. Two, because of the flute. Although I personally don't think we sound much alike, but each to their own. If people like Tull, I think people would like us. I can imagine that. There's a crossover just because Tull have folk music and we play folk music.

Ron

And Tull had Joe. Tull has you. There's the personal connection as well.

What's it like playing with another Tull guitarist in Albion now, how do you combine?

Jack

Joe and I have been playing together for about 15 to 16 years. We met in school. You're the same ages. So we grew up together, spent a lot of time writing, playing music together, so we're really familiar with each other's playing. There's not an ego with the guitar playing. Joe's the lead guitar player in this band and he's bloody brilliant. So I'm happy to sit and do what I need to do to make the band sound good. We've been playing together forever, so we're very familiar with each other's playing and habits and style. And, you know, I think we write to complement that.

Ron

Why should people who have never heard Albion before come to an Albion show?

Jack

It's very fun. Joe's got really good stage banter. He's very funny with the crowd. It's almost half a musical show and half a stand-up comedy gig with Joe. I think Albion is accessible to a lot of people, even if it doesn't seem that on the outside. It's folk rock or prog, but I think that the point of traditional folk music is that it gets everybody together, and our music is that. It's just got drums and electric guitars. So I think everybody could get something out of an Albion gig. They might not like all of it, and that's fair enough. They might not like Joe's stage banter, and that's fair enough. Or the bass player's performance. But I think everybody can get something out of the show musically. There'd be something in it for everyone. We're not a generalist band, but I think that we have quite a good show, and I hope people enjoy that as well.

Ron

Jack, thank you so much for this interview.

Jack

No problem.