Greetings from Metalheads Forever Magazine, I’m Keith Clement the Editorial Head, how are you today?
Hey Keith. Nice to meet you remotely. I’m good, thanks, though really saddened by what’s happening in Ukraine right now.
December 4, 2021, you released your debut “New Dawn Rising” can you tell me about the songwriting and production behind this new album?
Long story. The band was active in the late ‘80s in the UK. We played around 150 shows and released three 12-inch singles on a respected indie label called Chapter 22. We played with a ton of bands including Living Colour, Balaam And The Angel and Wolfsbane (all decent sized acts in the UK) and picked up good press, but the elusive major deal never materialized. The band fractured under acrimonious circumstances, and we all moved on. I personally never thought about getting Dawn After Dark back together again until 2006 when the drummer Tony Henderson and I reconciled. We decided we’d like to make music again for fun and recorded three songs in 2008. They were just for us, and we had no intention of releasing them. Then in 2019 a promoter asked us if we’d be interested in reforming for a show in our native Birmingham with Balaam. That was when we realized we had an itch that maybe needed scratching. We did the show and loads of old supporters of the band turned out, many of them wearing original tee shirts. We had so much fun and went down so well that the promoter Dean Brown, who also happened to own a revamped version of Chapter 22 Records, asked if we’d be interested in recording an album.
We had a ton of songs from back in the day that never got recorded. We were pretty prolific writers. We knew that with the new technology that’s now available we’d be able to produce something great, so we rehearsed hard and recorded over six intensive days at the end of 2020 with producer Andy Taylor at a studio in Birmingham. I think the results speak for themselves.
Track listing
- Maximum Overdrive
- The Day The World And I Parted Company
- Dead On Time
- The Groove
- When Will You Come Home To Me?
- Nothing Can Fulfil Me (Without Your Love)
- The Shifting Sands Of Time
- Crystal High
- (I’m Not) The Man I Used To Be
- Her Sleep
- Truth And Freedom
Was there any particular concept that was put behind this album?
We wanted to reflect what we have always been, a group that plays like a classic rock band, but has listened to lots of alternative music in its time. In the ‘80s in the UK the alternative scene – The Cult, Killing Joke, New Model Army, The Mission – seemed to us to be the most vibrant scene, guitar music that wasn’t just going over the same old ground like a lot of the hair metal acts. We wanted to combine the visceral power of rock with melodic and structural ideas that tried to move the genre forward. We’re not exactly reinventing the wheel in Dawn After Dark, but I’d like to think we’re very much not like every other heavy rock band out there.
The Cover art is quite amazing, what was the theme behind it?
That’s a genuine shot of our hometown of Birmingham. Sabbath and Priest rightly talk about the industrial smog of the place when they were starting out in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but Birmingham has undergone something of a makeover, and it looks futuristic in certain places these days. We wanted to celebrate the fact that Dawn After Dark was back after such a long time away, and the title of the album, ‘New Dawn Rising’, coupled with this amazing shot of a place we’re so connected to, seemed perfect.
The history of the band goes way back to the 80’s it didn’t last long, how do you feel about the comeback?
The world’s a very different place to how it was in the ‘80s. Putting the band back together has made me realise that there’s only one reason to be doing this – and that’s for the joy. There’s no money in it, so if you accept that from the start and do it for the pure love of your band and for the life experiences that playing shows gives you, then you’ll be alright.
How has the reaction been since the return of the band?
We’ve had tremendous press that you can read at our website www.thedawners.com. We kind of knew what we’d done was a cut above in the genre we operate in, but it’s nice to have that view validated. Covid has fucked us for live shows, like everyone else. But we’re playing UK gigs in 2022 and we’re looking forward to playing to people who don’t know us in places we’ve never been to before.
New Dawn Rising, the 11 tracked album is pure awesomeness of Classic Rock, with amazing music progression and Vocals, Great songwriting, how as a band do you feel about the outcome?
I like “pure awesomeness”. We think ‘New Dawn Rising’ is a really great album. Our thought has always been that if more rock people heard it they’d love it. Getting it to the ears of the world is the goal. We’ve put out two videos for ‘Maximum Overdrive’ and ‘Nothing Can Fulfil Me (Without Your Love)’ on YouTube and have released those two songs to streaming platforms as well. Our record company need to recoup their costs on physical product, of course, so we’ve held back the digital release of the album. It will be on streaming platforms soon, though, and that should broaden our reach. But if people want to hear a sampler of all the album tracks they can do it by going to the Dawn After Dark website.
How does Dawn After Dark look into the future in this second comeback?
If the last couple of years have taught us anything it’s that you shouldn’t look too far into the future. We do what we do and make the music we make. We’d like more people to hear it and we’d like to play to new audiences. Let’s hope that happens.
Would you like to share some great moments that you had?
We’ve shared all the great moments that we’ve had in a 180-page hardback book packed with memorabilia about the band that we produced. It’s not only a history of Dawn After Dark, but something of a love letter to the old days of bands moving around the country in vans, playing endless shows, trying to make things happen without the aid of social media. It’s almost impossible to imagine those times now. You can buy the book at https://dawnafterdark.bandcamp.com/merch/what-we-are
What would be the biggest dreams?
To play in the States, which has always been the home of rock.
Finally, what would be the message for the fans around the world?
If you like Dawn After Dark, please tell just one other person you know whom you think would like the band. We’re into building the group one fan at a time!
