Since their inception in 1990 in Bournemouth, UK, Big Big Train has come a long way. From critically acclaimed studio project, they turned into a band with live performance experiences. Step by step, their self-supporting attitude got more applause and turned into a massive following all over the world.

NEXT STEP
Nick D’Virgilio has always been the only American musician in the band of UK artists. After the previous album, they were forced to regroup. ‘Vocalist David Longdon died at the 20^th of November 2021 in the middle of the pandemic,’ Nick explains. ‘We needed time to recover from that and we even considered stopping with Big Big Train and call it a quits. After a while we realized that David would want us to continue. That’s when fresh ideas for the new album came into being. First some cautious snippets, later with proper enthusiasm because we wanted to bring him honour. We decided to search for a new singer and had several options. We organized a kind of auditions and from the very start Alberto Bravin (you might know from the Italian progressive rock band PFM) stood out. Early 2023 Carty Bryant left the band and he was replaced in the end by the Norwegian guy Oskar Holldorff. He is still living in Norway, in the environments of Oslo. So we are a true international band now (chuckles). Last but not least we signed at Inside Out Music for this record. We have always been a self-supporting band, helped by Giant Electric Pea, but we thought it was time to make an upgrade in order to play outside the UK more often. We had always a strong following in the UK because most of our concerts happened there, but now it is time to expand our horizons.’

New vocalist Alberto Bravin made a glorious entrance on this more than one hour length record. He has the approach of early Genesis and it is no secret that Nick has been a devoted fan from that band since he was a kid. We can imagine his ecstasy when he was invited to replace Phil Collins to record the album ‘Calling All Stations’. Nick says: ‘We were two drummers on that record and it was a mind blowing experience. No I did not tour with them, but my name is on the record, that’s enough (laughs). He also met Peter Gabriel and cooperated on few things of him and finally the contact with Steve Hackett resulted in drumming on some works of him. For example, the drums on the new single ‘People Of The Smoke’ from Steve Hackett’s album ‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’ is done by Nick. ‘I have got them all now, it is full circle’, he grins.

RECORDING IN THE NEW WORLD
Going back to the new Big Big Train album, there are two mammoth tracks that leaps to the eye. The first one is the 12 minutes long epic ‘Beneath The Masts’. ‘That’s an interesting piece’, Nick considers. ‘It is built of bits and pieces, yet it sounds quite homogenous. You hear the big switch in the middle with other moods, but we succeeded in bringing all kinds of ideas from different persons in the band into a great stew. We don’t strictly organize limited input of members. We all contribute and see where we come out. Same goes for the lyrics. I write some lyrics about personal issues and things that matter in my life, but Gregory, our founding bassist and main lyricist is really found of history. That reflects in his lyrics. This one is not a concept album, but a result from our recordings in Trieste. That’s where the new singer lives and we all went down over there to record. All together. It was the first time we did it this way. In the past we arranged things on computer and sent files to each other. Everybody worked alone. Now that we have experience what a joy it brings of being together and create something from our spontaneous ideas, we are going to work this way for the next albums as well, because this is the real thing. The second mammoth track ‘Miramare’ is a fine example of that. It is a castle at the seaside in Trieste, the place where Alberto is coming from. It is about 100 kilometres from Venice and at the Mediterrean Sea. It is impressive and a model of ancient art. Italy is famous for that. While residing over there it was mind-blowing to be welcomed by their architecture, nature, history and debonair way of getting along with each other. Gregory was also very inspired by that environment and the next albums we will surely record over there and all together.’

In 2015 Big Big Train returned to live performances. That is not evidence, explains Nick. ‘We recetly did a European tour and it was marvellous. Getting the response from your fans is the reason why you are in this business. We were in awe that so many people knew us and talking to them was mind opening. Big Big Train has been a studio project for a long time, but that is something we want to change as well. We have scheduled our first American tour now for this year. We planned that earlier, but everything was cancelled due to the pandemic. We will play an anthology of our back catalogues on this American tour, because no one has seen us live here in the US and people need that first experience. Later this year I am pretty sure that there will be a European tour to support this new album ‘The Likes Of Us’. Instead of two songs, we are going to play five songs of it live then.’