FabricationsHQ - Putting the Words to the Music
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Celtic sheen, rock shimmer
Muirsical Conversation with Hayley Griffiths
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Outstanding and versatile vocalist Hayley Griffiths kicked off 2023 with a musically contrasting but ‘doubly’ satisfying two album release, showcasing her love for the traditional/ Celtic and symphonic/ contemporary rock.
 
In January the classically trained Griffiths, who spent nearly a decade as lead singer in the international phenomenon Riverdance and Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance before fronting Celtic-tinged melodic progressives Karnataka for seven years (featuring on  2015 album Secrets Of Angels), released her third solo album Far From Here alongside MELANIE, the debut studio album from The Hayley Griffiths Band.
 
Far From Here follows in the evocative Celtic footsteps of Silver Screen (Classical Crossover Album of The Year 2010) and Hayley Griffiths’ previous solo album, 2011’s Celtic Rose.

MELANIE, by ever shifting rock-contrast, is a heady and successful mix of contemporary symphonic rock, melodic rock and progressive themes that sees Hayley Griffiths backed by her former Karnataka band mates Jimmy Pallagrosi (drums, production) and Cagri Tozluoglu (keys), along with the talents of Mathieu Spaeter (guitars) and Jordan Brown (bass).

Both albums are excellent examples of their respective genres, but releasing both on the same day could be seen as a risky move – which is exactly where the conversation started…

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Ross Muir: What drove the decision to release both Far From Here and MELANIE at the same time, because that’s both a bold move and, obviously, a lot of work…

Hayley Griffiths: It was a serious amount of work, yes, and it it’s probably completely bonkers! [laughs].
Ever since I left Karnataka and started the Hayley Griffiths Band, we have been writing away in the background on our first studio album – but then, obviously, we had the pandemic, which led to having to do everything remotely.
That meant the album took a lot longer than we could ever have anticipated at the beginning.
And, since our last tour, back in 2019, I’ve had two kids, so our time was spread thinner and thinner, which also held back the release 
– but that’s also why we did the Hayley Griffiths Band live album and DVD, kind of in the middle of all that, so we didn’t disappear completely.

Then, kind of randomly, during lockdown, I came up with this idea to do a sort of ten-year anniversary follow-up to my Celtic Rose album, which came out in 2011
– so as you can see I didn’t quite make that ten-year anniversary [laughs]; but that’s how the idea of a new solo album came about.
I had also been introduced to Mike Stobbie who, as you know, is a founder member of the Scottish progressive rock band Pallas. Although he’s well-known in the prog scene, Mike has all this experience in the Celtic world; he has actually written for Celtic productions and he was just the most perfect person to work with; he also produced the album.

Far From Here started out as a lockdown project but, again, for multiple reasons, it just started to take longer and longer from beginning to fruition.
So, suddenly, after years of putting all that work into those two projects, both were ready at the same time!
I thought "OK, I can either spit the releases, maybe six months apart, or delay one of them."
​But then I suddenly realised that, in some ways, that would be like doubling the work – because as you’re promoting one release you’re starting to prepare for the next one, with the same amount of promotion and PR, but separating them out – "this is me as the rock singer" then "this is me as the Celtic singer."
​
So, one night I had this mad idea where I thought "why not just celebrate that diversity?"
Anyone that has seen me perform live will know that I’m not really your typical rock singer – I have a classical background, and spent many years touring on Irish dance shows – I can’t forget I’ve done all that; that is who I am. So why not celebrate that along with the rock side and do something a bit quirky; not many people release two albums on the same day and that are such contrasting genres.

RM: Indeed not. Bruce Springsteen and Guns N’ Roses are extremely high-profile examples of two-albums-on-the-same-day artists, but those releases are, in their respective genre-styles, not dramatically different.
And of course The Boss and Guns N’ Roses have massive promotional, commercial and fanbase resources for that sort of dual-release to be successful.
But from your point of view this is a brave decision to take, but one I’m personally appreciative of because I favour and champion artists that take risks – it’s also a great opportunity to showcase your musical and vocal diversity.

HG: Thank you; I’m so glad you look at it that way.

RM: You mentioned Mike Stobbie’s involvement on Far From Here; Mike also wrote the title track, a lovely lead-off song that sets up the traditional songs that follow. Was it always the intention to lead with Mike’s song?

HG: Well, the Celtic Rose album was a collection of traditional Scottish and Irish favourites, and the original idea was to do another album in the same vein, but with bigger and better production, and improvements all round.

RM: Hence the anniversary idea.

HG: Yes, and that’s how I went to Mike originally, asking if he could reimagine or rearrange a handful of different Celtic songs. But then he offered me Far From Here, which is part of a far larger opus of work he has written called This Land which, at some point, apparently had big interest from Simon Cowell.
When he played me Far From Here I loved it; I also think it sits really nicely with the other, traditional/ older songs. It doesn’t in any way downplay the original songs; it really works as part of the whole.

RM: I agree, it works as a lovely introduction. It’s very traditional in its form and arrangement, but with a contemporary Celtic makeover…

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RM: Far From Here is also a wonderful example of your purity of vocal and enunciation; nor do you ever stretch beyond what any of the songs need – you make it about the song and the lyric, not what you could do, vocally.

HG: Thank you. I think, probably, that comes from my classical background and all the music exams, I took, where enunciation was so important! I also do a lot of musical theatre and I that’s an important side of it, too; it’s never really left me. 
I’m also a vocal coach myself now, and diction and technique is very much part of that.

RM: Another album highlight, certainly for those of us north of the border, is your cover of Dougie MacLean’s Caledonia.

HG: Yes; I hope I did it justice!

RM: You did indeed; it carries a lovely vocal and an equally lovely classical meets Celtic arrangement, of which I’m sure Dougie approves.
You also have a lovely version of the quintessential English folk song Scarborough Fair; I have to say that’s one of my favourites on the album.

HG: That’s actually one of my favourites on the album as well; it came out really well and it’s one I’m particularly happy with. It’s such a simple song but it’s so, so effective.

RM: As Far From Here showcases, you are steeped in the traditional and the Celtic, but were you, prior to joining Karnataka, also a rock fan?

HG: If I’m brutally honest... probably not! [laughs]. But that’s only because I wasn’t exposed to it; it was only really through being in Karnataka that I listened to the rock genres a lot more and, obviously, became so involved in rock.
And now, with my other half Jimmy Pallagrosi, who was also in Karnataka and is a heavy rock drummer with very eclectic musical tastes, I have loads of new and different influences.
Music is such an enormous part of our lives and now, absolutely, I’m into so many rock influences.

RM: That probably explains why Melanie is such an impressive mix of styles, along with very strong vocal melodies. There’s also some very interesting and clever stuff going on rhythmically with Jimmy, whom you mentioned, and bassist Jordan Brown. You and the band have clearly put a lot of thought into this album.

HG: Thank you. Jimmy also produced the album, so full credit to him for that and putting all the arrangements together, but it has really been thought through and yes, there are a lot of quite unique sounding rhythmic intros. On Made My Bed for example, there’s this really interesting drum rhythm before you get into the song, which is also quite different.
We tried to make the album as contemporary and fresh as we could; we are a progressive band but, like me, with my differing styles, we don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves into one genre.

RM: Yes, you are progressive in the sense of dynamics and arrangements, not through long, or overly long, songs; on Melanie only three songs reach over the six-minute mark.

HG: Yes, we’ve still got those quirky and different time signature changes and you’ve got those lovely guitar solos from Mathieu Spaeter – so we have those elements of prog but, like you say, we have a different approach to it, one that will be more appealing, hopefully, to a broader audience.

RM: It certainly should be, and right from the get-go with opening track Broken Lullaby.
That song has a lot going on
– rhythmic shifts, a great, punchy chorus, darker passages, but it remains cohesive. And then with a song such as Made My Bed, which you mentioned earlier, you have that AOR/ radio friendly vibe, which allows you to play around with a slightly poppier vocal.

HG: That’s what I really like about the album, we have a lot of different styles within it. Broken Lullaby and Melanie are the heavy rock side of the album and Make My Bed is more vocal led, and poppier; we also have the more upbeat and catchy style of Dust To Gold.
And then there’s Little Star, which is very different again.
We tried very hard to make sure it wasn’t an album where the songs were all going to sound the same.
It was really important to both Jimmy and myself that this album was kind of up and down in tempos, had different kinds of intro and outros and different things going on in the songs, evolving or changing, so you didn’t get that same style throughout. That was a very conscious decision.

RM: There’s not just the simultaneous but very different albums release, we also have the chance to see both sides of Hayley Griffiths when you go out on tour later in the year.

HG: Yes! I had this other crazy idea one night [laughs] that, now I was committed to doing this double release and having already planned to go on tour at some point this year, why not show the audience both sides?
We did always do some Celtic songs in our rock sets but that was always a small selection of intimate, acoustic numbers that were part of the main set – bringing the energy down before you build it back up again.
This time we are doing an Act One, which is the Celtic set, then we are going to come back out for Act Two, which is the rock set.
​
Now, having said that, we are a five-piece rock band, so we are not going to attempt to be, or sound like, a one hundred piece orchestra for the Celtic songs.
If you delve into Mike’s work on those songs there are multiple layers and they are richly orchestrated, so we have reimagined or rewritten them as a five-piece, although we do also have an accordion addition and a violin addition, to give them a more Celtic flavour
– but we are not trying to emulate Mike’s sound because you just can’t do that as a five piece rock band.
That also means there won’t be as big a transition between the two sets as you might expect; it won’t be quite as stark a difference as playing those two albums back to back, but it will be the repertoire of those two albums on stage.

RM: Keeping to the rock side for the moment, the title track of Melanie has to be mentioned because, as can be seen on the official video, this is a very different Hayley Griffiths, vocally and visually, from the classically trained trad. loving girl of Celtic Rose and Far From Here.
Much like the alter-ego lyricism of Melanie, are you taking on another role to become this bigger voiced rock gal?

HG: In terms of going on stage as somebody else, I think, for me
– and the reason Melanie is also the title track of the album – the answer is, yes, it's that idea of an alter-ego.
That definitely stems from me becoming somebody else, because I am this classically trained singer who then has to go on as this rock chic [laughs].
It really is about putting yourself in a different headspace – you walk on as almost a different character and not who you actually are. It’s very much about the alter-ego, which is something I did intentionally – I’m saying "this is not me, but this is who I become."

RM: An on-stage persona if you will.

HG: Exactly; and that helps create that very different energy for the rock side.

RM: Yes, light and shade; the two sides of Hayley Griffiths; Celtic sheen and rock shimmer.

HG: Yes, the show is very much a performance; we want it to be as much of a visual show as it is about the music, because people want to be entertained at the end of the day.
You buy tickets to watch a show, not just listen to a show; you don’t want to see calm and demure at a rock show, you want a commanding performance.

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RM: From the present, to rolling back the years to a phenomenon called Riverdance.
The obvious question is how did you get the gig as the featured singer on that show and Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance?

HG: I auditioned for them, but I honestly don’t remember applying! [laughter]
I think it started with seeing an advert in Stage magazine, which was donkeys years ago now [laughs]; I must have written to apply, and then they came back asking me to record a couple of the songs that would feature in the show, so I sent them a demo disc.
I didn’t hear anything for what was probably months then, after all that time, a letter came in asking me to go for an in-person audition. From there I did a workshop. followed by a trip top Dublin to meet the executive producer and sing to him, but even then I was still thinking about that first letter of reply after seeing the advert, thinking "did I write a letter?" [laughter]; even now I’m still not sure!
I think maybe my mum wrote that first letter and then sent them a CD when they wrote back to say "please record a couple of songs; you then might have to come and meet us." [laughs]

But then it all happened so fast after being such a long, drawn-out audition process.
On the trip where I flew out to Dubin they also had me try on the costumes, which was probably a bit of a clue that I might actually have won the job [laughs].
After that, all of a sudden, it was "Right, OK, can you fly to Germany this weekend?"
From there I never looked back; each tour seemed to trickle into the next tour and each of those tours seemed to get longer. Then I was also part of Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance and started dovetailing; suddenly eight or nine years have gone past and I’m thinking "well, that’s a huge chunk of my career right there!"

RM: What a fabulous story and such a wonderful opportunity – what age were you when you started with Riverdance?

HG: I think I was just nineteen.

RM: Nineteen years old, on the Riverdance stage, performing to tens of thousands across Europe…

HG: It was pretty amazing. It was the biggest platform I could ever have asked for but I was also quite naive and quite a quiet girl, so such a new experience was a massive shock to the system.
It was also quite brave, leaving home and going out on tour across Europe, pretty much straight out of school, with the pressure of such a professional job.
It was definitely like throwing myself into the deep end!

RM: And those shows and performances led to the opportunity to do the first solo album?

HG: Yes. Towards the end of that time, there was a residency Riverdance held in Boston, for about a month.
I thought "well, instead of just sleeping all day then doing the gig, then sleeping all day and doing the next gig, why not be productive and do something?"
A friend of mine had a contact with a recording studio in Boston, and set it up for me to have a meeting.
I went there just to record a demo, actually, but I got on really well with the producer there, Jared Hancock.
We got chatting and he said "why don’t you think about writing some songs?" I’d never written before but I thought "well, I’ll give it a go!"
From that conversation, over the next couple of years, every time we had a break I would fly back to Boston and write and record with him; that became my first solo album, Silver Screen.
So that solo opportunity came out of a bit of luck and being in the right place at the right time.

And it was only off the back of that solo album that Karnataka heard of me.
They headhunted me having heard that album, which in itself is kind of mad because it’s not a rock album.
I’d have put it under the classical crossover genre but it’s also quite eclectic and quite varied, which was quite unusual at the time for the genre because it wasn’t an album of covers; it was very different.
So from that came Karnataka, and the rest is history in terms of the rock side of my career, which then took a complete left turn.
But that was absolutely for the best, because I’m so glad I got into rock; it’s the best thing I’ve ever done!

RM: Well I for one am delighted you took that left turn, as will others who follow or champion rock music that’s happy to take risks and be that little bit different.
Here's hoping for the best of both Celtic and Rock worlds for you and the albums, Hayley.

HG: Thank you ever so much, Ross, I really do appreciate the support!

Ross Muir
February 2023
Muirsical Conversation With Hayley Griffiths


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UPDATE: The schedueld March dates of The Hayley Griffiths Band's Metamorphosis UK Tour have been cancelled due to family matters; please check the official website and Hayley Griffiths' social media links for updates on news of future rescheduling.

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Far From Here and MELANIE can be purchased on Digipak CD or Double Vinyl from the official website:
https://www.hayleygriffiths.com/
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 Photo Credits: offical promotional images

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