INTERVIEW: Renaissance is having a renaissance
The progressive rock band Renaissance, started by Jim McCarty and the late Keith Relf, has gone through several changes over the decades. Annie Haslam kept the flame alive with years of nonstop touring and recording, and it was truly her vocals, sometimes set to McCarty’s compositions, that kept the group going strong for as long as they lasted.
When Haslam grew somewhat tired of the road and needed a knee replacement in 2024, the band called it quits at the Wildey Theatre in Edwardsville, Illinois, a community that has embraced the group over the years.
But now, a year later, Renaissance is back, and this time Haslam has employed the help of McCarty, which means for the first time ever multiple generations of this beloved band will share the same stage. They’re planning four concerts right now, two in Edwardsville, one in New Jersey and one in Pennsylvania. After that? One will have to wait and see.
“Well, the story was I retired the band last October, and the last shows were actually at the same theater in Edwardsville, Illinois,” Haslam said in a recent phone interview. “That was it really. I had taken control of Renaissance when Michael Dunford passed away, and over the years, which have gone so quickly, I don’t know why, it was getting to the point where it was heady on my shoulders. I also needed a knee replacement, and it was not good.”
Then a promoter in Illinois reached out a couple months ago and asked Haslam whether she would be open to a “History of Renaissance” show where she would share some stories from the many albums and songs from her career. There would be a lot to pull from because Renaissance’s musical output is impressive. Their well-known songs include “Carpet of the Sun,” “Ocean Gypsy,” “A Song for All Season,” “Island” and “Ashes Are Burning.” The tunes lean into classical vibes, but remain firmly set in the rock world.
“I got an email from the guy who promoted the show in Edwardsville, and he said, ‘I’d like to bring you back, but I’d like you to do a one-woman show,'” she remembers. “I said, ‘Well, no.’ I couldn’t see myself doing that on my own and people listening for so long without any music or anything. I said, ‘No, I just couldn’t do it.’ Then we started talking how we could do it. He didn’t want to let it go. He wanted to do this, so in the end, I was going to bring in a keyboard player, so I could do at least have some music and somebody else there.”
That’s when Haslam thought of McCarty, who remained a friend, but who hadn’t been with the band for many years. In fact, McCarty was busy with the current incarnation of the Yardbirds, so Haslam thought he might not be available for a Renaissance project.
“He wrote the song ‘Island’ I got the job with, and so I contacted him with my fingers crossed,” she said. “He was interested, and he had the time. So that was it. That was the start of it. In the end, we decided to bring the band back together for it as well. … It’s going to be a great show because we’re going to talk at the beginning, Jim and I, to the audience and tell them about the history of Renaissance.”
After the talking, the band will start the playing, including Renaissance tunes and some songs from another McCarty project, Illusion.
“It’ll be really exciting because I find I’ve been telling these stories with the Yardbirds now, talking a lot of the history of the group, and people were really interested,” McCarty shared. “And I thought that would apply very nicely to this, telling them how Renaissance came about, how the group started and what the roots were, and we’ll go from there.”
McCarty remembers the first few days of Renaissance. The original members were all shacked up in his little house outside London. One of them said that maybe they should infuse some Beethoven into their rock songs. “We thought, oh, that’s really original,” McCarty said. “Let’s leave that in and hear more of that. It became more and more classical themed. I suppose it became one of the first prog-rock bands at the time.”
Haslam was noncommittal on whether Renaissance is officially back together as a band. It seems that she’s taking these four concerts as an encore of their farewell and will see what happens next.
“I don’t know really,” Haslam said. “It depends how it goes down as well. If it goes down really well, then that would be something to think about. I don’t know. I don’t know whether I want to tour or not again. It’s a lot of work. Of course, we’re going to have a video screen behind us. It’s not just the band. It’s like a two-and-a-half-hour, two-hour-45-minute show.”
Haslam said she and McCarty get along very well, and they have a lot of fun together. On a basic level, they both want to see the group succeed and the music to continue with the fans. “We both love the band,” she said.
By John Soltes / Publisher / JohnHollywoodSoapbox.com
The History of Renaissance with Annie Haslam and Jim McCarty will play Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the coming days. Click here for more information and tickets.
