Transcript of interview with Bruce Watson of Big Country, originally broadcast on Kaleidoscope Ears, Edge Radio 99.3 in Hobart, Tasmania, on Sunday 20th September 2009. DWAYNE BUNNEY: It’s a privilege to have on the line from Dunfermline in Scotland, founding member and guitarist of Big Country, Bruce Watson. Thanks for joining us. BRUCE WATSON: That’s no problem Dwayne, how are you? DB: Yeah very well. Now we’re going to talk about the new music you and your son Jamie are making in a moment, but, I want to talk to you about Big Country. BW: Yeah that’s not a problem. DB: The band, it’s renowned for being a Scottish band, but no of you were born in Scotland were you? BW: No I was born in Timmins, Ontario in Canada. Stuart was born in Manchester, England, and Tony and Mark, well they were also born in England. DB: Well you certainly don’t sound Canadian I can tell you that. BW: No definitely not. I lost that accent a long, long time ago. DB: Tell us about how you first hooked up with Stuart Adamson to form Big Country. BW: Well Stuart was in a band called The Skids as you probably know. He decided after about three and a half years that he wanted to do something different. And he’d also told me while he was in The Skids that he wanted to start a two guitar band and that at some point he’d give me a call in the future. I think it was about two months later, he turned up at my door and said I’ve booked this little rehearsal room and I’ve bought this portastudio, would you like to come up and collaborate? I wasn’t doing anything at the time and I had a couple of songs under my belt from my previous band and Stuart had a couple of songs under his belt that he was going to use with The Skids. So we just collaborated and the results were the first album The Crossing. DB: So which ones off that album were yours? BW: I think Angle Park was one of my ones. Obviously it was an instrumental at the time. Stuart had Harvest Home. Those were the first two songs that we worked on although they weren’t called that at the time, they were just kind of instrumental little jams. We just developed them further. DB: Now why did Stuart refer to you as the man who invented the seagull? BW: He didn’t actually, I think that was just one of those silly in-jokes you know, that you do when you’re on tour. Actually it came from Mark. Mark used to sit there, he had this little remote control with him. I don’t know why he had it but he used to say you know I’m controlling these little seagulls that are flying above the bus as we were on tour. It’s just one of those little daft things. DB: Is it true that the band almost broke up after the recording of the second studio album Steeltown? BW: Yeah that’s correct. We had kind of you know been on the road continuously for the previous two years as well as recording both the albums and we were kind of shattered. We got as far as Japan and it just took its toll. For two years constantly we didn’t even have a day off. It was just work, work. Obviously the tours, the more successful we became the more touring and the more festivals we were doing and it got to a point where it was now, let’s stop or we were going to break up. We didn’t actually break up it was just like, let’s take time away from this you know. I’m kinda glad at the time we did because we were just heading for severe burnout. So we almost got as far as Australia but we had to cancel that tour. DB: Yeah that was a shame. I do remember you being in Australia once and you had very interesting hair at the time. BW: Yeah I’ve always had interesting hair. We went down to do a couple of videos for the Peace In Our Time album. DB: Somewhere in Western Australia in the outback somewhere? BW: Yeah. And it was great, we found ourselves living in this old asbestos shack and then going out during the day and doing a bit of filming. DB: What is your personal favourite period of Big Country? BW: Favourite periods would have probably been the early days when we first started touring and recording because it was new and I’ve got a good memory about that stuff. And the other favourite would have probably been around when we did an album called The Buffalo Skinners and we did a bit of extensive touring in America. I loved that. DB: Yeah The Buffalo Skinners is definitely one of my personal favourites. You took over producing at that point in time, is that one of the things that made it stand out for you? BW: Well we kinda co-produced it with an engineer called Chris Sheldon, who we’d worked with before, and we actually had Nigel Godritch, the was his first job, and he was actually the second engineer on that album. The A&R guy Chris Briggs who originally signed us to Phonogram, he started this new label called Compulsion. We’d sent him the demos that we’d just produced and engineered ourselves. And he kinda liked what was going on and he said you know you’ve had umpteen producers over the years, why don’t we just as an experiment, why don’t we just go into the studio and we’ll do the first three tracks, we’ll produce them ourselves with Chris Sheldon and see how they turn out. And he was happy enough with the results and he said you know if it aint broke don’t fix it, let’s just go along with this. DB: Yeah you’re right the result from The Buffalo Skinner particularly to me, stand out to this day. Why do you think that it didn’t have the commercial success that you probably would have wished for? BW: I don’t know, it’s just one of those things. I guess we weren’t a new band anymore and I think people had got used to our sound. I mean when we came out in the early days it was a new sound and a new band. People got interested in it. But it’s like any band. After about six or seven years, you know people have heard it all before. DB: Big Country has a very devout and loyal fanbase, still very active today. Why do you think that is? BW: I don’t know I guess people just made a connection to the band. We were never one of the biggest bands in the world like a U2 or a Bon Jovi or a Rolling Stones. I think people kinda like bands that are like underdogs and it’s their band you know, almost like The Smiths or another band like that where you get to a certain stage and you still a kinda underground band you know, and I think people like that. DB: And I guess you’re still not too huge to have that personal connection with the fans too. BW: I think a lot of people perceive Big Country as being bigger than we really were. I think it’s because we did all those like, we were always like a big support band for band like The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper and Meat Loaf and all these kinds of bands, and we were a good festival band, so I think people thought we were bigger than we were. DB: Have you got any stories you can relate to us from those days supporting? BW: I’ve got loads of stories but there’s no way I’m gonna divulge them on the air. [laughs] DB: Can’t do that? BW: Oh definitely not. I think I’d have lawyers at my door. I mean it was just great fun. We had good times and bad times. I think the bad times were as far down as the good times were up. DB: I wanna ask, some of the other projects you were involved with outside of Big Country. Fish is interesting to me being a big prog rock fan as well. Are you a fan of prog rock and how did you get involved with Fish? BW: Well I think, Fish being from the east of Scotland as well, we only live about 30 miles from each other. The first time I met Fish was at Live Aid. Our paths had never crossed because he’d moved down to England but he’d moved back to Scotland and he’d left Marillion and he was putting a band together to do this benefit for the Lockerby disaster and he got me involved in that. Every now and then Fish’ll give me a phone call and he’ll say I’ve got a track on the album I’d like you to get involved with and I’d go across and play a bit of mandolin or guitar or e-bow. And after Big Country he putting another band together and he just wanted me to get involved so I started writing with him and I wrote this album with him called Field Of Crows.