Somewhere in a parallel universe, Dry The River frontman and songwriter Peter Liddle is a successful doctor who turned his back on his musical dreams to get through medical school.
The truth is when Liddle signed for Sony, he knew he was never going back to anatomy class.
“I had been heavily involved in bands when I went to medical school,” says Liddle, as the band prepares to return to The Great Escape, having played three shows last year.
“My father was helping me out with my medical degree. He was saying I needed to get on with my academic studies and music was a distraction.
“For the first year at medical school, I didn’t do any music – it was the longest time in my adult life that I hadn’t been writing or making music. It was cathartic in a way. It gave me a fresh approach.”
Having started his musical education as a choirboy, and growing up listening only to religious music and his parents’ record collection, he remembers coming across hardcore for the first time.
“When I first heard At The Drive-In it had a real impact,” he says. “Seeing people go that berserk on stage and having that intensity – it’s something we always try to create live.”
His early years in hardcore have proved beneficial when it comes to the intense touring a new band has to do in today’s music scene, where the live stage is the only way to make money in a download culture.
“In hardcore and punk bands the only way to stay afloat is to tour a lot of the time,” he says.
“A lot of the bands on that scene play 200 shows a year.”
The origins of Dry The River came from a reaction against those hardcore days. Liddle had started to write acoustic songs and brought in a fewfriends from different bands to help him get them down in the studio. From that hobby project Dry The River was born.
“I wanted to draw a line under the shouty and noisy bands I was in,” says Liddle. “I wanted to write songs in a more conventional way and make them more melodic. It was something I wanted to work on for my own songwriting development.
“We started doing live shows and initially we were trying to be pure lo-fi and folky.
“It felt a little contrived. We were trying to achieve an artificial folky sound. In the end I allowed the musical heritage to creep in so we could rock out a bit more on stage and bring back the electric guitars. That evolved into Dry The River.”
The result is a set of songs that display a melodic sensibility rare among guitar bands today, while offering plenty of crescendos and upbeat moments.
Sony was behind the creation of the album Shallow River.
“It hadn’t occurred to us!” says Liddle. “By the time we recorded the album, the songs were fairly old. It was almost like a greatest hits documenting everything that Dry The River did over the first two years. Shaker Hymns even predated the band by a couple of years. You can almost hear the songwriting developing over the span of the record.
“Now we can work on new music.”
Although many bands complain they never get time to write new songs, Liddle finds time wherever he is.
“Even when I was a medical student and working crazy hours, I still found the time,” he says. “You have a lot of free time in airports and venues or whatever. A lot of places you can see me sitting with my guitar mulling over songs or listening to demos.”
Corn Exchange, Church Street, Brighton, Friday, May 11, 11.45pm
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here