With another hugely successful album, 'Amazing Things', the phenomenon that is RUNRIG continues to astound many music biz observers. James Lewis talked to the band's drummer Iain Bayne.

Runrig

I caught up with Runrig just after their well-received set at the Celtic-based Fleadh festival and spoke to their soft-spoken drummer, lain Bayne, amid the chaos of the artist's backstage catering tent.

The Fleadh festival is a Celtic music event which ranges from punk to folk - what is it about Celtic music that seems to give it this peculiar identity, whatever the style?

"Speaking for Runrig, I think our history is different from other rock bands, in that Runrig's music is heavily influenced by landscape and people rather than the urban background where most rock music's comes from. The main difference is that we grew up with the Celtic language, with Gaelic language, Gaelic culture, Gaelic heritage, in a very open kind of environment, very open landscape, and these are the things that drive the music. That's what we try to put across in our music, as a feeling of depth, and a kind of spirituality, if you like, behind the landscape and how in actual fact we're all so dependent on the environment and the things that influence us round about and the beauty of the things round about us, and I think that's the main driving force behind the band."

Celtic music seems to have an inseparable spiritual thread running through it.

"With Runrig the song writers in the band, Calum and Rory MacDonald, grew up in the north-west of Scotland which has a very strong, centuries-old tradition with the Church. And if you grow up in a society like that, you can't fail to be influenced by it. It's part of your culture; it's part of your own psyche, it's part of everything you touch in life and it's tied in very much with your general real deep appreciation of your surroundings... your own sense of history; your own sense of future; your own place in life. I think as far as we're concerned that's always been intrinsic to the band, to our music and something that we'll never shake off. It's something that's central, it's at the core of the things that make Runrig operate as a band."

A lot of self-professed Christian musicians in the mainstream seem to have problems with the established church - do the Christian members of Runrig find any problem with the church?

"It's very easy these days to live in the age of pick and mix religion. You want to take a wee bit of this and a wee bit of that and mix them all together to make your own religion, just to suit your own needs. And I think that's a pretty dodgy area to get into. As far as churches are concerned, organised religion, be it Catholic/Protestant, you do whatever feels natural to you, what comes naturally to you, and for somebody to criticise one particular form of practice is nonsensical. In my book, people don't have the right to do that, y'know. As far as the Church is concerned, three of the members of the band regularly attend church and that's as natural to them as going for a run in the morning. That's a part of your life - you make it an important part of your life, and there's no discomfort about that whatsoever."

Does having a mix of Christians and non-Christians in the band affect the lyrical content?

"I think that when Calum and Rory write songs they have to write songs both for the band as a six-piece unit and on a personal level. They might wish to write songs which go further into their own personal thing, but it still comes through in our songs a lot of the time anyway. I mean, it might be right, it might be wrong to stand up on stage and profess your beliefs to other people. There are a lot of lyrics in Runrig's songs that do have a very strong spiritual message. That's one of the great things about our songs; they can come across as being love songs, or somebody can see them as a spiritual song, or a Christian song, or what have you, but they don't set out to fly banners or flags about we are this, we are that, this is what we think - it's a very personal thing. If you feel that something is important to you then you write songs about it, and we don't sit down and study the album and say 'you can't say that because we don't agree with it.' We wouldn't do that."

Has the band ever been under pressure to be a mouthpiece, to evangelise?

"No, we never had that kind of pressure. It's nice to do interviews and what have you, but I think it's a more personal thing anyway. If Calum wants to do anything on his own for any particular organisation then that's entirely up to him, but I think it would be wrong to use the band as a mouthpiece for anything, be it religious, political, social, whatever. That comes across in your songs anyway. And if that's your medium then that's fine."

Do you feel that Runrig's songs are quite ambiguous, open to New Age interpretation?

"What is New Age? I've never heard of it. Is that the latest label to put on things?" (After my feeble attempt to fairly describe the New Age world-view in the space of thirty seconds) "I think the ambiguity that arises in the songs, if anything, is due to the fact that it depends on your own point of view. You can read the lyric and see what might possibly have been the motivation behind it in the first place, or you can see it on the superficial level, that you see it as just a poetic lyric or you put your own interpretation on it. We don't strive to appeal to any label, be it new age, old age, middle age, whatever. I don't think that crops up in our repertoire - it's nice for people to see the meaning behind the song. That's the great thing because I think one of the strengths of the lyrics is the way they are deeper meanings. There is a message as such, a substance behind them. There's depth."

How does Donnie find the situation of interpreting songs written by someone else?