Interview with Mark Colton of Credo

Mark Colton. Photo by Béla Alabástrom, used by kind permission.

You were telling me on the way in that you have played some gigs with Comedy Of Errors.

Yes, we did a gig in Glasgow when Against Reason came out, and we did a tour linked to it just about 14 years ago for the last album. And we played in Glasgow and there was Comedy Of Errors, Abel Ganz and us.

That is a dream line-up.

Yeah, all three bands got to play Rosfest at some point and, but yes, and I've appeared on stage with Comedy Of Errors singing The Student Prince on more than one occasion and Joe's sung Skintrade with us as well, which is what we're opening with tonight.

Sounds great. So first of all, why the name Credo? Where does that come from?

A lot of people think we took it off of the Fish album. I'd just say that was a happy coincidence. We didn't think anybody would be interested in releasing an album of ours. It was 1993 or 1994, and we recorded a cassette, a tape that we were going to sell at gigs like lots of bands did. We got contacted by Cyclops Records, and they put a CD out.

It was ironic. I'd spent decades trying to be a rock god and out of nowhere this guy came and said he'd release a CD for us. Never even seen us, heard us play or anything.

And Tim, the guitarist, and I, were just sat there one day pressing enter, enter, enter on the thesaurus on his computer and the word credo came up. We just thought it was an interesting looking word. It's had some, people obviously go on about the Fish thing, but there is a definite Marillion influence in what we do. So once the Fish album came out with Credo on we did wonder, what do we do? Do we change it? Do we keep it? We just thought it probably explains to people what we sound like, so sod it, we'll just go with it.

That's as good a reason as any.

But, as I said, the actual name came up before the Fish album came out and came out from us just messing around with a thesaurus. I can't remember what we were called before that. We did do a couple of gigs, but I can't remember what we were called at the time.

Prog Primer is what I call this. Imagine that there's somebody who's never heard your music, so they don't know you at all, which one of your songs would you recommend for them to use as a starting point and why?

I would probably say Staring At The Sun. And I would say that one because it's, I think, our take on prog. It is quite melodic. We like to write tunes and songs. That sounds snobby, doesn't it? But I think Staring At The Sun is just a good example of what we do. And, it's got a killer chorus.

When you asked me the question, I was thinking about Too Late To Say Goodbye. That's another. People love The Letter and I think there's elements of The Letter that are very typical of us. There's me getting very angry. It's another song about my failed love life. But I think just generally I'd say listen to Staring At The Sun or Too Late To Say Goodbye.

I have a friend who described Credo as "the periodical cicadas of the prog world". It's been a long time since you last played. Can you give us some insight as to why?

Yeah. One of the things is we do seem to have built a career out of taking 10 years between albums and there have been really valid reasons. COVID, obviously.

We all used to live within a 10-mile radius of each other, we rehearsed every week, writing new material continually, but we now just live all over the country. From Tim living up in Manchester, I live in Swindon, Mully lives in Winchester, Jim lives in Frimley, Mike lives out in Hereford. So that's one of the challenges.

We write together. We always write together. Nobody just writes the songs.

It's not like what I see when I look at some of the bands. In fact, I look at Jim Johnston [of Comedy Of Errors, who writes the music and the lyrics]. And I sometimes wish we had somebody who would do that because it'd make it a lot easier.

Also, I'd like to think that we don't have too much in the way of filler on the albums. We don't do 45-minute albums. They're all 70 minutes plus. I think being prog every album should be the equivalent of a double vinyl album, that's something silly that we do. We could release one every five years if we did the same as other bands.

We've got Round And Round, which I don't think we're playing tonight. That's another good one if anybody wants to listen to what we're about. But it's not even been on an album. It's been written since 2008. We're just not very good at being quick. But, I do think this album will blow a lot of people away.

Your fans are looking forward to that. Why did you decide or how did you decide to get back together again?

Well we never really split up. Being in CREDO is like the Hotel California, we can check out, but we will never leave. The demo tracks were probably recorded well over 10 years ago. What we do is we record the demo tracks. Then we record over them with the actual recordings that you hear with the final mixes. We went away and stayed in a residential studio for a few days and wrote the basis of the music and a lot of the vocal melodies. I reckon it was probably about 2010 when we did that.

They're the base tracks of everything that we've got on this album. It's just taken a long time. We've had a number of occasions when it's gathered momentum and then fallen off again.

This time it gathered momentum, and it's pretty much got to the end now. The album's got to be mixed, but all the recording's done. It sounds great.

I'm really looking forward to hearing it. We've got Karl Groom who's going to do the mixing for it on us. I'm really looking forward to it because the mixes I've got at the moment already sound great, but there's nothing production wise that has been done to them. They're just what's on the tape, well not on the tape these days, but on the computer. It's all just very raw.

Have you got a rough guesstimate of when a release date might be?

It's either going to be later this year, which actually it's probably not now because it's September next week, or it's going to be early next year. We've got three live dates and the idea of getting these dates now was to release the album. One of the band has had a recent bereavement that has slowed it down again, but we figured on the fact that we've waited so long, a little longer won't matter.

You've got the Nene Valley Rock Festival coming up.

Really looking forward to that. We're all a bit nervous today. We've got another live date on Wednesday in Swindon. And then we've got Nene Valley on the Saturday, so that should be good.

What are your plans for the future?

I would suspect there'll be another live album. And then at some point, and I'm sure we all realise this, we need to sit down and decide if we're going to do another album.

I'm 60. A couple of the guys are older, a couple younger. At the rate we record, who knows? I'd like to think there'll be at least another live album.

At the moment I don't think there'll be another studio album. And if there was, whether we'll get to tour it or not, I don't know. We've got lots of bits that we haven't used, and I'm sure we could pull them together. But we wouldn't want to compromise on the quality of what we're recording.

No, of course not.

And I know that's been to our detriment. I mean, there's a number of bands that I personally feel have put out a number of albums, and if you took maybe six or seven of their albums, you might get a good album out of it. Or there's bands that go out and put out 40-minute albums, and none of us think that's the right thing to do.

You know, it's probably we all think that being prog they should be double vinyl albums, so that's why we just do lots of long albums.

Well, why not? You're doing a few dates in the UK. Would you consider coming across to Europe? If so, which countries?

Any country that wants us. We'd like to go back out to Holland. We do very well in Holland. We've been to France, and apart from somebody saying I look like an English football hooligan we were incredibly well received! Yes, I mean, we'll play wherever we're asked to play. We're always surprised that people want to come and see us, if I'm honest.

This particular question actually came from a fan called Markus in Germany, and he's desperate for you to come and play either in Germany or in Belgium.

Yes, we would be delighted to go to Germany, and we'd love to go to play The Spirit of 66 in Verviers.

I don't know what it is. We seem to be stuck with a peculiar image where people don't think we're popular enough to headline, but think we're too popular to support, and it's just strange. We find that there's some bands that don't want us to support them. I'd like to think that's because they think that we will get too good a response, I don't know. Who knows? But yes, we'd love to go out and play in Germany. I'm hoping that the Fish era Marillion tribute tour dates that I am undertaking with tonight's soundman Robin will create some Credo dates off the back of it.

That would be great. De Boerderij would also be amazing.

We've headlined De Boerderij in the past. When I look at some of the bands that were on the bill below us, IO Earth and Iona, I would hope that we can attain those sort of gigs again. It feels odd sometimes when I just look at some of these things, but we just don't know what the album's going to do. I mean, will people remember us? That's the big worry.

People will most definitely remember you. Has Brexit had an impact on you as a band?

Yeah, definitely.

Can you tell us how?

It just makes touring impossible. It was one of the reasons we slowed down on the album as we knew touring with it in place was going to be difficult, so we thought that we had no real need to deliver the album until things had settled down a bit. I don't get, just the bigger picture, I just don't get what's been going on in this country in the last 10 years. I just don't get it, it's just bonkers. How anybody can think that we're any better off, I just cannot comprehend.

Has it had an impact on sales?

Well, we've not had anything to sell, really. We'll find out, though. We're still negotiating at the moment with the company for the CDs. We're hopeful that the entire back catalogue is going to come out on vinyl. I'd love to get Rhetoric on vinyl.

Rhetoric, for me, is a really personal album. I don't know if you know, I was really ill during the recording of it, and I never thought I'd get out of hospital, let alone get onto a stage again. So, in summary, I'm hoping we're going to have some really good products to push and to sell to help fund mainland Europe dates.

We'll go out and play live, definitely, we're, I think we're a very good band when we play live. We always tend to give a good show, all the guys in the band can play.

But as for how things have changed over the last few years, I just don't get it. I really just don't get it.

Also, even the States, we were just talking about, they've put the price of a visa up to, eight hundred and fifty dollars a person, or something crazy like that.

What can you say? You know, where there's a will, there's a way.

I mean, we'll definitely go on tour if people want us to. And all we're interested in is covering our costs, you know. We've never made a penny from this band. It funds itself. As long as stuff doesn't cost us money, we'll do it. Yes.

A labour of love.

Yes, it is, definitely, yes. It's a funny band. It's a funny construct, really. Tim and Jim have known each other since they were, like, 15. So that's 50-odd years. I've been in the band 32 or 33 years, maybe 34. Mike's been with us maybe 30 years. And Mully's been with us and managed not to record with us for 12 years. I mean, we all get on pretty well, we like it. It's a bit like being married to the four of them, to be honest. We bicker all the time, but it's what it is.

But yes, we'd go and play anywhere. As long as it covers its costs.

Is there anything in particular about the new album that you could sort of give me a sneaky idea about for DPRP readers?

Yes, it's very much an album that reflects on what's happened in the last 15 years. And as is the way as you grow up and get older, it's very reflective. There's a lot of questions in it.

The album's called We The Disconnected. Part of that is because we did become disconnected. As a great many people have since, and maybe because of Brexit and COVID. It's a very adult, grown up album with some real themes... There's not a specific song about COVID, but there's a song about feeling isolated. This song's about sort of waking up, not literally, but figuratively, and thinking, well, this is what I signed up for. I've done everything that society expects me to do, and I'm just not fulfilled at all. And, it's got lots of really happy music and lots of miserable lyrics. So it's a typical trade-off album from Credo.

We were talking about that earlier. I mean, the guys have contributed more to lyric writing on this one than they have in before, for no particular reason. I just felt they had things to say as well.

So there's a lot of co-writing on the lyrics, so we all were feeling the same way about things. There's a lot of anger in it, again. There's a song we're playing tonight, which is about the American school shooting. And again, it's just one of those things you're just like, how on earth does this keep happening? Why is it still allowed to go on? You know, there's general stuff about the toxicity of the British workplace post-COVID and post-Brexit. The British workplace is just a horrible place to be at the moment. And yes, everybody's just out for themselves. Bullying's rife. People think because they've got an opinion, it entitles them to be shits to everybody else. And that is just a nonsense situation.

But, again, I'd say it's a very grown-up album. Rhetoric's the one I'm most proud of. But I think this one will probably beat it by the time we've got out and start playing it live.

And I never thought, just because of my personal circumstances, that that was ever likely to happen. So I'm just looking forward to getting out and playing the new material. We are playing 30 minutes of it for the very first time tonight and that is quite a scary thought!

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This interview was published at the same time as the concert review of Credo's gig and the interview with Rod Moor-Bardell on the venue, The Old Rectory.