TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Black Country, New Road (BCNR) have experienced a wild ride since the release of “Ants from Up There”, which debuted at No. 3 on the UK Albums Chart in February 2022.

Critical and public acclaim led to a packed touring schedule and international engagements. Unfortunately, fame was not enough to dissuade lead vocalist and guitarist, Isaac Wood, from quitting the band, leading the band to make the decision to soldier on with new material.

Fortunately, improvisation is a key element of BCNR according to band member, Charlie Wayne, in an exclusive email interview conducted by Taiwan News.

Is BCNR named after an actual road, "Black Country New Road" in England?

The band both was and wasn't named after Black Country New Road. We first came across the name whilst surfing through randomly generated Wikipedia articles. The article that we used for the band's name was about a small road that goes through the midlands in the U.K., near Birmingham and Wolverhampton. We didn’t name the band on account of any particular affinity with the Black Country New Road, it was just the best of quite a lot of other bad options we had for prospective band names. We didn’t really think about it at the time, but as time passed we appropriated our own meaning to the name. The addition of the comma in the middle also made it our own. Band names don’t really mean anything at all unless there’s music attached to them.

BCNR were one of the few bands to tour during COVID, even doing “socially-distanced concerts”. What was this experience like? You must be glad most regulations have been dropped.

We did a bunch of socially distanced shows back in 2021. It was largely because we wanted to road-test AFUT. It actually really helped to perform the tracks in front of small crowds. It would have been a bit weird to perform new tracks in big rooms, I think. In part because we were still tweaking the songs, but also because we were only really used to performing to small rooms. We sort of came up during the pandemic, so we didn’t really know what sized rooms we could perform in — it maybe just seemed more natural to perform to the smaller rooms that we knew.

Saying that, though you’re right, I’m glad that the restrictions have been lifted, it’s really exciting to be able to play in larger spaces.

6-piece British rock band Black Country, New Road perform March 7. (Holly Whitaker photo)

Can you give us some highlights of your recent tour with Black Midi or what some referred to Black 2 Tour?

The Black 2 tour (or the ‘Back in Black’ tour as we called it) was something that we’d been wanting to do for a really long time. The guys in black midi are close friends of ours and we love their music. We didn’t get up to many proper hijinks, but we did wind up having loads of fun. We went sand-boarding and sledging down the White Sands National Park, which was pretty amazing, lots of bowling in LA and a few lovely evenings spent in each other's company.

Is geographical proximity the main reason behind BCNR's affinity Black Midi & Squid, or what some dub the “Windmill Scene” after the famous Windmill Pub in Southwest London?

We met Black Midi at the Windmill, a pub/venue in London. It’s pretty well known in the alternative music scene for putting on bands like Goat Girl, Shame and HMTLD before us. We just started playing around the same time as Black Midi. They’re also about the same age as us, so we got to know them a little bit as we played more and more shows with one another. We also have the same booking agent so we started playing across Europe together when we both started playing shows.

People also then just started grouping the two of us and Squid into the same sort of scene. The people in Squid are also really lovely, and amazing musicians. They’re not from London and they’re a little bit older, but I suppose we share the same musical sensibilities as them (broadly). People also just quite like categorizing things like musicians. Placing people into a scene always adds a bit of context (whether it’s relevant/important is maybe not altogether important).

I believe you are currently touring without any recorded music available to the public? Is this correct? And how are audiences responding to this?

When Isaac left the band last year, we made the decision to continue performing, only under the condition that we play new music without his vocals. It was a pretty intense decision at the time and it was quite stressful — we had to write a full set of brand new music in under 6 months in order to perform at the festivals we’d been booked for over the summer. I think that we’re very lucky to have had a wonderful/understanding fan base. They know that our music is based on experimentation and the majority of people embraced the change. I think music also speaks for itself. It's different without Isaac, but by no means worse. We wouldn’t be performing it if we felt it was. Fundamentally, we’re still the same musicians with the same musical sensibilities — it’s just new.

Any chance that you will play music from “Ants from Up There”?

As I mentioned, it just wouldn’t feel right to play any of the music that we wrote with Isaac without him. It’s not something that any of us want to do at the moment. It’s not because we’re trying to be obstructive or punitive to people who’ve really engaged with that album. All of the support that we’ve received has been pretty overwhelming. We just hope that people will be able to find the music that we’ve made since AFUT is just as interesting and engaging.

Black Country, New Road makes their debut Taipei performance at The Wall. (White Wabbit Records WWR)

Do you consider BCNR to be more of a musical ”collective” rather than a traditional band? Is this intentional? Sort of a democratic approach to making music.

Yeah, I think BCNR has never really had a ‘bandleader’ in the conventional sense. There’s no one voice that guides the others. We’re a group of friends first and bandmates second. It makes more sense to think of it in that context — it would be weird to have a leader of a friendship group. I also think the musical makeup of the group also lends itself to that attitude. Everyone governs their own little musical space because they’re the best at their respective instruments. I’m the best drummer in the group, so ultimately, I have the final say over what happens with the drums — that applies to everyone else. I really wouldn’t know where to start when writing a sax part, for example. We all obviously have our opinions about how songs should broadly be, and those opinions don’t always align, but that’s part of the fun of it — we talk a lot about what sounds good and what we could do to make songs sound better. Everyone’s ideas are listened to and tested out — we try everything once and nothing is personal.

Please feel free to add anything you want to this interview. I look forward to the show at The Wall. It’s a great performance space with good acoustics.

I think we’re all still pretty amazed that we’re going to be heading out to Taiwan to come and perform a show. I don’t think any of us would’ve ever imagined that we’d be invited to come and play somewhere so far away from the UK. It’s pretty amazing. I think we’re all pretty grateful to the people who’ve bought tickets to come and see us. I hope we put on a good show!