Devastated.

I'm Sorry

Midnight

The Arbor Doves are a new British rock band that represents a new beginning for singer Rory O’Neill and guitarist Andy Odom.
Six years ago, the two musicians were, in O’Neill’s words, “burned by the music business”. But with this new band, and their debut album Rewound, they have come back stronger.
With influences that range far and wide – from Elvis Presley to The Rolling Stones, from Neil Young to Steve Earle, from Muddy Waters to Ryan Adams – The Arbor Doves are described by O’Neill as simply “an authentic rock and roll band, with no pretentiousness to it.”
And for this band, what matters most is the songs. As Odom says: “A great melody, a great riff or a great lyrical hook – all of the best songs have something that gets inside your head. And that’s what we’re trying to do – write songs that will resonate with people.”
The breadth of The Arbor Doves' sound is the result of having two songwriters with very different perspectives: O’Neill the country music fan, and Odom the classic rock guy.
Odom says. “For me, the Stones have always been the centre point. From there, I worked back to Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed… all that powerful blues music. But I love out-and-out rock like Guns N’ Roses and Aerosmith, and modern artists: Richard Hawley and The Killers.”
O’Neill fell in love with country music as a young boy in a large Irish family. “My dad had 17 brothers and sisters,” he says. “When they had family parties, they played music. And it was the sound of a steel guitar that got me into that country sound. I’m a big fan of Steve Earle, Garth Brooks and Brad Paisley. Above all, it’s the haunted quality of country music that really gets me.”
In addition, it was the rich tradition of storytelling – both in country music and in his family – that shaped O’Neill as a lyricist. “You’re a product of your upbringing,” he says. “I grew up with all these uncles and aunts who were storytellers. It’s the Celtic thing.”
And in the 11 songs on The Arbor Doves' album, O’Neill tells the stories of his own life. “Some of them are sad,” he says. “Some are happy. And some are about what went wrong for Andy and myself back in 2007…”
Arbor Doves songs such as Midnight and Devastated are meditations on the illusory nature of the music business, related from first-hand experience. “One day,” O’Neill recalls, “I was on a road to success and the next week I was back in my mum and dad’s living room, without the money to buy the daily paper.”
The first track on the album, I Won’t Lie Anymore, was written when O’Neill and Odom were hitting rock bottom. “As we were writing the chorus,” O’Neill says, “bailiffs were lifting my car off the driveway.”
“It was a bad time,” Odom admits. “We ended up with nothing. But that’s how life is. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. And that’s the message in these songs: it’s during the bad times that you find out what you’re made of.”
Odom and O’Neill never considered giving up on their dream. As Odom explains: “Musicians make music – we had to carry on.” And so in 2012, The Arbor Doves were formed around the creative nucleus of O’Neill, Odom and multi-instrumentalist Lee Spence.
The band’s name has a special significance. “My father used to write poetry,” Odom says. “After he died, I found a box of his poems in the attic, and the first one I read began with the line: ‘The Arbor Doves soared first as the flood hurried home…’ When I told Rory about it, we decided that if we ever get the opportunity to make music for real again, we’ll use that name…”
And the album’s title also has a personal meaning. “We chose Rewound,” O’Neill says, “because some of these songs were written around 2007, so it was a case of us going back and finishing what we’d started.”
For Rory O’Neill and Andy Odom, The Arbor Doves are a validation. “We always believed we had some great songs, so it was important to get this album made.”
And if there is one song on the album that sums up the ethos in this band, it is one that was written in 2011: Turn The Light On.
O’Neill was revisiting the Harry Potter books he had first read as a teenager, and in the second volume, Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, there was a saying from the sage Dumbledore that connected with O’Neill and Odom on a profound level.
“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn the light on".

Paul Eliott


the_arbor_doves