Skip Matheny –former bartender in a retirement community and currently a songwriter in the band Roman Candle — caught up with Fran Healy, frontman and main songwriter from the Scottish band Travis, before they played at Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre.

Who We’re Drinking With:

Travis are from Glasgow. They spent quite a bit of time at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 00s being one of the biggest, if not the biggest band, in the U.K. They have released six studio albums and have twice received the BRIT award for album of the year. Travis often receives credit for having paved the way for bands like Coldplay, Keane, etc. and Chris Martin has famously said that he is “a poor man’s Fran Healy.” If you are looking for a good introduction to Travis, you should check out the More Than Us (Live in Glasgow) DVD.

Though they co-wrote the last album as a band, their main songwriter (and “benevolent dictator”) is Fran Healy, who we are chatting with today.



What’s your favorite Drink?

I like beer. But you can’t drink a lot of it because you get a fat face — a fat mask — at the age of 36. But living in Germany — I live in Berlin — it’s hard to avoid really nice beer.

When you’re writing songs do you think in terms of crafting songs for your record or do you just write what comes out?

The way you write is just something you pick up [over time]. It’s not like tying your shoelace. There isn’t just one or two ways of doing it. There is a load of ways to do it. No one teaches you how to write the song. You just stumble and roll and trip into it. So, each time I try to write a song, I stumble and roll and trip into it the same way I’ve always done from the very start, except, maybe, I can sort of do it a little quicker than I did before, but not much. The craft of it? … I don’t think of albums. It’s impossible to think of albums unless you’re a designer, and I’m not a designer. I just want to write something that’s honest and true to me.

What does that “stumbling and rolling and tripping into it” process look like for you or the band?

I think that there are two kinds of songwriters. There are songwriters and jingle writers — but within the jingle there can be truth. If you put truth in your jingle then it becomes less like an advertising jingle for your band. It becomes a little more in touch [with that truth] when you hear it, and it’s invisible, you can’t tell. But most people write jingles, because every songwriter is [also] a jingle writer. When I say jingle, it’s just advertising music without any soul to it, but it’ll get stuck in your head if it’s a great jingle. But I guess the truthful part of it comes in the lyric. If something has happened to you, or you’ve met someone, or you want to get something off your chest, and you put that in a song, it makes the song vibrate differently, it stops being a jingle. I’m not knocking jingle writers though, because I’m a jingle writer. I’m just saying that if you write a song that’s not a jingle, it’s got more depth.

Look, I’m old enough to remember that it was not only acceptable at one time to make an album like this, but actually preferred. And—get this —people enjoyed it. The Wee Hours Revue miraculously maintains a current appeal while channeling faded strains of Oasis, the Jayhawks, the Rolling Stones, and ’90s alt-rock charisma. Does that scare you? It shouldn’t—unless you’re a hipster.

The opening track, “Something Left to Say,” sets a lush, harmonic, and surprisingly urgent tone for the album. Lead singer Skip Matheny delivers the chorus—“The things you’ve done have made me what I am/And that’s catching the bus and half singing the tears of a clown”—with a brattish beauty that Liam Gallagher and Ryan Adams only wish they had.

Talk about a long time coming: Roman Candle's debut has been through two incarnations and three labels since its initial Indie release as Says Pop back in 2002. The latest version, polished to a bright sheen by indie stalwart Chris Stamey (exhibiting a previously hidden commercial acumen) introduces a young band with an already mature, readily identifiable sound built around Skip Matheny's disarming vocals and his drummer brother Logan's infectious grooves.

"From the first listen, one gets easily hooked on these hooks. And there’s a lyrical potency throughout that catches your ear and makes rewinding rewarding."

It's said that first impressions linger. Roman Candle can relate, because the band is in the midst of the most protracted first impression in recent memory. Its excellent debut album, The Wee Hours Revue, was released June 6 on V2 records but has been in circulation for years, since it was first released as Says Pop on the independent label Outlook in 2002. that was two labels and several lineup changes ago for the band's core Skip, Logan, and Timshel Matheny. "Going back to these songs again, yea, it's kinda like moving back to your old hometown after being gone a long time," says Skip Matheny, Roman Candle's singer/guitarist. "Hearing the record again is like riding around your old neighborhood. But having a new lineup to play them live is exciting. We've had to work hard to retain that excitement. If the live versions don't seem like the CD, well, that's intentional." The retooled album, immaculately produced by Chris Stamey, is high gloss, detailed pop music for the senses as well as the mind. Most pop records fall short on groove, but The Wee Hours Revue is as rhythmically smart as it is sharp and catchy.