Jethro Tull are certainly on a creative roll these days. After a nearly 20-year break (during which founder, singer-songwriter Ian Anderson remained active as a solo artist) the veteran progressive/folk-rock band returned in 2022 with The Zealot Gene, the first new studio album since 2003’s The Jethro Tull Christmas Album (and first LP containing all-new material since 1999’s J-Tull Dot Com).
A little more than a year after the release of The Zealot Gene comes another new Tull album, RökFlöte (released in April on Inside Out Music). RökFlöte was recorded with the band’s current lineup, which features three musicians who Anderson retained from his solo band (keyboardist John O’Hara, drummer Scott Hammond and bassist David Goodier) along with new guitarist Joe Parrish, who makes his full-album debut (he played on one track on The Zealot Gene).
In addition to releasing a new album, 2023 sees Jethro Tull back on the road after experiencing cancellations and complications due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Goldmine spoke with Anderson about how touring is still challenging for the band (but more approachable), as well as the themes that inspired the writing of RökFlöte, the album’s recording process, and his answer to the question: Is putting out new music still worthwhile?
GOLDMINE: Let’s talk about RökFlöte. I understand from the press material that it was inspired by Norse mythology and pre-Christian religions. Could you break down how you came up with this ambitious concept for the new album?
Well, it began on January the first of last year with the notion, which I had passed on to the record company, that it would be a predominantly instrumental album, a rock music album pushing the flute to the fore since that’s what I’ve done over the years. It had the working title of “Rock Flute” in English, but during the first day of working on the album, I began to get some ideas about content and it changed from being “Rock Flute” into, which is “rök” meaning, in old Icelandic, destiny, and “flöte” being the German spelling and pronunciation of flute, as in the instrument I play. That was because I came around to the idea of writing about a loose and not too serious look at the polytheistic beliefs of Norse mythology as they became written down in the 11th century in (a book of narrative poems about Norse gods
