Robbie Grey can’t wait to get on the stage at Tucson’s AVA at Casino del Sol Sunday, July 29.
There’s something liberating about being at his stage in the game with no pressure to crank out a No. 1 hit and sell millions of albums.
“We’re creative people; we like making music. For us to, one, be able to make it, and, two, taking on tours where people want us to play it, for us it’s a really nice reward,” the Modern English frontman said during a phone call from England in early June.
These days when the band tours and records, it’s not about making money. The band, which was at the top of the 1980s international post-punk/new wave movement, made enough money from their smash single “I Melt With You” to pay the bills indefinitely.
“We don’t have to worry about too much financially,” said Grey, who along with his bandmates is in his 60s. “It’s not like we’re going out to play for money any more. We’re going out to play because we enjoy it.”
Modern English is on the lineup for the 1980s throwback Retro Futura Tour 2018 with Belinda Carlisle that has been winding its way through the States since early July. We are one of the final shows before the tour wraps in Michigan on Aug. 4.
We caught up with Grey early last month to talk about the band’s new album and still making music after four decades.
What are those Retro Futura shows like?
“They’re good fun. They’re quite big venues. People turn up to hear the hits, really, I suppose from all the different artists. It’s kind of like a fun experience. It’s not very hard work, let’s put it that way. You get to play short sets; it’s not a long concert. You generally get to play your more commercial songs. So it’s good fun.”
At this stage in your careers, you guys probably get along fairly well with the other bands since no one on the lineup is battling for the No. 1 spot on Billboard.
“That’s absolutely right. I mean we’ve never done anything like this before, an ’80s-type tour, and it’s such good fun. I think you’re right, that’s probably the reason why. Everybody’s relaxed about it; there’s no competition going on. Every band got on really well and that’s why we decided to do it again really.”
You guys seem even more cohesive as a band today than when you started.
“We’ve all known each other since we were kids, teenagers really. When we got back together eight years ago, it’s was very easy. Simple really because we just were older and we knew each other pretty well anyway, so it was just an easy situation. Once we saw how to jam in the rehearsal room, it just felt really good and quite coming easy really, natural. That’s why we went on to write and record another album. It just felt like the right thing to do.”
Does your new album pick up where you left off or does it come from a more mature place?
“Our first album was an album called ‘Mesh & Lace.’ That was quite a dark album. It was ’80s underground, gothicy type album. And after that we had ‘After the Snow,’ which had ‘I’ll Melt With You’ and was totally different. But what’s happened recently to us, our first album ‘Mesh & Lace’ has become really, really popular because a lot of the young kids are getting interested in post-punk, which basically mean they all wear black clothes and they like listening to some of the lyrics which was what our first album was all about. When we recorded our new album, which is called ‘Take Me to the Trees,’ we tried to marry .... the sort of noisiness of the first album and the songcraft of ‘After the Snow.’ I hope that’s what we did with ‘Take Me to the Trees’.”
You guys crowdsourced this album. That’s a massive different approach than how you did it in the 1980s.
“We used to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks back in the day to make albums from record companies. Now it’s all done by the bands. All of the bands are like little cottage industries. What’s nice about it is you can make the music you want. there’s no kind of pressure to write ‘I Melt With You,’ which is what record companies always want you to do. Crowdfunding — and we were amazed, by the way, how many people could remember us even. We raised the money we needed really quickly and we went around the clock about three or four times more moneywise. That really helped us. We didn’t know what would happen, but when it kicked off, the fans came out in droves to help us. It was really fantastic.”
So will you sneak in some of your new material in Tucson?
“Oh, yeah. We wouldn’t have done it otherwise. Last year we played two tracks from the new album and this year we will be doing the same. We’ll be doing a track called ‘Moon Beam,’ which is a good pop song, and the title track from the album which is called ‘Trees.’ That is good for us because a lot of people get to hear our music that probably wouldn’t get to hear it. People who come to Retro Futura are not necessarily the people who would go out to buy our new album, but they get to hear it.”
What’s been the crowd reaction been to the new material?
“It seems to fit like a glove. When we played on the last Retro Futura tour, we would come out every night and the 25-minute set would just fly by and each song would go down as well as the other songs, except of course ‘When I Melt With You,’ and everybody is singing along at the end. But all the other songs, the new ones and the old ones, all go down very well.”
You’ve been doing this all your adult life. Are you still having fun?
“Yeah, definitely. It’s definitely harder work because your body’s older and traveling all those miles isn’t easy as it used to be. But the fun side of it is probably more fun now than it was before. We were so, so busy before, the pressure of product from the record companies and everybody. We did a tour, 80 concerts in 100 days back in the ’80s. This is a lot more relaxed and you can enjoy it more.”
