Fran Healy (Travis) “In our business, there’s a trail of rock widows and orphans.”

Next month, Glasgwegian Britpop band Travis release their first new album since 2008. In a candid interview with Telegraph Music critic Neil McCormick, singer and principle songwriter Fran Healy reveals how an innocent remark by his son compelled him to take five years off.

“In our business, there’s a trail of rock widows and orphans,” according to Healy. “Cause the guys go off on the road and never return. There was a moment, when my son Clay was two, and we were looking at the little globe in the house, and I was going here’s where nana is, and here’s Australia, and he said, ‘where do you live, papa?’ My heart broke. I was going ‘I live here with you’, and he had this incredulous look on his face, ‘no, you don’t.’ And he really meant it, ‘cause we spent so much time touring.”

In 2008, after bassist Dougie Payne became the last member of the four piece band to start a family, they embarked on a short tour and then took a hiatus. “We had the most fun that we ever had,” says Healy, “and at the end of it, we all realised now we’re all dads, let’s just (call it the) ‘end of part one’, let’s go and be with our families.” Making rather spurious analogies between pregnancy and songwriting (“it starts in the bedroom and then its realised nine months later”), Healy adds, sincerely, “your kids are the greatest songs you’ll ever write. If the success that we had can afford us anything, it’s just to turn our backs and say ‘right, see you later’, and go and be with our kids. It’s been amazing.”

Travis are emphatically back on the job, however, with a UK tour in October and a new album, "Where You Stand", out on August 19th. Filled with classic Healy songs, it showcases Travis in clear, understated, and gently emotional form. In the relaxed and revealing interview recorded for Needle Time on Vintage TV, Healy talks about his songwriting principles and almost spiritual belief in the power of music. He also recalls, with a modicum of embarrassment, the first song he ever wrote.

“I was 13, a shrink would have a field day with it,” says Healy, before reciting what he remembered of the lyrics:  There’s a place where I go / Where the sun never shines / And the birds never sing their song  / it’s a place where I go sometimes / To escape the crimes / In a world that is changing. “I played it to my mate in the store room of the art class. He was like, ‘whose song’s that?’ It was cheesy but it made me think ‘oh that’s cool, he didn’t think I wrote that’.”

Neil McCormick's Needle Time with Fran Healy of Travis  is broadcast on Vintage TV at 10pm, Tuesday 24th June and repeated Saturday (27th) at 7pm

Watch the preview for this week's Needle Time with Fran Healy....