"I'D NEVER seen a studio before and so we were just making things up as we went along, not really knowing that the tempo of a song should remain the same throughout, and things like that...'

"Yeah, things like being in time"

"And being in tune-we didn't really give much of a damn about that. . ."

Er, I think I'll stop them there. We'll save the hard sell for Wogan.

With customary modesty, Ruby Blue's Rebecca Pidgeon (vocals/guitar) and Roger Fife (guitar) respectively, have been trading what they perceive as the shortcomings of their 1987 debut album, Glances Askances, an acoustic folk LP with rock/pop leanings.

To call Ruby Clue an Edinburgh trend would be inaccurate. Rebecca moved from there to London in'84 for career reasons, with Roger following three years later after they had signed their first deal with Red Flame (the label which released "Glances') because he was bored.

Ruby Blue then swelled to four, following the enrolment of Erika Spotswood on harmony vocals and Anthony Coote on bass.

They released five singles, the last of which, 'Stand Together', was hot enough to land them a long-term contract with Phonogram.

HARDLY ROCK layouts from hell, both Rebecca and Erika are part-time ex-RADA actresses of some repute.

"The reason I haven't done any acting for a while, says Rebecca, is because nothing's come up that's interested me enough."

Say you were on tour and it did? "I guess whichever commitment I'd made first would take priority, unless someone said, come and star in my major motion picture, then I'd star in the picture. Sorry Roger."

Roger mumbles something about not minding. But he needn't worry. Their imminent 'Down From Above' album is an Oscar winning performance of a record.

Pidgeon and Spotswood's divine vocal harmonies, supported by slick instrumentation, emulate the emotion and simplicity of early Joni Mitchell and the traditional feel of, say, The Oyster Band.

Roger's aspiration for 'Down From Above' display the usual caution and an encouraging maturity: "It'd be nice to build up without being instantly huge-that'd be counter-productive."

Question time: name a commercially successful British folk band of recent years. And don't say Clannad - they're from Dublin. Sad isn't it?

Given a modicum of experience in the Biz and an equal-sized break, Ruby Blue could - and should- be the answer.

AS WE all know, drinking and swearing are usually more pleasurable activities than listening to records that sound like they've been made by people who've never done either. But occasionally a band happens along with sufficient beauty to wipe away your preconceptions - Ruby Blue are such a band.

They even get away with having a singer/lyricist with such an overtly hippy name as Rebecca Pidgeon. 'Down From Above' is an eclectic collection of different styles that move from middle of the road celtic-folk to pseudo Simple Minds territory, and only truly fall down when they plunge the jazz-puke depths of 'Betty's Last Letter'.

Generally though, every style is tacked behind the folk beauty of Rebecca's voice (imagine Sally Oldfield singing 'All Around My Hat'), the beauty of which easily eclipses most of the style hopping. From the English pentagram folk of 'Primitive Man' to the Fleetwood Mac-ismo of 'Can It Be' the songs have pleasantly commercial class stamped all over them - enough to establish a strand of identity through alternately great and abysmal production ideas.

The gospel choir of 'The Quiet Mind-For Joe' seems a touch misplaced, whereas the straight church choir of 'Pavan' works sweetly. A rugged rural beauty with city-slick clean finish... 'well crafted' is the sort of description any self-respecting young person should quite rightly be sprinting away from, but here the description applies without the knee-jerk reaction. Roll on the new New Seekers.

From Elvis Presley to Sting, the history of pop music is littered with stars who have tried their hand at acting with varying degrees of success. There is one essential difference between those forays into acting and the career of Ruby Blue's lead singer, Rebecca Pidgeon. As she explains: "They got their parts because they were pop stars, I'd rather get them because I'm an actress".

Ruby Blue may be a new name in music but Pidgeon, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and brought up in Scotland, has already established herself as a thoroughly respectable stage performer. Eighteen months a the National Theatre and a role in David Mamet's spiky satire, Speed The Plough, is hardly the currently favoured route into pop stardom. On the other hand, a part in an Australian soap seems to work wonders.

Speed The Plough provided a break for the band as well as it's singer. David Mamet took such a shine to the group that he wrote the words to their new single, Primitive Man. In the playwright's absence, Rebecca Pidgeon elaborates on the lyrical strands, which accompany the haunting, folkish melody. It might be a different medium, but Mamet is still obsessed by the niggling little things in life -"You know, the basic themes, murder, lust, marriage, death; the usual little things...the primitiveness of mankind, having to hunt and be hunted."

Mamet also sings on the band's forthcoming album, Down From Above, an accomplished mix of high-spirited folk conjuring up images of a designer Fairport Convention, laid-back swoony jazz and breezy pop. Technically, Down From Above is the band's second album. . The first, Glances Askances, followed soon after Pidgeon's graduation from RADA in the late eighties. But she would rather think of it as their first. "The earlier album was recorded for hardly any money, about £3,000, for a tiny label, and hardly anyone beard it. And since then we have had time to learn to play our instruments."

Down From Above reflects the quartet's growing interest in root music. Very much a traditional band, concentrating on live performance rather than studio work, they've picked up, almost by osmosis, influences from people they've played with over the years. Most notably the spirit of celtic icon Van Morrison hangs over Primitive Man, while the busking spirit of Martin Stephenson and the Western swing of Lyle Lovett has invested the album with a stylistic diversity that never yields to the threat of banality and superficial style-hopping. It is a record that grows gently on you, and fulfils the band's hope that they can make "not pop singles but good strong albums that sell well."

As for the future, the hope is to sustain parallel lives on different stages, alternating between the band and the boards. Following a summer tour, Pidgeon returns to the BBC -where she previously had a part in the glossy advertising soap Campaign- this time to film Checkhov's Uncle Vanya. Somehow you cannot imagine Kyle Minogue making the same move.

"THERE IS a telephone/There are some photographs/A penknife/And a coin/And time...to pass", sings Rebecca Pidgeon of Ruby Blue in the enchantingly, catchy 'Can It Be'. This is what 'Down From Above' is all about - an uplifting travelogue through old times, friendships and future hopes. If that sounds twee, it is, yet somehow it stays part of the album's overall strength.

'Down From Above'- abbreviating to 'Down' would be unforgivable - is Ruby Blue's second LP. Their first, 1987's 'Glances Askances', was released on the obscure Red Flame label and featured only two of the present line-up (Rebecca and guitarist Roger Fife). Today's incarnation also includes Erika Spotswood (harmony vocals) and Anthony Coote (bass). Rebecca and Erika are actresses.

Ruby Blue's names may be -straight Out of Jeeves And Wooster, but this is an album of heavenly modern pop harmonies crowned by Rebecca's uncannily perfect voice, of subtle, complementing instrumentation, and of pop-tinged folk for the '90s.

'The Quiet Mind' (the first single), 'Can It Be', 'Stand Together' and 'Bloomsbury Blue' all warrant an allusion or two to Suzanne Vega, Clannad, or Joni Mitchell circa 1974's 'Court And Spark', but, at the same time, they're illusions.

Enticing little curios are provided: 'Pavan' a wondrous, almost boastful, choral chant; 'Epitaph', a simple acoustic guitars vocal duet; and 'Primitive Man' trad folk at its most approachable. The other song in the curio category, 'Betty's Last Letter', is more difficult to get to grips with - clever, up-to-scratch jazz.

Someone's looked 'Down From Above' on Ruby Blue. And it seems, as though they're a fan.

Outside the urban furnace, high summer needs a refreshing tonic, and Ruby Blue's second LP (their first for Fontana) produced an effect not unlike a cool evening breeze blowing off a river.

Centred around the creative hub of singer/songwriter Rebecca Pidgeon and guitarist Roger Fife, Ruby Blue take the folk-pop relationship one stage further than people like All About Eve and the Sundays. Their Scottish upbringing adds a Celtic touch, and, more intriguing still, Pidgeon's American background introduces some jazz/blues/gospel elements as well. The US connection is constantly emphasised in lyrics that allude to a Stateside sweetheart ('I don't think it's jet lag, I think it's love' - that's a line and a half).

Like Fairground Attraction's Mark Nevin, she has the ability to make new songs, like Something Gone Wrong, sound like old favourites on second hearing. It could be simple plagiarism but I prefer to think it is genius (the two, as Morrissey might argue, are not mutually exclusive). Certainly anyone capable of writing The Quiet Mind is ripe for dedication, the massed harmonies are the closest a pop group has ever come to emulating a choir since Bohemian Rhapsody-period Queen.

Though a lighter touch here and there wouldn't hurt, there is a tendency in places for the drums to clatter in like Phil Collins- this is a band fettering on the brink of brilliance. Don't stop the Pidgeon. 9

WITH A SCORCHER OF A SINGLE entitled 'The Quiet Mind' and a long player to follow, Ruby Blue seems set to waft a breeze of fresh air into a world of pop impurity...an antidote to the technologically twisted tedium of most of today's chart toppers. It's dreamy stuff, ... no pretensions, no gimmicks, no clutter - just songs presented joyfully and honestly.

This is the second album from a band that are still caught mid-leap between unrealised potential and promise fulfilled. "Down From Above" sees Ruby Blue covering too many bases with too little expertise, suffering from indecision and an ignorance of their own strengths.

Ruby Blue's disorientation often leads them to plump for shameless mimicry in the vain hope that it will give them direction: they don't know where they're going, so they'll follow someone else until they do. Consequently, they amble down paths already well trodden by American pop-folkies, 10,000 Maniacs ("Can It Be"), or by British folderol merchants such as Steeleye Span ("Primitive Man").

Not all copycats are crap: Japan aped Roxy Music, yet finally wound up better than their mentors (!? ndr). Ruby Blue, on the other hand, are best when they're being themselves, and sounding like no one else. This happens all too rarely on "Down", notably on "Song Of The Mermaid", where the group play up to, and exaggerate, their laudable baroque tendencies, and break free of the overly simple textures of their otherwise drab guitar/bass/drums line-up.

"Mermaid" is lush, ornate, speckled with flourishes and drenched in strings. "Take Your Money" and "The Quiet Mind", though, are way too dusty and dry. The more complex, meandering structures of the almost lovely "Stand Together" and "Bloomsbury Blue" make up for this but, these oases aside, "Down From Above" suffers from a surfeit of dehydrated folk.

UNLIKELY POP stars seem to be everywhere these days. So say hello to Ruby Blue, originally the musical outlet for two RADA students with a precocious idea about doing something other than acting. Rebecca Pidgeon, 24, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts but raised in Edinburgh, doesn't really know why she now has a seven-album deal with Phonogram.

"Roger Fife (guitar) and I would spend days writing songs and recording demos which Roger sent out to people," Rebecca explains in an alluring mid-Atlantic Edinburgh burr. "Dave Kitson of Red Flame Records liked one enough to want to record an LP with us."

Kitson paid £3000 for Rebecca and Roger to spend two weeks recording a debut LP which, explains Rebecca, "was bought by the mothers of people who played on it. It got some good reviews, though". So good that Phonogram supremo Dave Bates signed the ever-expanding band to his Fontana label. The result is the first major label LP release by Ruby Blue out in June, titled 'Down From Above'.

"It's our first record for the label, but," offers Rebecca, "we have the next one written already". The problem, of course, is that the band have to sell enough copies of 'Down' before they can get to record the next. She laughs, "it looks like we'll be spending quite a while promoting this one". In truth it shouldn't rake that long to justify a follow-up becoming available. Certainly 'Down' is never destined to collect platinum discs for the band, but its mixture of early 70s folk-rock melodies and sensitive, introverted lyrics are pleasurably packaged in a none too bombastic production.

Rebecca's voice is clear and bright, not too idiosyncratic nor alarming in its stylistic nuances to warrant a 'love-it-or-hate-it' response from listeners. The one thing it might lack from a commercial point of view are instantly recognisable hit singles.

"We understand that you have to sell singles to the kids in order to sell the LP" Rebecca reveals, "and we will make videos of singles which the company think might get us airtime on kids TV or whatever". But there few compromises when it comes to the obvious marketing idea of, as Rebecca says, "putting me at the front of the band in a bikini, That's not us", It certainly isn't. At the moment Rebecca Pidgeon is best known as a serious and promising young actress, who has so far starred alongside such cinematic greats as Trevor Howard and Anthony Hopkins (in The Dawning) and Dame Peggy Ashcroft (in She's Been Away).

Despite the crossover strands of her acting and singing careers - playwright David Mamet has written the lyrics for current single 'Primitive Man' - it looks as if, for a while at least, Rebecca Pidgeon aspiring pop star will not have to quit her other career. And despite her claims that she has found the music biz to be lot more of an industry, and more cynical than it must have been in the 60s or 70s", she seems perfectly happy with the way things are going in her life.

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Last Updated March 1999