VELVET THUNDER

A mere forty plus years after they started, Solstice are finally beginning to get the acclaim and recognition their efforts down the years have deserved. In the wake of two successful new album releases and gigs played to larger crowds, the 2024 readers polls in Prog Magazine saw Solstice voted ‘Band of the Year,’ alongside Jess Holland and Ebony Buckle (vocals) and Steve McDaniel (keyboards) scoring high places in their respective sections, while band founder and ever present, Andy Glass, was voted best guitarist, coming out ahead of some stellar competition. And, with a new album release in the pipeline, the third in four years, Solstice are looking to continue with this onwards momentum.

So, after all these years, how gratifying was it to see Solstice voted band of the year by fans?

Andy Glass (AG): It’s absolutely amazing, man, but there are a couple of things about this. I mean, the best of anything is all about a personal preference and is very subjective, isn’t it ? But I think it’s all about the music really, and it’s also about the audience. So, clearly, we have an amazing, motivated audience who decided to write in and vote for us, which is amazing. Clearly the bigger acts, Marillion and Steven (Wilson), have a way bigger audience than us, but their audience didn’t vote because they always win, so their audience probably got a bit complacent there, so we snuck in under the radar! Also, I think people are really enjoying the music we’re making at the moment so fans thought, ‘let’s give them a vote’, but it won’t happen next time. In the guitar poll last year, I was number two and Steve (Rothery) was number one, so they said I was snapping at his heels and I’ll be number one next year, which I obviously didn’t believe. So it’s wonderful, man, and I’m gonna print that poll off, stick it up on the wall and die a happy man. Sorry about knocking you off top guitarists spot, mate! (laughter)

VT: Mentioning Marillion, back in the early 1980s prog scene, which other bands did you think might follow Marillion and become very successful?
AG: EMI signed Marillion, didn’t they, who then came up with hit singles, Punch & Judy and Kayleigh, so good for them. Marillion were amazing to us back then, really very supportive of our efforts, and we’d probably not have got the kind of profile we did without them.

VT: I went to the Marquee to see Marillion and, on arriving, found they’d cancelled the gig so they could appear on Top of the Pops!!
AG: Well, there you go, man. You can’t turn down this show if you’re looking to get onto the world stage! But, seriously though, the difference was Fish. It wasn’t that Marillion were any better than IQ or any of the other bands, Fish was just someone who was really driven and brutal, man. He’d get rid of anyone in the band if he thought he could get someone else who was better. I mean, I was in the band with Mick Pointer which became Marillion, and he did the first album with them, but Fish fired him from his own band. He even fired his own mate, who’d come down from Scotland with him, though I don’t know the full circumstances there. Fish knew exactly what he wanted to achieve, and that’s why they were successful in the commercial world. It’s a dog eat dog world, man, and there were a few casualties along the way, and we were just so happy not to be any part of it. After them the next band EMI signed was Pallas. But, we weren’t really in the loop with the others, bands like Pendragon, Twelfth Night and IQ, we weren’t really interested in the commercialisation of music. We were distrustful of the whole music industry. Back then, in the mid-1980s, we were hippies and it was probably difficult for a record company to market what we were doing, when you consider what was mainstream at the time … and we split up in 1985 anyway.

VT: Solstice were very active in the early 80s free festival scene. Do you miss those days?
AG: Yeah, we were, that’s what we loved doing. Do I miss it? Yes and no. I mean, it was a wonderful time but it just doesn’t exist anymore … put basically, Thatcher got it all closed down. But we loved playing them and, when we play festivals now, in the UK at least, we get a lot of the same types of people coming along to see us. They were precious moments and we loved it, we were right hippies, well, certainly, several of us in the band were hippies but a couple preferred the more conventional route, but Marc (Elton) and I started the band and this was our MO, you know, getting out to play … and that’s what it’s like now. My main consideration is, as a group of people, will we have a good time together and will we enjoy the experience? If we think so, we’ll do the gig. More so now than back in the day, I just want it to be a good experience for the audience and we have a good time together. Other than that, I’m not interested. Back in the early eighties, we’d play anywhere and everywhere, and it’s just not possible or practical to do that now, so I just wanna make sure every gig we play is a joy, y’know? That’s the number one in my priority list, and if we can cover the cost of doing it, then I’m even happier. It’s commercial madness, our having eight people in the band plus a sound engineer out front of stage, but that’s what makes it such a joy to do, and you just have to deal with the financial side of it. Fortunately, we’re lucky in that we have our amazing Guardians (fans who support the band financially) who help to keep us going, and without them we couldn’t do it. So, one way and another, we manage to keep it rolling, and what more could you ask, really?

VT: Solstice has been around for forty plus years, with many musicians passing through the band. How does the current line-up compare to previous incarnations of Solstice?
AG: This current line up really started with Jess (Holland, vocalist) and then her bringing in other singers as a result of her incredible creativity and vocal harmonies. A while back, we had a kind of revolving door when it came to singers until we found the right people, and then we got Ebony (Buckle, vocalist) involved, who’s an amazing human being, and also Dyane Crutcher (vocals), who’s been with us a couple of years now … so this is the best line up ever, so far as I’m concerned. Ebony now has a solo career which is taking off, and she’s got an amazing tour in Holland coming up in April, so she’s unavailable for the first part of our Clann tour, but we’ve got the brilliant Leoni Jane Kennedy to sit in while Ebony’s away, and she’s an amazing musician and great singer, and she’s going to make a big contribution to the gigs Ebony can’t do. We’re really lucky, man, we’ve been able to attract some amazing singers and musicians, and I can’t imagine a better line up, really .. and the other members of the band (Peter, Rob, Steve and Jenny), we all go back many years together. So there’s a huge age range in the band, but it all adds to what is a really great dynamic in the band, and the younger members energise us older ones, and we all get on like a family which only has to see each other once in a while! (much laughter)

VT: Solstice gigs are amazing because you always look like you’re enjoying being onstage.
AG: Oh, man, we love it, we absolutely love it, and that’s the beauty of it. When Jenny first suggested Jess join the band, I couldn’t imagine anybody forty years younger than me wanting to join us, and also wanting to sing this music, but Jess absolutely loves it, and she connects with the music like no one else, she really gets it, and it’s the same with the other singers as well, they just love the music and we all connect with the music so well together … isn’t it amazing? It’s an absolute joy to play with these people and I couldn’t be happier.

VT: My introduction to Jess’s voice was hearing Long Gone, from the Sia album and, for me, this is the best song Crosby-Nash never performed, her vocals were amazing.
AG: Yeah, you’re right, they were. That’s the thing – Jess gets it, she really feels it straight away and she always adds something to the song ideas, which usually ends up turning something mediocre into something magical. She’s incredible, she’s a force of nature.

VT: The new album, Clann, was it crowdfunded?
AG: No, not this time. I would say it was funded by our Guardians, really. I tend to record everything in my bedroom, and the only thing we have to go to the studio to record is the drums, which we spent four days recording. Everyone has facilities, a computer and a microphone, to record at home these days, so they just send me their files and I put them together. The difference with this album, though, is we’ve played the whole album ‘live’, some of the tracks quite a lot, so everyone knew exactly what they were doing, and that’s helped make the new album what it is.

VT: The new album together is part three of the ‘Sia Trilogy,’ isn’t it?
AG: When we recorded Sia, Jess had never really been a singer in a band before, and had never recorded an album before, so when we started work on the follow-up, Light Up, we could see how she was developing as a singer, as well as how the whole band was raising its game, because we were enjoying it, as also the audience was as well, and I just thought it’s gonna take three albums for us to find our feet and to start doing our best work, so it’s become a three album thing to mark our journey from our beginning with Jess, towards us doing our best work, and I believe Clann has proven this to be true. I wasn’t trying to write three albums which make up one piece of work, it was more about our tracking the journey towards really getting it all together. And I think this has proven to be true because, on Clann, you can hear this development, and I think Clann is a statement about how we’re starting to do some good stuff.

VT: Since Jess joined in 2020, there’s now been three studio albums, plus a few live releases, an amazing burst of creativity, isn’t it?
AG: Exactly, exactly. She’s had a phenomenal impact on the band. It’s all about timing as well. The main thing is Jess coming onboard, but I also work obsessively on the band. The thing is, our children are now adults (Andy is married to Jenny, Solstice violin player) so I can devote my time to the band, organising gigs, talking to promoters, doing interviews like this and putting newsletters out … ten years back I wouldn’t have been able to do this, but now over the last few years, I’m able to spend lots of time, at least three days a week, working on the band and driving it, so it’s a lot about the timing; but, as I mentioned earlier about Fish, every band needs someone behind it driving it forwards, and that’s now my role, which is amazing, which is how we’re able to be so productive. It’s all come together at the right time.

VT: When Jess joined in 2020, did you ever conceive, by 2025, you’d be topping polls and be as popular as you seem to be now?
AG: No, not at all, but what I did know straight away was we had something really special, though what I didn’t know was whether Jess would wanna keep working with the band, so I didn’t know where it was gonna go, so we’ve made it up as we’ve gone along so, no, I couldn’t have seen all this … but I did know, creatively, there was huge potential so I just wanted to try and explore this and try taking it as far as we can, which is how I still feel today … how much more music can we create, how can we do more gigs than we do, and keep working on it. So you never know, we’ll see how far we go in the next five years, and try to keep enjoying it as you never know what tomorrow’s gonna bring, do you? So, happy days, man.

VT: Last time we spoke, you said touring was not economically viable, but Solstice have a fifteen date tour lined up for 2025. Are things a little easier now?
AG: Well, the tour’s an experiment, really. I mean, you always wanna do a tour to promote an album, of course, and we’ve never done a tour as such as, over the past few years, we’ve tended to do either individual gigs or a run of two, so we can drive back afterwards. We’ve done festivals in Europe which have been good and are usually weekends, so this is an experiment as I wanna try it to see how it goes. We’ve got six consecutive gigs, which will mean van hires and hotels, which are expensive, but if we fill the gigs up, which we might not, but if we do, and sell lots of merch, then we’ll just about break even. So I’ve been building up a nest egg so as to fully guarantee the tour. But if we do lose money, then depending on how much we lose will determine how we do it next time, either expand on this idea or go back to doing one-off gigs. We wanted to travel further so, this time around, we’re making it as far north as Huddersfield and we’re also going to Wales, so it’s an experiment. Ask me at the end of June how it all went! But few bands make any money on tour. Big Big Train are a much bigger band than us, get bigger crowds and can charge more for tickets, but even they don’t make money playing gigs. One of my ex-students is guitarist in Tesseract, and they’re huge … they were the support to Dream Theater at Wembley and they’ve played the States and Japan, but even they don’t make money on the road. I asked him why don’t they, and he said the bigger the gig, the production costs increase, and the promoters expect a bigger production, which is expensive. I don’t think anyone makes money touring any more, except maybe Taylor Swift and the Stones. So, as I said, it’s an experiment, so fingers crossed.

VT: Are you happy for Solstice to be considered as a prog band?
AG: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been ambivalent about it in the past … but, you know what? The prog audience is the best audience in the world, man, and the most supportive.

VT: It’s certainly the most loyal.
AG: Exactly, so if we’ve been embraced by the prog audience, and prog festivals and by Prog Magazine, then I’m more than happy for Solstice to be considered as a prog band. We’ve been advised, if you lose the term ‘prog’, then you’d appeal to a wider audience, as this audience, as soon as they hear the word prog, they write you off. But the thing is – we have the best audience, so why would we wanna appeal to another audience? People hear the music and, if they like it, they’ll come to it. But the other thing is, there’s a massive audience which likes progressive rock music which has never heard of us, so if everyone who likes prog came to see us, we wouldn’t have to find other audiences. So I’m happy to be called prog, or progressive, whatever you wanna call us is fine by me. We just want people to enjoy the music and, if they do, this is all the reward we’re after.

VT: On the forthcoming tour, is there any likelihood Solstice will reprise some deep cuts, songs like Find Yourself, for example?
AG: We have done that one before, we did it a few years ago, and it was on the list because this last year has been the fortieth anniversary of our first album Silent Dance, which is why we started playing Earth Song again, which Ebony sings beautifully, along with Cheyenne, which we’ve been doing all along, and Find Yourself, and we rehearsed these three but, for whatever reason, we just never got around to doing Find Yourself last year. And the thing is, now, we’ve got a whole lot of new music which we all really want to play, but we’ll definitely continue to do some of our old favourites, Cheyenne and Guardian. There’s loads of stuff we wanna keep doing, and if we do everything we wanna do, we’ll be doing two and a half hour sets! But currently we’re rehearsing about two hours of music.

VT: Given everything you’ve said about how the band’s going, are you still as driven as ever?
AG: Considering everything that’s happened over the past five years, then yeah, absolutely, I’m still as driven as ever, and really ambitious to see how far we can take it over the next five years, and then the next five years. But this is all new to me from 2020, from when Jess and Ebony joined the band, and us writing Sia, that’s when it started. It wasn’t a plan, it was not a plan, but now I find myself fully committed and working every day to ensure we make the best music we can and to take it to as many people as we can. If we can keep it going, it’ll be great, but I’m gonna keep working on it, that’s for sure.