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them and various venues over there, but to make it work financially would be exceptionally
difficult at the moment, unfortunately.

BiTS: You’ve been involved in, produced a fairly large number of albums. You’ve not been
backward at coming forward, as my family often say [chuckles]. Do you have a favourite?

RD: I know that’s like trying to ask somebody about their favourite child, but I would have
to say, I’m going to dismiss the new album because it’s not out yet, but it would be a toss-up
to me between the last album, “More Sinner Than Saint”, the last studio album for the band
and the live album that we did because I always listen to the live album and it just makes
me smile and Mark Stuart who recorded it over a number of gigs and put it all together, I
just think did a fantastic job. I know some live albums can sound a little bit dodgy
sometimes, but I’m really proud of how that came out and as I say, kind of like if people ask
me what I sound like, it’s like well just listen to that. That’s going to encapsulate it and it’s
such a great album to have, but I do have a very soft spot for the last studio album because a
lot of the songs on there were years old, to be honest. Some of them before we kind of had
an album that we thought they fitted on because we write a lot of music. So there’s a lot of
songs on there that are really close to my heart and it was a kind of a long haul to get the
album done and the production and there were a lot of things that went wrong and then we

had to correct them and put it right. So yes, those two – “More Sinner Than Saint” and the
“BeLive I think.

BiTS: Tell me something about the new album, the one that’s planned for release later on
this year. How far have you got with it?

RD: It’s in the can, as they say. It’s mixed and mastered. It’s been mixed and mastered by a
guy called Gavin Monaghan, who’s worked with huge artists, Paolo Nutini, Editors. I worked

with him, gosh, when I was about 17 or 18, so it’s been a while since we worked together,

but he loved the demos that we’d done, and we worked with him really well. I’m really
proud of it because the majority of the songs were written over lockdown. What me and
Steve Birkett, who I write all the songs with, were trying to achieve was to give the opposite
of lockdown. I remember saying to Steve, I think we should write an album that is all about
the songs sounding like you really want to play them live. Almost like upbeat, kind of clappy
hands, stompy feet because I’m a big fan of The Rolling Stones’ album “Bridges to Babylon”
and I played Steve that and said this is kind of like the raw vibe that I think that I’d really