If you’d mentioned the Scottish band Del Amitri to most American rock fans back in the 1990s – even at the band’s apex when “Roll to Me” was a Top 10 single – the odds were good you’d be met with a blank stare.

And yet… they’d developed a strong and loyal following here and had four Top 10 albums in the U.K., along with a dozen Top 40 singles.

And yet… that wasn’t enough, changes in the music business led their record label to reject dozens of demos which kept them out of the studio for four years until the band “didn’t know where we were going,” according to singer and main songwriter Justin Currie. Where they were going was into the ether: the band ceased simply vanished soon after their fifth record in 2002.

And yet… changes in the music business led to a 2014 reunion tour in the U.K. and another in 2018, and then last year came “Fatal Mistakes,” Del Amitri’s first album in nearly 20 years.

Now the band is even touring America again, including a show at The Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood on March 29th. Currie, 57, spoke recently by video about the strange arc of the band’s career and how he measures success. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. You stopped playing in 2002 then got back together in 2014 and toured again in 2018. What changed?

Back then everything had turned to crap – audiences weren’t turning up, the record company turned into a corporate behemoth and we were under a lot of pressure. It was horrible.

Then the music industry turned on its head with streaming – all the money went into the live shows, with ticket prices going up exponentially. In 2014, we were offered a ton of money for a reunion tour. So we thought, “That’s quite a good job turning up and playing old songs and getting paid thousands and thousands of pounds.”

And with no record company and no pressure, we were just playing a bunch of old songs to our loyal fans. We ended up really enjoying it, which we didn’t expect to.

Q. Last year, you released the first Del Amitri album since 2002. Why now?

We toured twice and you’d start to feel like a bit of a heel if there’s no artistic merit in what we’re doing then that’s not what we got into this for. We love making money but having a new record makes it feel like we’re touring for the right reasons, bringing new shades and colors into the picture.

We might be kidding ourselves but it feels more justifiable. And this time we reduced ticket prices, we figured let’s do more gigs for less money, that’s a better experience for us and the audience.

Q. How are your Del Amitri songs different than your solo songs?

My solo songs weren’t vivacious enough for Del Amitri, they were too introspective. The Del Amitri music is more optimistic and decorative. The solo stuff can be quite bleak and without a second voice you strip out color and tension in the music. It’s the great thing about bands, you have these other musicians doing their own thing and you can’t stop them or mold them into something else.

Q. Is it fun knowing your bandmates might change your songs?

It is, and it’s also very practical. If you’re writing a song for a solo album and it’s a bit boring for a solo album you’d immediately throw it away, but with a band, you might think, Andy [Alston, the keyboard player] could do something quite interesting there or Kris {Dollimore, guitarist] could come up with a riff to make it more interesting. Sometimes those become the most fun or successful things on a record, because they’re rudimentary they leave room for the band to add things.

In the ’70s, the music press got obsessed with songwriting craftsmanship but that’s all a bit Cole Porter for me. It’s not just about songwriting, it’s about record-making with the musicians’ parts.

Q. But your lyrics are thoughtful and your songs are well crafted.

I think that’s the reason we’re not more successful (laughs). If the songs were simpler and more fun, the whole oeuvre would be more enjoyable to people. But I’m proud of the fact that what we’ve done is interesting. I wouldn’t want to be Foreigner. That was never our mission.

Q. Your lyrics are often dark or sardonic. Are you that way? 

An awful lot of what you’re doing as a songwriter is inhabiting a character and their worldview. With girls I was in relationships with back then, I’d say, “Don’t listen to that song and think it’s me and I’m so sad and sensitive.” I’m not that sensitive and I’m quite happy-go-lucky and weirdly optimistic despite knowing the world is screwed and is a cruel place.

Still, as a writer, you do put your attitudes and suspicions about the world in your songs, though they may not be things you’d talk about at the pub with your friends. That way you can just write the song instead of obsessing over something.

Part of being a singer and writing lyrics is that you’re trying to get attention. But even though it sounds pretentious try making the world a better place, with a bit of originality, or at least not fill the world with bland wallpaper paste. It’s arguable whether we’re achieving that.

Q. Is Glasgow still central to your songwriting soul?

I wrote almost everything from our early albums in Glasgow and a lot are situated in Glasgow. But I don’t write songs here anymore because I live with somebody and I need an empty house. I’ve been writing on an island off the northwest coast of Scotland where there’s nothing to do except look at sheep and the sea. If you’re by the sea you do end up using natural imagery a lot that you might not if you were in the city.

Q. But there’s no sheep imagery.

No, the sheep have not made it into any of the songs yet.

Q. Is it different touring in America than the U.K., where you’ve always been more popular?

Back when “Waking Hours” went platinum in the U.K., we were on TV a lot – we weren’t pop stars because we were too old and ugly to be in the tabloids, but we got known and we’d tour theaters. But in the States we played in clubs to 350 people and we loved it. It was quite nice having both, constantly changing the nature of the performance and the setlist. Just doing clubs all the time would get really tiring but doing bigger shows all the time would feel impersonal and alienating.

Q. Squeeze and Crowded House, who I see as your musical and lyrical kin, also fared far better in the U.K. Why?

What the bands have in common is that we’re ambitious in terms of the songs and the work we want to do more than we’re ruthlessly ambitious commercially. I think you need to be viciously focused on that to get to the top of the pile commercially in the States.

We did a huge amount of work there in the ‘90s, but we didn’t take it that seriously. Doing things like morning radio shows was so commercial and so vulgar – we shook all the hands, but our tongues were firmly in our cheeks. It’s not for us. If you want to go big-time in America, you’d need to have a steely cold determination. We were on the radio in America and that felt great. We were just happy with less and we didn’t push that hard.

Q. Looking back, do you see a satisfying career with millions of albums sold and a loyal following who can sing all the lyrics at the concerts, or do you wonder about those missed opportunities for more?

I can see both sides. We never wanted to look hungry for more so we were self-deprecating and quick to assure journalists we were perfectly happy when we got asked that weird question, ‘Shouldn’t you be bigger than you are?’

We’d been on the road for years when we had our first hit, so we were pretty cynical, but we also gratefully accepted what we got and didn’t moan about the stupid things we had to do, because it was just so much better than being failures. It’s rough being a failure.

Now, we’re not millionaires, but we don’t care. We’re paying the bills, royalties bought me a house. I can’t complain. Still, everyone has an ego and we believed strongly in what we did. So, I’d have been interested to have gone to another level to see what it was like, even though we might have hated it.

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