The links between music and archery are not often discussed. Intriguing, then, that Conrad Keely believes his band’s current album, XI: Bleed Here Now, benefited from him accessing his inner Robin Hood.
“It was fun to set up an archery range outside the barn where we were recording,” he says down the line from his home in Austin, Texas. “It’s a very meditative thing that requires calmness and a careful breath response; great things to access when you’ve just been stressing over a take. I’d go outside, take aim, and loose the arrow. There are all sorts of metaphors that can go along with that, of course.”
Today he’s chipper as he reveals…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead have just been filming a promo video for Millennium Actress, a Bleed Here Now song that seems to count the cost of fame. “Later today we’ll rehearse for a couple of hours and last night we worked on our three-part harmonies,” he adds.
Both Keely and fellow multi-instrumentalist/ToD co-founder Jason Reece have turned 50, but Keely says there was “no big drama” and they still feel like 20-year-olds. Eleven albums into their fearless alternative prog career, ToD know a thing or two about longevity. They’ve weathered countless line-up changes and major label burn-out, the damaging online leak of 2005’s ; even a five-year spell when, detached from his bandmates, Keely decamped to Cambodia after tiring of a period living in New York City.
