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The Session:

Travis

About:

We here at Lake Fever Sessions are excited to inform you that the following Session from Travis is being brought to you in cooperation with the fine folks at American Songwriter. We think it's a damn fine magazine run by a team of major dudes and swell gals. You could probably use a subscription or two...   Anyway, here's Travis:

During the first few years of my twenties, I listened to a lot of Travis. The silver-lined melancholy found within their records The Man Who & The Invisible Band resonated with me like noting else at the time.  Throw in their much more rock n roll 1999 debut Good Feeling and a few choice bridge singles and b-sides into my music collection and call me a fan. Hell, I even tried wearing my hair in a hauxton fin style - y'know... a fauxhawk? - like Fran Healy did. Though it was more of a vein attempt to come to terms with - or rather, conceal - my ever-quickening receding hairline... and I only tried it a handful of times.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but Travis and I kinda parted ways late in 2003. It was all rather unceremonious, really...  everything just went quiet. After the rush of success, the band took a couple years in the name of normalcy to recover, start families and generally straighten out their heads. During this self-imposed hiatus, Coldplay - and to a lesser extent, Keane - kiped Travis' trademark downer love pop, watered it down for the masses and started cashing truckloads of royalty checks. I just tuned it all out...


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In the years since, Travis released three proper albums  - 12 Memories, The Boy with No Name & Ode to J. Smith -  along with a greatest hits collection. I was more than a little nervous when Fran Healy & Andy Dunlop dropped by Lake Fever to shoot this Session and I hadn't heard any of it. I felt like were gonna get all crazy ex-girlfriend on me for not keeping tabs on them, for being a bad fan.
 
Of course, this was a completely ridiculous notion. Any guilt I held scattered upon introduction to Fran & Andy, as they are a pair of truly gentle and sweet fellas, the definition of gentlemen. And then they broke out their guitars and got down to business. They threw us a quick curveball with a loping version of More Than Us off their debut record, followed up with their hit single Driftwood. To cap it all off, they treated us to one new to my ears, Big Chair, off their 2007 release, The Boy with No Name.
 
In the wake of this intimate experience, it's as if my Travis sabbatical never happened. I've since picked up their last few records and I've fallen in love again. If, like me, you happened to lose track of Travis after 2003, I highly recommend picking up the second half of their catalog. You will be grateful.
 
-Joe Baine Colvert