My Carnoustie: Roddy Woomble on his relationship with hometown

The Courier

30-04-2025

Roddy Woomble can't seem to stay away from Carnoustie, despite once being desperate to 'get out of town'.
His band, Idlewild, were this week announced as the first headliner booked in at anticipated Dundee venue LiveHouse.
But just last week, he was back in the Angus town he once called home. So we caught up with Hebrides-based Roddy about what keeps him returning to Carnoustie.
I lived there on two occasions. I moved there when I was eight years old in 1984, when my dad worked for Michelin.
We'd been living in France before that, and there was a big Michelin plant in Dundee.
Then in 1989 Dad got transferred to the plant in South Carolina, so we all lived in America for a few years.
I moved back to Carnoustie in '91 and I stayed there until I left home in '95.
I do. It's strange, because I've got two distinct versions of Carnoustie.
The 1980s version, when I was at primary school, I was on my bike with my friends, supporting Dundee United, playing football, that kind of thing. Playing at the beach.
That innocent, idyllic period of life when you do those things.
Then I went to America as a teenager, discovered films and punk rock and photography, and I came back to Carnoustie with a totally different outlook.
I just wanted to form a band with my friends, build a darkroom in my cupboard so I could develop photographs, read books and write words.
I was a different person, really, it was like I'd come to life.
Well, I think a small town is a really good place for a creative person to grow up, because they want to get out of it.
If you grew up in a city there are all these options, but if you grow up in a small town without any of that, you want to leave it.
A lot of the artists you like will have a similar background, where they needed to go and pursue something, they knew there was something beyond.
So in a way it was a good town like that, because it didn't really offer anything. But that's not its fault.
It could have been anywhere.
I was projecting what I wanted and it wasn't there, and that's a really interesting thing for a town to encourage.
Obviously lots of people I went to school with remain there and have happy lives, because it's a very liveable town.
It's right by the sea, it's touristy because of the golf and it's easy to get to Dundee.
It's a perfect place to live in a lot of ways, but in the '90s I wanted to move to a city, which meant Edinburgh or Glasgow.
I associated Dundee more with my grandparents then.
I'm from a family of Dundonians, I was the only one – well, my sister and I – not born in Dundee, so it's an area I'm very connected to through my family, it's full of nostalgia for me.
When I grew up, though, there was no V&A or DCA, there wasn't much. Groucho's to buy records, that was about it.
I worked at the Dundee Rep in an after-school job as an usher for a few years, I always liked going there.
The connection was more the familiarity of family history, you feel at home somewhere if you know your ancestors lived there.
My mum and dad are still there, I was there on Monday night!
Obviously the minute you leave someplace, then the nostalgia starts, doesn't it? I've not lived in Carnoustie since 1995, but I've gone back regularly and the town has changed, it's expanded a lot.
Carnoustie High School is almost unrecognisable to when I went there, but it's still a sleepy town where people walk their dogs and the tide comes in, the tide goes out.
It's got a nice vibe about it. My mum and dad are older now, we go for walks together.
My parents came to my recent gig in Montrose, but I don't have many family and friends left in the area because everyone I grew up with moved away too.
I've played Perth Theatre a few times, though, it's great.
This is the last tour for my most recent record Sometime During the Night We Fell Off the Map, which we recorded in an old church near my home on Mull.
I guess it's a wintry record, because we recorded it in the winter.
Sorren Maclean produced, engineered and played guitar on it, and we wrote the songs together, so me, Sorren and Hannah Fisher will be playing in Perth, and my son Uist.
He's a piano player, he's 17. We'll play songs from the record, old songs and Idlewild songs, then after this tour is finished it's Idlewild gigs from summer onwards.
Yes, we are. My granny Woomble used to go to the bingo there!
My mum and dad told me it was the place to hang out when they were younger, when it was Green's Playhouse.
It was like a coffee bar, it was seen as quite European and sophisticated back then.