Travis singer Fran Healy: 'I do feel like I am in a band with Coldplay'

The Scottish group are performing at Dubai Opera this week

Travis members, from left, Douglas Payne, Fran Healy, Neil Primrose and Andy Dunlop. Photo: Dubai Opera

On paper, it resembles a dream run of concerts.

And as expected, when Scottish group Travis went on their latest tour — beginning in the UK and Europe before heading into Asia — the reception was ecstatic.

The key reason being is it's dedicated to the fans, with the first half of the show featuring all the songs from their big-selling 2001 album The Invisible Band, followed by an encore of hits including Why Does It Always Rain on Me?, Turn and Driftwood.

Yet despite their pedigree and stellar material, singer and chief songwriter Fran Healy is more measured when it comes to his thoughts on the tour.

While the songs performed reflect the breadth of the Brit Award-winning band, he is happy to focus solely on the present.

“I really can’t speak about the crowd or what they are experiencing when we play,” Healy tells The National before the band’s performance at Dubai Opera on Monday.

“For me, all I know is that when I go out every night on stage, I play like it’s my last-ever show. And because of that, I need to make sure that it has got to be a good one.”

Such self-effacement is an enduring hallmark of Travis.

At the turn of the century, they were one of the biggest rock bands in the world thanks to a series of brilliantly crafted sets of pop, rock and folk songs that were more beguiling than thrilling.

Even their album titles were steeped in understatement, with titles such as The Invisible Band, The Man Who (1999), The Boy with No Name (2007) and their most recent 2020 effort 10 Songs.

Healy, whose only extravagance on stage is wearing the odd baseball cap, says Travis’s no-frills approach is largely responsible for their durability.

“When people come to see us, they know that they are seeing a proper band,” he says.

"We are a band that stayed together with the same members through all this time and that is getting increasingly rare.

"So when you are seeing a band like us, you're not just watching and hearing the live music, you are seeing a live relationship and friendship at play also. And this has been a very important part of live shows, not only the records."

The concerts also serve as a welcome reminder of when acoustic instruments were popular.

The Invisible Band joins White Ladder by British singer-songwriter David Gray and Just Enough Education to Perform from Welsh rockers Stereophonics as one of the biggest-selling UK albums of 2001.

Since then, popular music has moved towards more bombastic and synthetic sounds, according to Healy, something that is down to artists increasingly taking a backseat to producers in the songwriting process.

He passionately argues in support of songwriting, a craft he fears is increasingly being lost to today’s high-tech pop sounds.

“Like a storyteller, one is born to be songwriter and it is an ancient craft going back even before Roman times. So when I am writing a song, I know I am following a particular lineage that goes to Paul McCartney, Mozart and many before,” he says.

“What you're seeing in the charts these days are songs created by producers who are calling themselves songwriters, which they will never be. They are song designing, not songwriting.”

Healy is confident acoustic instruments will become a major feature in popular music again, and points to the popularity of vinyl records as proof of a new generation interested in studying that revered lineage of songwriting.

Being part of a greater whole also keeps Healy from feeling any sense of jealousy of peers Coldplay — who were dubbed the new Travis when they released their 2000 debut album Parachutes — overtaking them to become one of the world’s biggest rock bands.

"It is almost like looking at an object like a glass cup and knowing that it is made up of gazillions of atoms," he says.

"I feel that music is just one big band with so many stories and amazing people. We are all part of that one thing and there is a lot of joy in that.

“So I do feel like I am in a band with Coldplay, with John Lennon, with David Grohl and Mozart. We are all in this together because, at the end of the day, our job as musicians is to be a force for good. End of story."

Travis performs at Dubai Opera on Monday, October 17. Showtime is 8pm, tickets from D240; www.dubaiopera.com

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