Conan: Charging Onward Through The Plague Year

Few bands tour harder than ‘caveman battle doom’ crew CONAN. It seems like, in a ‘normal’ year, the trio are either on the road, or recording their next record to take out on the road.

But 2020 was as far from a ‘normal year’ for anyone, least of all those who are part of the world of live music. As guitarist, vocalist and founder Jon Davis explains, the effect the Coronavirus pandemic had on CONAN‘s plans for conquest in 2020 was sizable. “We had to cancel quite a lot. With UNGRAVEN (Davis’ other project that includes Tyler Hodges of TUSKAR and latterly Dave Ryley of FUDGE TUNNEL) we had a festival planned for the summer in Sweden we had to cancel, and numerous rehearsals. We were able to record with Chris [Fielding, CONAN’s bassist] for the split with SLOMATICS which was great. In terms of CONAN… what a year,” Davis laments.

“We had to cancel four festivals in the summer of 2020, mainly in the UK but also in France. In September we were booked to go and play in Sao Paolo, and we were going to fly straight to New York to play Desertfest, and the day after that to fly to Seattle and start a US tour, so that was ruined. We didn’t have any other tours or festivals planned, so an average year was just reduced to zero. But really importantly, we weren’t able to rehearse enough to be able to record our new album, which we’ve been working on remotely for quite a while. Every time we tell people we’re going to do something about it, something bites us on the arse. So we’ve got some time booked this summer, but that looks like it might have to get pushed back again.”

While many bands have had to get used to song writing and sharing ideas remotely and individually, it was a reasonably normal practice at camp CONAN as the band are split geographically. As Davis explains, it’s an evolving system that’s taken some fine tuning. “We’ve actually got a system set up where I’ve got a recording set up at home and I bought Johnny [King, drums] an electric drum kit. So I’m sending over ideas to him, he’s recording and then sending them back, and we’ve come up with some good ideas together using that system. We’ve got about two albums worth of material, more or less, so I reckon when we get into the studio it will all come together really nicely.”

Though their current recording set up is functional, for Davis nothing can replace being on the road, though the enforced downtime has led to some personal positives. “It’s been really nice because I’ve been able to spend more time with my family, which is different. But in terms of touring, I hate no being able to tour, and it’s been difficult being not being able to get on the road. I was thinking about how much I took it for granted – being able to jump in the van and drive to Spain or around France or head to Germany. You just take all those things for granted. Up until the last year it was completely normal for us to travel around Europe a lot.”

With the impact of reduced trading seeing many smaller venues at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords and crowd funding support to pay the bills, does Davis see the COVID-19 pandemic causing a problem period for the UK live music scene? “I think it will in the short term. But I would say that live music as an entity is very resilient. I believe that the phrase ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’ will come into it, and hopefully those venues will be there to continue trading and we’ll be able to book some shows.”

For those privileged enough to follow Davis on social media, they’ll know full well that he has weaponised the ‘dad joke’, frequently sharing some excruciating puns, rivalled only by SLABDRAGGER bassist Yusuf Tary. Can we expect any sort of dad-joke themed super group in future? “I think that would be awesome, and we’d probably die laughing thinking of the band name. I think that would be the best band ever so bring it on!” says Davis. “We’d need to get another dad in on drums though. I’d love to make any sort of band with Yusuf, but I think it’d be a close competition to see who could tell the best dad jokes. I think I’m older than him and naturally more experienced, and I’ve got three children plus a step daughter, so I think naturally the demand for my dad jokes is higher.” Davis pauses the interview to check the quality of his dad jokes with his daughter, the result being a scathing “minus four million, apparently, and that’s from one of the main consumers of my dad jokes.”

CONAN have recently released their third live album, the aptly titled Live At Freak Valley. Some see the live album as ‘one for the fans’ only, but Davis a fan of the live album as a format? “I don’t think I’d listen to live albums of just anyone, I think it does have to be someone you’re a fan of,” he explains. “Some of my favourite live albums are NIRVANA ones, or NAILBOMB’s Proud To Commit Commercial Suicide – I think that’s my favourite live album. It’s just so good, and you’ve got Alex [Newport] from FUDGE TUNNEL doing vocals as well – the best! I always preferred live albums when I was learning to play guitar because it made me really hungry to go and play live,” Davis continues. “To see the crowd, and have that atmosphere of being onstage and performing. I’d watch (NIRVANA’s) Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! over and over again because that video gave me a sense of what it would be like to tour and to play live.”

Since being founded back in 2006, CONAN have been at the vanguard of the contemporary doom scene – a scene that has been one of the most popular in metal for nearly two decades. Does Davis feel like the ‘doom bubble’ is close to bursting any time soon? “I don’t really see it as a bubble. I think it’s part of the landscape now. It’s a type of music that’s accessible and interesting,” he says. “It appeals to every age group. I think if it only appealed to a certain age group you’d be in trouble. You see a wide variety of people and age groups at doom gigs, all the way up to people with more grey hair than me. It feels good to be playing a sort of music that has such a wide ranging appeal, and it’s quite a down to earth circle to mix in. It’s a type of music that has proven itself and will be around for a long, long time.”

On any waxing or waning of doom’s popularity, Davis isn’t sure. “I don’t know if it will become any less or more popular – right now it’s very popular, there are festivals all over the world that cater to doom metal, with Psycho Las Vegas being a perfect example. When we played there we played on a stage as the sun went down right next to a swimming pool, and if that isn’t a sign that your chosen genre of music is popular, I don’t know what is.”

CONAN are an embodiment of the genre’s global popularity, and are in demand on stages the world over. “We get put on all around the world; we’ve played shows as far as Australia and New Zealand and then played in Moscow not long after that, and we played a handful of shows in Japan,” Davis says. It’s something he’s very grateful for, and not complacent about. “Being able to do that all because I started to write some tunes back in 2006, I think it’s crazy that ‘the bubble’ around this sort of music has sustained me and my lifestyle since I started taking it seriously back in 2013. So I think once lockdown is over and we can start playing shows again, I expect there to be renewed demand for shows, renewed demand for festivals, renewed demand for releases, and I’m excited about picking up where we left off. I’m sure most other people would say the same.”

Being one of new doom’s earlier adherents puts CONAN in the position where they are reaching major milestones, with 2021 being their fifteenth anniversary as a band. That said, Davis doesn’t put a huge amount of stock into marking these milestones in a big way. “Because we’ve released so many things, it seems that there’s fairly regular anniversaries of different things. We wanted to celebrate ten years of (first EP) Horseback Battle Hammer last year, but of course we couldn’t, and I don’t really plan on doing anything else like that for the fifteenth anniversary.”

“Maybe when I retire I can take a look back at things, but at the moment I’m still in the thick of it, so I’m focusing on the present. It’s cool to have so many anniversaries, I just wish they weren’t all so big – ten years or fifteen years sound scary. It makes you feel old!”

While contemplative around the changes CONAN has ridden out over the last year, unsurprisingly Davis’ relentless focus and work ethic has him thinking about the band’s immediate future. “We’d like to have a new album written and recorded before the summer,” he explains. “At the moment we’ve got a UK tour lined up for July. I hope that we can play some more festivals over the summer and in the winter. I expect that if things open up as we’ve been led to expect through June and July we’ll see some short notice tours in the summertime. And hopefully our album will be released in the next twelve months. That’ll be our main focus actually – getting the album recorded and released, and seeing if we can play some shows in the meantime.”

“It’d be so good to get the new album out. I’m more excited about this album than I have been for a long time. My life was a bit all over the place during the recording of [2018’s] Existential Void Guardian, and since then things have changed for the better in a big way. Writing this album, coming from a different place and being able to take more time over it, has been awesome.”

Live At Freak Valley is out now via Napalm Records. 

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