It was a busy Wednesday morning for Grace Knight when I had the pleasure of talking to her about the current Eurogliders tour. With back to back interviews all morning, she was very apologetic for calling me later than our scheduled time but busy seems to be the way of the world for Grace.
The Eurogliders have been touring throughout the year and Grace has recorded three albums in the last two years. The Eurogliders currently have an album out which was released earlier this year, titled Don’t Eat the Daises and Bernie (Lynch of Eurogliders) is frantically writing for another Eurogliders album.
“I guess we are closer to the end of our career than we are to the beginning of our career. So there’s a real urgency to get out there and wring everything out of life that we can. There is a lot of fun to be had. I’m not suggesting we are going to drop down dead tomorrow but there’s a lot left in us,” Grace explained.
“My life is pretty much a tour. I’ve been doing this for over 35 years now. We no longer do the sort of tour the Eurogliders did back in the 80s where we were on the road for three months. What we do these days is we will go on the road for three days, go home for four days, back on the road for another three days and go home for two days. It’s all back and forward. People do not tour the way they used to in the 80s.”
The other major difference in touring in 2015 to the 80s is the comfort. “I’m much more comfortable. I don’t travel around in a truck with six other people with smelly feet, lying in the back of the bus smoking dope. I get in a nice plane, get picked up at the airport and taken to my motel and driven to gigs. Which is nice.”
Grace and Bernie are old friends who enjoy working together in Eurogliders, the band that took them to international fame. “We can just look at each other and know what the other person is thinking.”
I mentioned to Grace that I recently saw The Eurogliders perform at the Palais Theatre as part of the Gold Concert tour and that I got a real sense of that friendship and their love of performing. “I’ve always really enjoyed my job. It’s been really good to me. As a singer, I always feel really energised by my work.”
On this current tour the band is performing all their old hits plus some new songs. I asked Grace how the new songs are being received by fans. “Great,” was her response. “They are Euroglider songs. It is a very up vibe band, we have always been positive and up vibe and that is how we send our audiences home after one of our gigs.”
When talking about how fewer venues there are these days for live music, I found it most interesting to hear Grace’s view on how she believes it has affected the quality of music.
“People have their entertainment at home, then of course that affects the pubs; they close down the venues and then that affects the musicians and it affects the music as well because people now will stay at home and write music at home. I’m not saying this is across the board but often you will find the music isn’t as good because people are doing it without learning about music; they are doing it in their bedrooms and so you get a lot of really bland music because there is no input from other musicians.”
The Eurogliders these days is Grace and Bernie playing with young, up and coming musicians. It is giving the young musicians a great opportunity to get out of their bedrooms, to get input from experienced artists and keep Grace and Bernie young! “We are lucky as we are performing with some really excellent young musicians which has put a spring in our step as well,” Grace said with a tinge of excitement in her voice. The younger players are learning a great deal from Grace and Bernie. “As you know, music is a cyclic thing. A lot of these young folk are saying ‘what you were doing back in the 80s is what we are trying to do now’”. Grace explained that part of the job of these young musicians is to analyse the part of the music they need to perform. “Once you analyse it, it becomes quite special and they go: ‘How did you do that? What technique did you use and what technology did you use?’ It’s really lovely to be able to share stuff that we did naturally with young up and coming musicians.”
Grace was almost embarrassed by my suggestion that these young musicians must have a great deal of admiration for bands like the Eurogliders who toured endlessly. “They do but you try to remain humble because you were doing what you loved doing. We did what we did and it’s lovely when people admire that but I try to keep my feet on the ground and be grateful that I’ve had such a wonderful career.”
After this short chat with Grace, I got a real sense that she is a very humble lady with her feet firmly planted on the ground but most of her genuinely loves sharing her music.
by Suzanne Bunker
Copyright © Suzanne Bunker 2015. All rights reserved
For full list of tour dates for both Eurogliders and Grace Knight, click here
