The drummer of the rock band Aslan, Alan Downey, isn’t looking to retire just yet. Christy Dignam, the band’s lead singer, died last year aged 63, but Downey sees no reason to abandon his sticks and twiddle his calloused thumbs. “We can’t give up and we can’t give in. We have come this far, so what else would we want to do? Yes, Christy’s gone, but we have our music and we want to continue.”
There was never any doubt about suspending the band, the guitarist Billy McGuinness says. They had every reason to knock it on the head, which is what Aslan did in the 1980s when Christy left the band then. “He came back, but that obviously isn’t going to happen now. This is what we’re going to do until we die,” he says.
The other founding members of Aslan agree. Along with Downey and McGuinness, the guitarist Joe Jewell is huddled around a wood-burning stove in a chilly rehearsal space at Camelot Studios, Co Dublin. In another part of the room the band’s new lead singer, Lee Tomkins, bides his time. We are here to discuss, what is Aslan Mk 2?
For the first time in more than ten years plans are afoot for the band to tour outside of Ireland, and for the first time in over 18 months they will be playing a series of gigs in Ireland. There is as much giddiness in the air as there is regret.
“People have to remember that because Christy’s health was deteriorating we had to stay in Ireland, pretty much, for ten years.” Downey says. “We were getting offers to play at venues in America and Australia, but we had to turn them down. Now we are talking about going to those countries.”
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“Now we’re free and I mean that with the utmost respect,” McGuinness says. “Christy wasn’t well and over the past decade his health came first and so he set the pace.”
“Being held back didn’t bother us,” Jewell adds. “We were able to gig in Ireland, one gig at a time because Christy couldn’t do two in a row.”
McGuinness says: “[Travelling abroad] was a no-no, but we didn’t mind at all because once a week we got on stage and were able to perform. It’s more the past 18 months of not gigging, plus the two years of Covid, that really screwed us up by just not being able to work. But, putting it simply, life goes on and music goes on.”
There have been many examples of rock bands carrying on following the departure of their lead singer. Casual music lovers will be aware of charismatic figure like Freddie Mercury, but can they name all of the other members of Queen?
“There’s a pecking order in a band,” Jewell says. “Not who is more important, but how the band is perceived by the public and the primary focus is on the singer. Nothing is ever going to change that, so if the singer is no longer there then it’s a struggle for the other members. Bands carry on, however, and the reason for that is because of the music and the songs.
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“If the drummer or bass player leaves, no one really cares. Well, they do, but they tend to get over it very quickly. From the perspective of the songs, it doesn’t matter to the audience who comes up with the lyrics, a chord progression or a guitar lick. It’s the band making the music. That’s the connection with the audience because at the end of the day it’s the music.”
Many bands have little problem playing the same songs over and over again for many years, essentially becoming their own tribute act, and Aslan have been guilty of this for the best part of a decade. The 20 or so songs they have in their back pocket (the “fan favourites”) will always get them through their shows, but new material has to be on the horizon.
Their most recent studio album, Nudie Books and Frenchies, was released in 2012. Downey says that Aslan have always been “about moving on, creating new material”, but irrespective of Dignam’s health issues, the lack of new songs in more than a decade seems constrained at best. That will change, fans are assured.
“Yes, we will write new stuff, but our focus is on getting out there again and playing as many shows as possible,” Jewell says. “While this year isn’t exactly starting the band again, it is a different way for us to get back into things. Once we get that out of the way, new material will emerge.
“When the time is right, we’ll start. We’ve been rehearsing about four days a week for the past few months to make sure we are match fit for the rest of the year.”
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“And we always want to be gigging,” Downey says. “When we were recording we’d be in the studio Monday mornings to Friday afternoons, and then from Friday evening to Sunday night we’d be gigging.”
The warmth of the enthusiastic chatter around the stove chills when the topic of Dignam’s memorial concert is broached. The gig, to be held at Dublin’s Vicar Street, on May 3, will, says the promotional material, “include some of the biggest names in Irish music” performing songs that he was known for. No performers or bands have yet been announced, but what is known is Aslan won’t be there.
“The simple answer is that we weren’t asked. And that’s it,” McGuinness says. There is no further discussion on the matter, but what the band won’t talk about is something we will: to celebrate Dignam’s music career without his long-term band mates defies logic.
Now in their sixties, Downey, Jewell and McGuinness have long since given up the ghost of world domination. They know the days of releasing records that people would queue up for overnight outside record shops are distant memories. And streaming, says McGuinness, “has destroyed income for so many people.”
For them, as well as every other musician working within the new parameters of the music industry business model, the gig is the gig. “Whether we’re playing in front of nine or 9,000 people,” Downey says, “there is only one way you can perform and that is the best you can give on the day.”
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What does Tomkins think? He knows challenges are ahead. “Obviously it’s not going to be the same,” he says. And there’s the rub — it has to be different, Jewell says. “There would be no point otherwise.”
Aslan play The Crown, Wexford, April 6, Dolans Warehouse, Limerick, April 13, Whelans, Dublin, April 25-26, The Academy, Dublin, Sep 13
