Category Archives: Interviews & Features

Interviews & Features

Smithfield: ‘I think you just got to stay true to what you want to say!’

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We had the pleasure of chatting to the amazing country duo Smithfield at The Long Road the other weekend. Check out as we chat about their set at the festival, their UK tour and plans for the year!

P.S. their album drops tomorrow!

This is the first stop on the tour, right?

Yep! First show period on the tour!

Is this the first time you’re in the UK for a couple of years, right? I know you did C2C at some point.

Yeah, we did C2C in 2023. Played three stages there, and then tried to figure out the next few years. How do we get back over here?

So honestly, the festivals, The British country Music Festival’s kind of what started it all. So we got booked for that and then we were able to book all around that. And then Long Road came in last minute. We were like, ‘well?’ and we were like, ‘oh yeah!’

I thought you guys were announced a bit later than a lot of the bands. I didn’t realize you were booked a bit later on!

Like a third announcement.

How would you compare the scene in the UK and Europe to back home?

We always talk about how attentive the audiences are here. And, you know, they know the words to the songs that aren’t on the radio, aren’t the singles, and that kind of freaks us out sometimes, because we’re just like, “How do you know this?”

I thought the first time I was like, “Are they… Do they like us?” Because they were so quiet. I realized after, it’s because they’re so attentive and they’re really taking it in, even if they don’t know the music. They’re so, like, appreciative. Not that America’s not, it’s just a different culture. You know, it’s a little more rowdy, you know, fights and beer drinking, it’s just, it’s wild and it’s fun, but it’s wild. So it’s very different audiences.

I’ve seen a few people say that it’s very daunting playing to a crowd for the first song and it’s nothing and then that you finish and suddenly everyone cheers and it’s great.

Yeah, you’re like, “Oh, wow, they did like it.” They did like it!

You’ve got quite an extensive tour, at least over here and then a couple of stops in Europe as well, right?

So we have one day in Denmark. Yeah, and I think it’s a festival or something. Yeah, it’s called National Nights. The rest of the dates are us being bopped around.

Yeah, I saw some cool venues on there as well. Quite a spread of kind of stuff from, yeah, almost a dive bar to a more intimate kind of songwriting thing, which will be cool!

Yeah, so we have a British band over here. So we have a couple shows that are full band, but most of them are acoustic. So it’ll be a different vibe for if you want to come to multiple shows.

Is it a full band here?

No, this is just acoustic. The front porch felt like acoustic. Just felt right.

Yeah, we’ve done a few years here now, and yeah, I feel like a kind of acoustic set does really well on that kind of stage as well.

Porch sitting and picking, you know, that’s the thing!

Then we’ve got part two of the, I guess a double album, right? Next month?

Two weeks!

Are there any differences you can pick out between the two parts? Is there anything specific?

Well, they feel cohesive as one project, I feel like…

They do. But you as the producer might have a different perspective on that.

Yeah, I mean I could go into geeky producer stuff…

That’s fine, go for it!

I mean, part two was recorded in a live studio with the full band together. So we multi-track things and we’ll do it in a big studio. The first part was done… the best way I can describe it is like; a part is done, then he sends it to me, then I get the drums recorded and he sends it to me. This was like all the musicians in the room together making music, and so that was one of the differences. And honestly, it was a little more special to me to do it that way.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it’s pretty cohesive.

It’s all meant to feel like one big album that just came out.

You’ve done at least a couple of kind of standalone singles as well outside of the EP, right? What went into the decision to put them out separately compared to the album?

Just being honest, we’re independent artists. It is so much easier to put out song-by-song than it is to put out a full album and what you have to put in on the front end to do that. But what’s cool is we’re putting out our first vinyl. It will have part one and part two and those standalone singles that came out in between.

That’s cool! I feel like it’s so hard to decide what to put out these days as an artist. Like a lot of the industry kind of pushes towards singles, but there’s quite a lot still leaning towards an album and EPs!

The West is wild to me, I mean it is. There’s no right way.

Well, and I think you just got to stay true to what you want to say, you know, like try to follow your North Star. If you lose sight of that, that’s when it starts becoming inauthentic. It’s like we just had a mountain of songs that we wanted to put out an album and a project, but I wouldn’t say force that. We just have a song at a time, go single, single, single. We had written so much, we’re like, this feels like a project. So it’s like, who cares what’s right and wrong these days? The West is wild!

I noticed you guys are pretty up on the whole Christmas singles and that kind of thing. Are we expecting something else come December?

You did your homework!

We shine at Christmas, yeah!

We got a couple things coming for Christmas, things that I’m actually working on while we’re in the UK.

I imagine that’s quite stressful, right?

You know, it’s interesting… yes and no. I mean, it’s making music at the end of the day, right? It’s something you love to do. We can’t say it will be originals, so what we’ve done since 2020 is every other year we do originals, the next year we do covers. So yeah, we’re trying to build up to where we’ll maybe eventually do a Christmas vinyl.

That would be very cool.

Our Christmas show is really special. We give back to charity with it, and we do it with several other artists. So Christmas has become a big thing for us, really has.  Accidentally.

I assume you’ve got everything in place for a Christmas show then back home?

Oh yeah, we haven’t announced it yet. But I can tell you it’s in December!

Have you got a busy few months when you get back home leading up to that, or?

Yes, it’ll be kind of a sprint until the end of the year. I mean it’s Halloween back home right now, so either holiday, when we get back, you’re going to be seeing Christmas.

It is, yeah, wherever you go it’s already Halloween. People were announcing Christmas stores in July!

What can we expect from the set tonight?

You know, we love our acoustic set, honestly. I might love it more, I don’t want to say more than the full band, there’s a great time at full band, but I think you don’t get a chance to get to know us as well with the full band. Like, when it’s acoustic and just the two of us, it’s very intimate, it’s very interactive, you get to just kind of get to know us more. I was telling a few people already that for our shows we just want to make you feel like part of our family, because that’s what we are. And like we just want you to feel that way while you’re here. Like, acoustic is the best way to do that. Because you get to know us, you get to feel like that.

Is it a different approach going into writing a set list for an acoustic show between you guys as opposed to a full band?

Yeah, you’re spot on, because some of the songs that we have don’t really translate as well to just a guitar, especially the more track-heavy ones. The EDM music we do doesn’t translate well to acoustic!

I don’t know, I feel like on a front porch it’d be fun, right, in the rain?

Yeah, why not!

And also more of your like storytelling songs, sometimes those shine when you’re able to tell the story. So in a full band, if you got to go from song to song and just… it’s more about the energy and the party and the fun, harder to tell those stories, so our sets do change based upon what we’re playing. Some remain the same, but yeah, there’s songs we’ll play in our acoustic that we don’t play in full band and vice versa.

That’s cool though. So what you’re saying is we need to come down to the whole tour.

Yeah, you need to come to more than one show!

Then as kind of a lighter question, do you have a dream tour lineup you’d want to be a part of? Anyone you want to support or friends you want to bring along?

I’ve always wanted Little Big Town.

I was going to say, I don’t want to speak for the other because I look up to them so much and they’re, I mean they’re very similar to us, very harmony-driven, but I think that their audience would, because they love them, would love us, and there’s just not a lot of us in country music, so. What about you?

I mean you kind of took mine, but another, I think Keith Urban would be awesome. He was a big influence on me just with country music, and I think it would just be cool, I think it’d be a cool combo, we could go out and sing harmonies with him on some of his songs. All three getting to be part of harmony stuff, I mean we still do cover one of his songs all the time. I think we’re covering one in the front porch set. I’ll have to look at the setlist. Keep you on the edge of your seat. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t!

Interviews & Features

The Nocturnal Affair: ‘”You’re crazy, but that’s brilliant. Let’s go!”’

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We had the pleasure of chatting to Brendan of the amazing Nocturnal Affair again last week. We caught up about how the last year has been since our last chat, as well as the bands new and upcoming music, and tour with Fear Factory. Check it all out below!

Sadly our stupid video didn’t record fully again, but I have some potential plans for still getting bits out… watch this space!

It’s been just over a year since we chatted last time. So, how’s the last year been?

Crazy, bro, crazy! Did you chat with me before or after Drowning Pool?

I think it was just before.

Yeah, that was crazy. They took good care of us. It’s just been great, dude. We’ve been working on a ton of music. We’ve got a bunch of songs we recorded forever ago, that we’re still waiting on the schedule of release. And then we’re mixing it up with even crazier songs. After that, people are going to think I’m a crazy person, more so than usual! But, I’m really looking forward to that.

We’ve had three singles since the start of the year, right?

We’ve got ‘Deep’, ‘Oxygen’ and ‘Place in Time’. And I’ve got two more that are we’re kind of pushing the limits here as far as how many we can release at once. I don’t know if we’re doing two at once or if we’re doing one at one time while we’re on tour with Fear Factory.

All three so far seem pretty different in style as well. I assume that was a conscious decision to kind of put something out that was a different side of the band each time?

Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s I do my best to not write the same song again and again and again. I love so many genres. I’ll go to the gym and I’ll listen to like Ramstein. And then later in the day, I’ll go back for cardio and I’ll be listening to Bill Withers. Then I’ll listen to like, Hayley Williams’s solo stuff, like Hayley from Paramore.

Yes, oh, some of her solo is so good.

Her solo records are so good!

So, it’s just, because I love to listen to so many different things, I’m not trying to limit myself to metal, or hard rock. And I feel like if I tried to, it would show that I’m meant to do more. I feel like I’d be forcing it if I only tried to do rock. I do rock when I feel like doing rock. When I want to do a piano ballad, that’s what I do. When I want to do an alternative, I’ll release something like ‘Oxygen’.

Yeah, definitely. I was reading the press release for Place in Time as well, and it was a really It’s a cool kind of concept and story to it. I feel like it’s really kind of touched quite a few people.

Yeah, it’s really cool that a lot of people have enjoyed the song and and and kind of felt the the power that was behind it when when we wrote it, because it It wasn’t a personal story for me. ‘Place in Time’, it happened to somebody who’s one of my best friends. He’s such an inspiration to me as far as just the type of man he is and and how good he is to people, and I’ve watched him fall apart from this sickness that just like chooses anyone. I mean, it’s scary. That bacteria that whatever it is is fucking scary.

It’s so funny, like they used it for our video. The thing that you see, I don’t know if you’ve seen the video yet, the big yellow thing with the tentacles, that’s the actual virus. That’s the actual cell, that is the thing that tries to kill you and and it’s antibiotic resistant.

I mean he died on the table four times. Yeah. Four times. The last time he heard his father’s voice screaming at him to get up. So that’s why we put that in the song. And also, what’s scary is like something that kind of creeps around and whatever, that’ll kill you if it if you let it. They’re relentless. When they pulled it out of him, it had grown so much, and they had to put it in a thing, and it had tentacles. Like the the bit that had grown and overpowered a lot of his body, they put it in a thing, and it reacted to light when when light showed on it, and it was moving.

God, that’s terrifying.

It’s crazy. It’s out of an alien movie. Yeah, and he fought it and he won. And thank God, he’s still here with us, and he’s stronger than before, and I’m so grateful.

Yeah, absolutely.

But it was just such a compelling story, and I don’t think we had planned to write about it. I think we was just going out to see him to hang with him in Jersey, and he was just like… He doesn’t play music; he listens to a lot of music, but he is definitely a creative mind like the rest of us…and he was like, “I have this riff that just like keeps playing in my head. I think it’s original. I don’t think it’s something  that I’m hearing from something else” So, I just brought my writing stuff with me, put down my laptop. I was like, “Okay, just sing it out for me.” And we sang it out, and we kind of built it, and it turned into what it is.

I gave it to my the guy who produced it, Tony Carbani, and he took the instrumentals, and he just turned them upside down, added his little bits to it. There’s a lot of stuff we kept in the chorus that was originally written in Jersey with Rick, but then it became its own monster. Then we were just like, “We got to do this, we got to release this.” It went from being like, “Hey, let’s just kind of help you get everything going out of your head and onto paper,” to now it’s like, one of my favorite songs to play live!

All your videos seem pretty massive and ambitious. I imagine it’s quite a big undertaking, to do videos of this kind of magnitude?

Not for me! I get to sit back and watch them do their magic, which I have never done before.

So, it’s done by management. Mark Willis, and somebody else on our team named Larry Hinson, who has this whole media conglomerate, where he works with a ton of other people; our good buddy Dustin and various other people in other states. They have this like insane time machine Frankenstein’s monster computer that’s the size of Texas, and it’s like when you turn it on, it sounds like a plane engine. And this thing, they scanned our bodies. And it’s done in the Unreal video game engine. That’s what the videos are done in. So, we have avatars in this video game world. They just put their minds together and create this awesome madness. That I have nothing to do with. And it’s not that I prefer that, because I love to see what I create with what producers I’m working with at the time. But I love to see how that inspires other people, even if it’s management and my team.

I had ‘Deep’ written back in the in like 2022, right? ‘Cross Me Out’ was 2023. ‘Benefit of the Doubt’ was beginning of 2024. All three of those songs were so different. They were so, just unrelated, different parts of my life, different emotional experiences, I was a different person in each writing session. And my manager heard it, and he was like, “Cool, we’re doing a trilogy.” ‘Cross Me Out’, and ‘Benefit of the Doubt’, and we’re ending it with ‘Deep’. And I was like, “You’re crazy, but that’s brilliant. Let’s go.” And he just did it, and it works. I think we’ve got a super cut of all three videos too, and how they run together.

I’m so grateful. What they did with Place in Time is like next level. They have like a bunch of new equipment, new programs, like new editing, and like with the avatars of the other characters, I had, dude, I had no idea what was going on. No idea. We went there, we got in front of a green screen, we performed. We’re in the moment, we do our thing, we think we know what’s going to happen. And then they released it and I was like, “Are we in space? Are we on a spaceship?” It’s so cool!

Then what they did with ‘Oxygen’ was freaking awesome. Like, he heard the song and he went, “You’re going to be Eric Clapton, and when Eric Clapton tried to fuck George Harrison’s wife, we need to find George Harrison’s wife.” And I was like, “I’m going to  what?!” That was just so fun, and just that he heard that song and he thought of that instance… I would have never have done that.

What’s the writing process? Is the rest of the band involved with it at all?Do you kind of bring some of the stuff to them and jam it out?

I have an open door policy on writing. So, since this band has started, I’ve kind of written and recorded everything, generally, except like guitar solos. Like for the entirety of Metamorphosis, I think except for one middle beginning solo on ‘Nothing left’, that was all done by our lead guitar player, Andy. Aside from that, I’ve written and recorded the lot. I mean, he did riffage and stuff and various other syncopated rhythms. But, I’ve generally been the the sole songwriter for the band.

Until kind of recently, I’ve been working with this Tony guy, he’s been kind of bringing stuff to the table that has just inspired. Like, we’ve got this song in the works that I really can’t say much about, that he wrote years ago for somebody else. That somebody else didn’t take it. I guess that’s what happens a lot with a lot of producers and songwriters. They bring them to many other songs, because he’s worked with many bands, so there there’s a couple other bands he’s worked with that he’s got stuff. Like they didn’t want it, and I hear it and I go, “Yeah, how? Are they crazy!”

I’ve learned to kind of check my ego and not worry about “Oh, everybody has to know that I write everything.” At the end of the day, who cares? So I’m like, instead of trying to be big tough guy, big writer on campus, I want to be creative and I want to surround myself with the most talented people I can and learn from, because I discovered when I work with other people and they write with me, oh, I become a better writer. So, it’s kind of a win-win. You get a great product, and then I also get better.

So I’ve told the guys, open door policy. If you’ve got a song idea, you can bring it to the table, but if I say no, you can’t be mad. And it’s it’s sometimes a little difficult, because I’m like, if I don’t feel like it’s Nocturnal, i’m probably going to say no. But the funny thing is, lately we’re throwing a lot of curveballs with the with the genre that we’re we’re dipping our tootsies in. So it’s going to be an interesting thing to see how everybody feels after these next few releases!

I feel like, outside songwriters are a lot more prevalent than a lot of music fans at least seem to think, as well. I know we’ve chatted to a few country artists and it’s even more of a thing in that genre, like everyone will just kind of get together and write everything and pass it around. Whereas it’s it’s less of a thing in rock, but I mean you’ve only got to look at Elvis barely writing any of his own songs, really.

Exactly, and he was so wonderful. And it’s kind of music should be, right? An expression of the artist to get through, or express whatever I would like, right? But it’s I’ve kind of discovered it’s really not about me. It is, but it’s not. Like, if it was about me, I wouldn’t be doing this in a public forum. I wouldn’t be writing this music and showing everyone I write this music, and it would be for me. But the moment I release it, it becomes whatever anybody is listening to it thinks it becomes. It is now now a soundtrack to a moment in their life, if they choose for it to be. I mean I’ve had people call me, you know, friends that heard when ‘Cross Me Out’ was being played a lot, and they’re like, “I just can’t stop thinking about this specific moment in my life,” and they tell me a story, and I’m like, “That is not what the song is about at all.” But I’m glad that it is a medium for you to maybe face demons you needed to face, or relive some happy nostalgia, or just maybe relate to it completely.

You said you’ve got another couple of singles that you haven’t to drop. Are we building towards something a bit bigger, like another album or an EP or something?

We might have an EP. I thought we had an EP a year ago, and then we kind of just took another turn with what we were doing musically. You know, it’s interesting, because the music industry is changing every 3 to 6 months on a crazy level. So you think you have an idea for what the next couple quarters are going to look like, and then you’re like, “That that’s not going to work out so well.” So, maybe… we sure as hell have enough unreleased music to release an EP. But I think anything is possible.

You’ve for a busy rest of the year planned, right?

Yeah, we’re going out with Fear Factory on Thursday. We leave, So we’ll be waving at you on the way to the rest of Europe. Then we’ll be finishing the tour with you in October.

Dude, I miss the UK so much! I just want like one just one English breakfast, which it’s never one. I’m going to have one every morning and I’m going to feel all like bloated while I get on stage. But it’s going to be worth it!

I saw it’s your birthday, right, while you’re out here?

Yep! Well, September 2nd, we will be in I believe either Lithuania or Latvia. And it will be Dino’s birthday, too. And what’s crazy is I do a sober tour, so I don’t know what I’m going to do. Kind of like have like a diet coke and maybe like a steak!

Interviews & Features

Kris Barras: ‘I’m really looking forward to people hearing it!’

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We had the pleasure of chatting to the amazing Kris Barras about his brand new album the other day, as well as his upcoming tour and his general sound! Check it out below!

Sadly the video didn’t save, so it’s just a written one for now. Maybe the audio will be dropped at some point!

The album is out soon! Is there an overall story, or is each track kind of its own thing?

There’s no like concept for the album. There are, yeah, eleven individual tracks. I always like to have like a cohesive sound throughout the album, and I do think I think we’ve got that with this. I think there’s a lot of different flavours on there, but I think there is overall like a cohesive sound, but, yeah, it’s not like a like a concept album or anything like that!

I did notice that we’ve had five singles so far, and they’ve all been towards the start of the album. What went into that decision, if there was one?

It’s really interesting that, because someone else asked me that one! The track listing was decided before the singles. I didn’t get involved in choosing what the singles are. I don’t normally do that. I put forward the ones that I think would be good. I think with the album there’s some obvious choices. You know, like ‘Monster We Made’ is the title track, it makes sense for that to be a single. ‘Riot of One’ makes sense to be a single, but a track like ‘Beautiful Lie’, I never imagined that being a single.

But I don’t choose, I find it hard to judge my own own music. In my opinion, a song that I’ve spent  in some cases quite a long time writing and then recording it, and that being like a year ago, I find it a hard process, and you know, I’ve got fortunate enough to have people involved that are much more knowledgeable and experienced than me. I’ve got fantastic management, great record label with Earache, and a really, really good radio plugger like Austin Collins, who works with some of the the biggest names in rock and metal. And you know, I like to get their opinions, you know? They they know what will work, and ‘Beautiful Lie’, for instance, is the the head of Earache Records, Digby, it’s his favourite song on the album, and he absolutely loved it, and and that’s one of the reasons that got pushed through, and that’s great!

It was actually just coincidence. I  wrote the the track listing and submitted that before any other singles were were chosen.

What can we expect from the other half of the album?

I’m really looking forward to people hearing it. I think there’s there’s a lot of different flavours on this album, there’s a lot of different elements, and there’s some stuff on there that people might not expect, or they wouldn’t necessarily have heard me do before. Some of the guitar work and the solos and stuff, I’ve really gone back to what I used to do in my teenager years, some of the more shreddy stuff, like stuff like guys like Steve Vai and Satriani and stuff, and bringing out some of those influences.

Typically, I’ve always had a token softer ballad song on each album. This one’s got three that could maybe sit into that category. Each one’s a little bit different. One of them in particular is just pretty epic. It’s got orchestral stuff and a big guitar solo over a big orchestral arrangement that that just sort of produced it. There’s some cool stuff in there, and yeah, I’m looking forward to hearing. I feel like the singles, whilst they probably are the strongest standalone tracks for what you need from a single, I don’t feel like they necessarily sum up the album, you know what I mean? Like, we’re at an EP, and don’t feel like they sum up like the Monsters We Made album. I feel like you need to hear all eleven to get a feel feel for the album.

Your debut KBB album came out just over a decade ago now. Is there any kind of comparisons you can draw from that release to this one?

I mean, if someone had never heard me before and listened to the first album, and then listened to this new one, they they wouldn’t even think it’s the same. It’s like the two have absolutely no connection whatsoever! I started off more in the bluesy rock world. I gradually got like a little bit heavier. The 2019 album, Light It Up, was still in the blues rock world, but had a lot more like classic rock elements. Then COVID hit, and, we didn’t know if the world was ended.  A lot of stuff I was writing was just a bit heavier.

The thing is, I love playing blues music, but it’s not that’s not my entire identity. And I think people have struggled with this over the years with trying to understand me as an artist. It’s like there’s a lot of people in the blues world, they play blues music, and that’s all they can do. Maybe they’re much, much better than me at it. But that’s all they can do. That’s not me. I’ve played in metal bands all my teens. I was playing in jazz bands in in my early 20s. I’ve played a lot of different styles of music, and I spent a lot of time studying different styles of music when I was younger, and I think like these influences wanted to come out. With my 2022 album Death Valley Paradise, I was much more in like the modern hard rock world. Halo Effect, we went another step further again, probably taking more like modern metalcore influences, particularly in the production. This one, the way I see it is kind of sitting in between those two albums, like pulling it back a bit from Halo Effect. It’s not quite as heavy, and I just see it as kind of straight modern hard rock.

What’s the the writing process like for you? Do you do a lot of it yourself and kind of bring it to the band, or are the band a bit more involved as well?

It’s changed a bit over the past few albums. So,  Josiah, who’s the producer, and he plays rhythm guitar and keys in the band, I’ve got him a lot more involved with the songwriting on Halo Effect, and on this album, And we work really, really well together. He’s my best mate, he’s a great guy and amazing producer, and his songwriting is really, really coming into its own over the past few years.

The process is is very, very different from song to song. Some of the songs started life as just me on my guitar singing some lyrics and then turned into a chorus, and then we develop it from there. Other songs, like ‘Riot of One’ for instance, he wrote the main riffs on that, sent it over to me and was like, “I’ve got this idea for like, kind of a big sing-a-long type song”. I’ve got a few of those. It’s obviously just instrumental that he gave me. And I sat with that and then ended up writing the lyrics and the melody. He gave me a stear in the right direction, gave me a little kick up the bum and said, ‘Right, go and write a big chatty sing-a-long banger.’ And so lots of different processes, I think that that’s a cool way to approach it, to keep it fresh and to keep new ideas coming.

I imagine it’s a different approach as well for this compared to something like, Hollow Souls or Supersonic Blues Machine?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, Hollow Souls, he’s involved with even more so because that’s actually like a joint venture. Like, Kris Barras band, technically, I’m a solo artist, but Hollow Souls, we started that together. Obviously we’ve got Phoebe with Hollow Souls, and it’s a different element. So we consider, obviously female lead vocalist, but also guests being involved. So that changes the writing process a bit with that, because we’re sometimes writing a song with with a special guest in mind, or we’re writing a song with a female vocalist in mind, which changes things. She likes to sing in different keys to what I would actually write songs in, so then we’re trying to write songs that would work for her, and so that’s kind of like a different approach, which is which is cool where it’s all in joint!

You’ve got quite a extensive tour plan for pretty much the rest of the year, right?

Yeah, so around the album release we’re doing an acoustic in-store tour, which is going to be cool. Josiah’s coming with me, he’ll be playing the piano. We’re doing like two of these a day, visiting like local independent record stores, and we basically do like a half-hour, 40-minute set, and then meet people and sign anything they want signed, and that kind of thing. They’re good fun. We did it on the last album, it’s the first time I’ve done it on the Halo Effect tour, and yeah, I really like doing like the stripped-back version of the songs. Vocally, I prefer singing the songs that way, I feel like I maybe do a better job vocally like singing over a piano rather than over a heavy band.

It’s going to be hard, you know, two a day with the some pretty crazy journeys. It’s it’s a pretty pretty intense thing, but hopefully it’ll be good fun.

Would you ever consider releasing a studio version of any of the strip-back tracks?

Well, we’ve recorded four of them. I don’t really know what the record label plan is. I think they’ve added like a bit of a bundle where you get a couple of them. I don’t know what the full plan is, whether there’s going to be a deluxe version or not. I don’t really get involved in it. But I’ve recorded four of them, piano versions, and I’m sure they’ll see the light of day at some point.

I assume it’s a full electric tour in October?

That’s right, yeah. Full band, nothing too crazy with that tour, it’s just around the UK. I can’t even remember how many dates, 10 dates or something. It’s our first headline tour in the UK for two years when that comes around. It’ll be good to get out there and have a blast!

Have you got much in the works for next year?

I’ve not even thought about it. I mean, again, I don’t really get involved in that stuff. There might be stuff going on that I haven’t yet told about. I mean, for me, it’s been a bit weird releasing an album in the summer. I’ve not done that before. Like, doing festivals and doing an album at the same time, it’s a different experience. So I’ve just been focusing on that, and then this tour in October, and not really thought about what happens after that. I guess it depends on how well the album’s received, and how well the tour does, and what opportunities come after that, you know? So, who knows!

Do you have a dream tour lineup you’d want to be a part of? Anyone you want to support, or any friends you want to bring along?

I mean, I’d love to open for Alter Bridge. I think that would be sick! Something like that would be really, really cool. I think we’d be like a good fit, I think we’d probably go down quite well with their fans. Yeah, that would that would be a pretty cool tour to do!

Interviews & Features

Jayne Denham: ‘It felt like the start of something new and special!’

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We had the pleasure of chatting to the amazing Australian country rock singer Jayne Denham about her new single and album, working alongside the incredible Marti Frederiksen! Check out the full interview below!

It seems like a somewhat unlikely pairing, how did it come about?

I’ve always been known for country rock, but I’ve leaned more toward rock always have a few rock covers in my shows as it is who I am. When my management suggested Marti as a producer, it felt like the right way to move a little further in that direction while still keeping my country roots.

At first, Marti was only meant to do one song, but it went so well that he ended up doing more. Before long, we were making a full record together, and it felt like the start of something new and special.

What is the writing process like between the two of you?

Most of the album was written with Marti, Kylie Sackley, and me, starting with ‘Hillbilly Halo’, which clicked right away! Kylie’s Australian background helped her understand me, and together we found an easy creative chemistry.

I’ve always loved writing songs that lift other people up, but this was the first time I wrote so openly about my own story. The album draws from my life, including ‘Preachers Son’ about my first boyfriend and ‘Angel of Mercy’ about my marriage breaking down.

You have embraced your rockier side with this collaboration. Did that come from Marti’s previous experience with rock and metal bands?

It came from me owning even more of who I am and recognizing that Marti was the producer who could take it where I wanted to go, based on what he’s done in the past.

The collaboration has given birth to a full album, right? Does it all lean more towards the rock side of country? Is there a similar theme present throughout the release?

It’s country and rock, so let’s split it in the middle. And yes, after my first three singles, there is a theme and a story behind why I chose this concept.

What can we expect from not only ‘Angel of Mercy’, but any other singles from the release?

We all know one of Australia’s biggest musical exports is INXS. Andrew Farriss and his beautiful wife, Marlina, live not far from us now, so we’ve become good friends. When I asked Marti what Australian artists he had worked with, he mentioned INXS, and I said, “Oh, that’s so cool I know Andrew!”. Marti then suggested we all write together, so I drove out to their farm, and we all jumped on a Zoom call with Marti in Nashville. It went so well that not only did it make the record, but it’s also the next song we’re going to really push for promotion!

Do you have a busy rest of the year planned for live shows in the lead up to the release?

 I have some big festivals here in Australia, but next year, once the album drops in February, we’ll hit the road even more, including a trip to the USA, hopefully!

If you could have written one song from history, what would it have been and why?

I’m a massive fan of Heart. Growing up on country and gospel music, I later discovered rock as a teenager, and Ann Wilson’s voice absolutely blew me away. I would sing her songs day in and day out, trying to figure out how to sound a little like her. So I’d have to say ‘Barracuda,’ because it taught me how to sing big, and I’m so grateful for it, because it helped me find my own voice that blends country and rock. When Marti found out I could sing a little like Ann, he pushed me to my vocal limits, and I was able to use everything I learned from her while adding my own signature, too!

Interviews & Features

A Thousand Horses: ‘We really bled for this album!’

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We headed down to the amazing Bodega in Notts the other week to see the wonderful A Thousand Horses (review here). We got the chance to chat to them before the show about their UK tour, their latest album and their plans for the future. Check it all out below!

How’s the tour gone so far?

Michael: Yeah, it’s been great. We’ve been out a few weeks and all the shows have been good. Being out with The Black Crows was an awesome run, and then Germany for the first time. Headlining was a great run there, and then we’re kicking off the UK tonight. Let’s talk about that. That’s important!

Exactly. You guys did a couple of days over here last year, right, as well?

Michael: We did, last summer. We did Manchester, London, and Glasgow.

It’s cool that you’ve got a little bit more of an extensive tour this time round, as well!

Bill: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We’ve have a lot of people telling us, “Hey, you got to get off the beaten path and come, you know? Come and see us. And so we’re glad to finally be here!

How would you guys compare the scene over here in Europe compared to back home?

Graham: It’s very different. It’s like a different type of fan. You know, I feel like over here, maybe people pay attention to individual bands or artists more so than I feel like in America, people get kind of looped into like the scene, the country scene or the rock scene. And I think when you’re just kind of generally into something, you can maybe miss something or whatever. And I feel like over here, people attach to artists more.

Michael: I would just say that there’s an excitement in the coming over here for not only the artists that do, but the people that live here having an American artist come overseas. And you know, because it’s a long trip and it’s so there’s a lot of, like, seeing somebody you haven’t seen in a long time and they made a big deal of it. Everybody is going to get together. So, I would say it’s just kind of, there’s just an excitement about coming over here. For us especially!

You guys have managed to kind of straddle the rock and the country line quite well over here. You’ve done a C2C as well, right?

Michael: We did back in 2015, yeah. It’s been a minute since we’ve done it. When our first record came out, we were in the country world. And you know, we’ve always straddled that line our whole career and we’ve kind of always been rock-forward in what we do. If you’re a fan of our band, you know that.

Bill: I think the important thing is really; we have just always felt and seen ourselves as really just a rock band, you know? And I think at times, that’s really the spirit of our band and what is at our core. So, it’s less about straddling a line necessarily and just kind of doing what we want to do.

Michael: Yeah, our creative expression at that time, that’s like the big thing of what we do, artist-wise. Each record is a different expression of that time of where we’re at in life.

Do you guys kind of feel like you fit more into the hard rock side back home than as well, I imagine?

Graham: I think that where we are now in how we’re creating, and the subject matter, and where we’re at in our lives and stuff, we’re definitely back to the rock band. That’s always been in us. It’s like Bill said, you know, we kind of, at any given point in time, an album is a snapshot of just where we’re at in that moment. And I think right now, and for the foreseeable future, it’s rock music.

The new album’s been out a few months now, it seems to have gone down really well!

Michael: Yeah, it’s been great man. The response to the album has been phenomenal and it keeps growing, and it keeps getting good feedback and good response from the fans and audience. And now we’re out on tour performing it, which we haven’t done. This is the first tour for the record, so it’s great to see the audience react to the new music and play the new music. We play some of the old stuff, too, because that’s what our people know, and jt’s been awesome to kind of experience that!

Would you say your writing style has changed as well in the last 10 years since your debut? Do you approach the music any differently?

Michael: I mean, I hope it’s improved!

Bill: I think it’s matured. I think I think we’re certainly in the best place we’ve ever been creatively. We’re more focused than we’ve ever been. And you know, we really bled for this album, more than we have anything else. Any of our other albums. Not that, you know, those weren’t hard work too and everything, but this album, there was so much emotional, there were so many emotional events in all of our lives that led up to this album that when I say we really bled for it, I mean it. But also, it was the most inspired record we’ve made to date, and the most fun we’ve had making one, and it really felt like we were making our debut album all over again. We felt like a new band doing it. And, um… So with all of that in mind, it makes it extra special to us that it’s been so well received.

Is there some more writing still going on in the background, or are you just focused on the tour for now?

Bill: Yeah, I mean we’ve already started on the next record, really. We haven’t started to necessarily record it yet. We started to write songs, and we’re always trying to create forwards, and think like, “Okay.” We don’t want to make music and turn around and look at it too long, you know what I mean?

As soon as we make it and put it out, it’s not ours anymore. It’s the fans’, and it’s the people that discover it and love it. That’s when the live experience to us really kicks in and is so important because it’s like, when we play live, it’s our goal is not to recreate album. You know what I mean? It’s like a live performance is different than like making our own.

I have spoken to bands and artists in the past who have also said like “it’s new to the audience, but we’ve been playing these songs to death for two plus years now, so we want to get onto new stuff already!”

Bill: Yeah, well luckily with this album, I mean, we’re a totally independent band. We don’t have any label or anybody to answer to, thank God. And so we were able to write it, make it, and put it out. We didn’t have to sit on it for so long like a lot of bands have to. And we’ve been in that position in our career, you know, before with the past records where we’ve held some of the songs. Some of the songs on our last record, The Outside, were over 10 years old, and they were never recorded because of some Label— Jackass of a label—was like, “Oh, let’s not do that,” and so we had to jump through all that thing. The whole process took like a year, I think. Like,  from writing the first song to kind of having it ready to be, you know.

Check out our review of their latest album here!

You guys seem rather up on the whole social media thing. Do you have any advice for a band just starting out with it?

Graham: Oh, God. It’s an uphill battle, man. It never ends. That’s what it feels like.

Michael: You know, I think the social media side of things is the the thorn in every artist’s side, you know. It’s something that you have to do, and it’s great to do, but consistency is key, not overthinking is key. And that’s it. I mean, you just  do it and don’t pay attention too much to the metrics of every single thing you do. You know, you’re not an analyst.

Graham: I will say, on the flip side of that though, the gift that social media has given to artists is direct connectivity to their fans. Which is great. People DM us, they comment us, comment to us, and we just get on there, and I’m like having conversations with fans and like, “Oh, shit, you can’t get a ticket? I’ll put you on the guest list tonight.” It creates a level of connection with people that you wouldn’t have otherwise. So, as much as it can be a pain in the ass to be like, “Look, I’m eating a sandwich,” you do get to have experiences and interactions with fans that you wouldn’t get otherwise. So, it’s a double-edged sword, for sure. There’s a lot of good in it.

What can we expect from the show tonight?

Michael: It’s an exciting set we’ve put together. We’ve kind of been working it out as we’ve been on the road the last few weeks. We’re gonna play some real old stuff from our first EP that we just started working into the set. It’s been fun to revisit. And then a lot of new stuff from the record that we’ve worked up, that we are excited about. It’s a good mix of everything, but the show’s got its flow. The set feels good right now. It’s not something that you could kind of hash out in a rehearsal hall. It’s one of those things that, like, we’ve been out on the road for what? A couple weeks now. It kind of took that to get it in.

Graham: It’s a live-run show, man. I mean, no question. And it’s no frills. It’s just five dudes up there making music. No computers involved. Yeah, just purely people music!

Interviews & Features

Destination Festival: ‘We are really, really happy with the bands that we’ve got!’

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We sat down and chatted to the wonderful organisers of Destination Festival the other day about their upcoming 2026 edition, their plans for the future and the current state of the scene. Check it all out below!

The event is just a couple of months away now, right? What can we expect?

That’s right! Yeah, we’re getting close, yeah.
Two and a half, just under.

I know there’s some fantastic bands, the lineup’s awesome! I imagine there’s some surprises and some cool stuff going on as well.

There always is, we do try. As far as the cool surprises, let’s get the cool surprises out of the way first, shall we? And I think if I told you what the surprises were, and then it isn’t a surprise! We just recently announced on social media that, our first band could be somebody that is well-known, and everybody knows who they are. I think just a tiny bit of investigation wouldn’t go amiss! But what nobody knows yet, and you’ll be the first one to know along with everybody else, is that there won’t just be one rock superstar, legend on the stage. There’ll be two of them, well-being well!

From the point of view of us, it’s a good thing to do, for people turning up from the get-go. Because you often get with all sorts of shows, people will be there all day and others also drift in halfway through, and there’ll be people who are here for certain bands, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, we’re not bothered’. So, come in! It’s not going to cost you any more, and if you don’t, you might be kicking yourself later!

We’ve had a couple of lineup changes, but we are really, really happy with the bands that we’ve got. Everybody’s been super supportive this year. It feels to be a bit of a unity this year. A bit more of a unity. Everybody’s a bit more helpful to each other. It’s nice. Band promoters, everybody working together. It’s cool!

You guys have been in the festival game for a few years now. How would you say the scene has changed over time? Do you approach things any differently?

Well, we’ve been doing this since 2017, so that’s nine years now. And we’ve been through a few changes of purpose, direction. But yeah, Rock in the Bowl matured nicely, and then it was time to rebrand. So, now it’s called Destination. Last year, we had to change venues last minute, so it was Destination Forge. Just to let people know, just to make it completely clearly obvious where we’re going to be. But, we really like our venue now. We’ve kind of bedded in nicely. We have a good conversation with the owners and things are running smoothly, so Destination it is.

The New Wave Of Classic Rock movement was a big thing to happen during this time. And that changed a lot, brought the focus onto younger bands. And they’ve always been in focus for the people that are, that are looking, but it really helped create that community, and, uh, people sourcing their music even more from newer bands than older ones. It’s also great to see so many shows hosting younger bands who’ve only been going for a few years, still being successful, still drawing the audience. I feel like, in a way, we’ve helped that along as much as we can, by choosing bands that we think are up-and-coming but really, really good, and they deserve a bigger stage to perform at!

What do you make of the current scene?

It’s good to see bands breaking out a little bit, and just leveling up. We were lucky enough… we had those damn crows on the bill. On the one that never happened. By the time we got the chance to go again, Crows were suddenly…we were lucky enough that they remembered us, and are decent people, so they kept their obligations. They gave us the Corporation gig for us, jt was awesome! There’s so many bands along the way that we’re sort of looking at and about half a year later and thinking, ‘There’s no way anybody’s going to get them for the same price that they got them for last year’. Because they’re just storming it. And it’s really nice to see. And it’s going to be interesting to see who will be the next one to sort of level up a bit!

We were quite happy with Chez’s success over this new album release. She’s done such a fantastic job, and she worked so bloody hard for it, as well. And people have been there for her, they’ve supported her all the way through, from the presales, from all the intimate meet-and-greets, to the bigger gigs, to the hopefully headlining shows in the future! And she’s breaking into Europe nicely as well, Sweden seems to be her go-to destination.

But, circling back round to the original question, audiences are still slightly cautious about picking, buying. And we’ll see, I don’t want to focus on negatives, but we do see a lot of cancellations at the moment. And I think it’s not that people don’t want to. They’re having to, instead of going to them all, they’re having to choose specific. Because the money isn’t going as far as it used to.

We can look at all the little festivals that going around, and you look at the lineup, and you’re like, ‘Well, they’re all great’. Yeah. They’re all great lineups. But I think what it’s not just the lineup that brings people back again. It’s how well you connect with them. And as far as I can see, almost every small festival does the same thing. At this level, I think that personal touch is what people like.

I imagine you’re at least tentatively planning something for next year, have you got some stuff in the works?

Next year, we’ve been approached by bigger bands than we’ve got this year. And that’s about as far as I can let you know! Before we came back again, and it wasn’t like starting over, but everybody was a little bit tentative first time round. And after last year, people were like, ‘Okay, you brought in Kris Barras, you did this, you did this, you did this.’ It worked, and it was nice. It was good. And then this year, we changed the name, but that’s pretty much all. And that was simply because of the change of venue. And then we put this lineup on. So I think the agents and the people who do watch everybody said, ‘Okay, seems like they’re not messing about. Let’s, how do you fancy having Bla’.

You’re pretty active and up on the whole social media side of things. Do you have any advice for people just starting out, in that regard?

Definitely, yes. Um, so this year we decided to try a risky strategy because we were getting social media fatigue, if you can call it that. You keep banging out posts and you’re reaching 10 people. And you don’t quite understand why because you’ve done everything right. And it can be really, really disheartening and demotivating. So, a good old flyer in the hand, and then going and show your face, and talk to people. Go to other events, buy tickets to other events, go as a band as a presence, and show yourself to the people, and talk to them. Have a little QR code on you, you know? Be there in person if you can!

But one thing for people who are starting out, be not cautious, but just relax a bit. If you’ve got your online poster and you’re just banging that out 10 times a day, every single day, it just becomes background noise to people. All they’ll do is just they scroll past, they scroll past. It’s nothing special. Vary your posts. The algorithm favours faces and videos. You only have to look at bands like Not Now Normal or LN, see how well videos are doing for them!

How do you feel about the rise in AI in the industry these days?

When digital art first came out, people were saying, ‘That’s it, that’s the end of all artists’. When Wikipedia came out, people said, ‘That’s it, that’s the end of all knowledge’. Yeah, AI is similar. Yes, it’s moving very fast. It’s getting it’s getting everywhere and you can really tell the difference when you look at it. But there’s nothing wrong with using it to generate ideas. Once you get that… it’s just like a quick digital art search, but it draws it for you. But then take that idea and play with it, or if you’ve got the cash, give it to a real artist. But still use it, it’s a tool. And be mindful of the mistakes it makes. Not everybody wants to see a generic Rockstar with a guitar and flames coming out!

What we tend to do as we design each poster, each t-shirt or anything, we’ll just start with an idea, our own idea. We don’t say to AI, ‘Give us an idea’. But we come up with our own ideas, we write them down, and then we go on to AI, or chat GPT, or whatever it is and just go, ‘Okay, if we did that, what do you think it would look like?’ and it’ll fire something back and we know that, oh, okay, no, that’s terrible! We don’t take it and copy it, we’ll write it down. And then when we’ve got all of the things that we put together, we send it, we give it back to AI and said, ‘Okay, this’. And it’ll kick something out, and then we’re like, ‘Mmm, that makes Better’. Okay, it’s kind of what we’re looking at. And then, we don’t copy paste it. When we know what we think looks good enough, then we say, ‘Okay, thank you very much, AI’. We remove it. And we go and do that. But we basically created it every step. We use AI to show us what it might look like before I spend hours on a desk, creating it!

There might be people out there watching who think that’s tutt-tuts, yes. Because of the energy used. Yes, we are aware of it. We know it needs cooling. But, it’s better than generating pictures of funny cats!

Interviews & Features

Alex Hughes: ‘I’m definitely looking forward to the next project!’

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We chatted to the wonderful Alex Hughes the other day about her new EP, the country music scene and her future plans. Check it all out below!

The EP’s been out a couple of weeks now, right? It seems to have gone down really well!

Yeah, it’s been a pretty great response! So, I feel really grateful that people are are digging the music!

What’s it like to finally have it out after a run of singles the last few years?

It’s been kind of surreal. Doing the single thing for years has been fun, but it just hasn’t felt like a collection of music. So, these songs all together, I’ve been working on them for three to five years, some of them. So it’s so nice to finally have see them through completely from the writing to the recording. And to I got to pick up my very first vinyl! So, just be able to even hold it in your hands is something that’s been on the bucket list for a while for me.

Was it always the same tracks on the EP? Or have some hopped on in that time or been released as a single instead?

Yeah, that’s a great question! It kind of all came together organically, and I did do a writing trip specifically for songs for the EP. But how it did end up changing was, we added one last song, not last minute, but, like, after the others were recorded. That was ‘Slow Dancing in the Kitchen’, and it’s ’cause I I couldn’t release the EP without having it on there!

What’s the plan moving forward? The EP’s only just dropped but is there another release already in the pipeline?

Absolutely, yeah. We’ve we’ve actually got a Summer Surprise that’s going to drop in July. so that’s exciting. And then, yeah, I’ve been writing a ton. So, I’m definitely looking forward to the next project. I think we’re going to definitely do another EP, we’re just kind of collecting those songs now. We’ll get in the studio hopefully soon, kind of after the summer rush, and, yeah, get back in it!

It seems like it’s so difficult these days to plan what you want to put out and how you want to release it, with the streaming algorithms and all this now. It’s such a nightmare to try and keep up with it all!

It is, and it’s just interesting ’cause music’s being consumed so quickly, and there’s so much good music out there. And it’s expensive to produce and release music, so it’s kind of balancing all those things like budgets and keeping up with the demand. But creating something that feels complete, it’s like, it’s a balance.

What’s the writing process like for you?

I know, at least with country, there’s a lot more focus on writing with other people or getting songs from other people. It’s quite fascinating to see from more of a rock background that everyone is kind of writing for each other and chipping in. It’s pretty cool!

Right, yeah. No, you’re so right. It’s so interesting how different genres sort of have their creative process, and then I know it’s different artist to artist, too.

Yeah, but for me, I spend a lot of time just with my guitar coming up with ideas, and brainstorming like titles, hooks. My voice notes on my phone is just absolutely filled with a million (probably terrible) ideas, but they’re there! And then I co-write a lot. So, what I usually do is collect those ideas, and then before I do, let’s say, a writing trip, or even just buckle down and do like a week’s worth of writing, I’ll go through all those ideas, figure out which ones are bad, which ones are good, and which ones I want to kind of maybe present because you can kind of tell, at least, sort of in the country world when you look into the background of somebody, what someone’s strengths might be. So, then I’m like, oh, I have this idea that I think this writer would really be able to help me create!

Do you have a favourite track on the EP?

Ooh, that’s a great question! Um, yeah. I mean, they’re all, as you know, they’re your song babies, so they feel like they’re all precious. Not to choose a favorite child! But, I guess I think maybe the title track, “Taking Me Home,” is my favorite because it it sort of encompasses all of the things that I wanted the EP to have; some fun, sonic sounds that are a little bit more pop and country and just sort of show the influences that I’ve had throughout my life. And, and then lyrically, it’s a love song, and even though it sounds like it might be surface level, when you really listen, there’s some deep, deep lyric things there. So, I think maybe, if I have to choose my favorite, I’d say this one.

While it’s marketed as your debut EP, you actually released another back in 2013. Are there any comparisons you can make between that one and this new release?

yeah, that EP was the first time I ever recorded all my own songs, and they’re all my originals that I wrote. I wrote every single one all by myself. So, it’s a really special EP, and I think you can very easily hear the growth and the change, and not only in sort of how my music has progressed. Like, I feel like this, my new EP is the type of music that I’ve always wanted to create. I’ve kind of finally landed on the sound that feels artistically like me.

I love that EP and I think it’s a really cool stamp in time. I was like quite young when I did it too, so even lyrically, it’s sort of like, you can hear the youth, like the young voice.

It sounds like you have a busy rest of the year planned in terms of shows, right?

Yeah, yeah. It’s going to be a pretty great summer with lots of festivals here in Canada! And then yeah, we’re looking at maybe doing a bit of a tour in the fall. So yeah, it’s great. This EP really sort of opens some doors for me to be able to get on the road and share these songs with people. We’re at that stage, which is great!

What’s it like being a Canadian country artist? In the UK it’s still a sound so deeply associated with the south of the US!

Yeah, you know, I think it’s a really exciting time to be a Canadian artist. I think our music scene’s starting to finally boom. And and it has been for years, but there’s lots of cool opportunities here. I spent some time living down in Los Angeles and then I did a little bit of back and forth to Nashville, but one thing that’s been kind of amazing about settling in Canada is the opportunities. For example, when I first moved back, I got to do a program called the Canada’s Music Incubator Artist Entrepreneur Program. It’s like this two-week long intensive where you learn all about the music industry, and you just gain all these amazing tools. I’m not sure if they do programs like that over there too, but there are just some really cool ways to get support and help. It’s a cool time, and yeah, there’s just there’s lots of cool things going on, too. Lots of cool venues, the Canadian Country Music Awards are always a really fun week, and lots of opportunities there. So, yeah, it’s exciting!

You seem rather active and sucessful on social media. Do you have any advice for artists just starting out, on that front?

This is something that I’ve truly struggled with, is like, how do you not be annoying? But it’s such a great tool, and I think you just have to get over that. Like, people who want to support you, they’ll like what you’re doing and they’ll think it’s interesting, and those who don’t, they’ll unfollow you, and that’s fine. I think it’s a really great tool, and there’s a bit of a balance between posting so much that you burn out. I’ve definitely gone through those phases where I feel like I don’t have any more ideas and I just can’t do it anymore. But when you find a balance that kind of works, it can be such a good tool. So, I guess my advice is like, don’t be afraid to post, you’re not annoying anybody, and be creative with it, and have some fun, like, it’s a free tool!

Any plans/hopes to come to the UK in the future?

Oh Yeah! Yeah, there’s no plans currently, but I really hope to make it out there soon! I’ve had some interesting people even from the UK reach out that that like the music. So, I would like to get out there and play some shows!

Interviews & Features

Chevy Beaulieu: ‘I’m really excited for everyone to hear it!’

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We chatted to the wonderful Chevy Beaulieu the other week about his brand new album, the scene at home in Canada and his plans for the future. Check it out below!

The album is out soon [at time of recording]. Are you planning on releasing any more singles beforehand?

No, what I have out right now is what I got out. I got “Forget a Goodbye” and “Alcohol You”. And then, other than that, no, we’re just going to keep pushing and promoting and pushing forward for the record next month!

The singles seem to be going down really well from what I’ve seen, too!

Oh yeah, no, it’s nice! It was part of the plan, to flood everybody with my music!

I feel like you almost have to nowadays with the algorithms and all that.

Well, everybody’s doing that now. Everyone puts out a new song every couple months, which is hard to keep up. Lots of new music, lots of new artists coming out.

Is there a kind of a particular theme or story to the album as a whole, or is it more kind of individual track-based?

It’s mostly individual track-based. The way I… we had it set up, I made it so… I am a little bit of everything, right? So, my music has to correspond to that as well. So I had a little bit of pop country, a little bit of rock, a little bit of the traditional-esque type of stuff. And I’m really excited for everyone to hear it!

What’s the kind of the writing process like for you?

No, I had a rule for this record that I had to have at least 50% written or co-written by me. We’re at that level, we’re at the 50% right now. The rest are pitches, the last couple songs there that we put out. But a good song is a good song, you know!

Coming from the rock world more than the country world, it’s such an interesting thing for me to look at all the writing rounds and pitching songs and all this kind of thing. Because you don’t really have that in rock. It’s really, it’s a cool kind of community it’s found.

Yeah, it’s really interesting. Like you said, comparing rock to country. In country, you can have a whole career singing other people’s songs. Look, look at George Strait. He’s the best example. He knew how to sell it, and knows how to pick good songs!

I read that you came from a kind of musical background and family, right?

Yes, yes. My father; he’s a three-time Canadian fiddle champion. I grew up playing with my family band. They were called the Vanishing Breed Band. My dad still has that band together. They play every once in a while, way up in Northern Canada there.

I assume that’s probably kind of influenced your songwriting as well in some respects.

Yeah, yeah, it influences a lot, especially this new batch of songs I’ve been writing! But we can talk about that part in another date. I’m getting ahead of myself!

To be fair I was going to ask if there was more writing going on already!

Yeah, I wrote about 20 songs on my own, solid songs. And I’m really excited for people to hear it. I might… maybe I’ll start this fall!

Do you have a favorite track or two from the album?

There’s a song on there called called ‘Hell If I Know’. It’s being released on the day the album comes out. I wrote that song with my one of my good buddies Walker Tompkins out of Fort St. John, BC. That’s more of a rock-y one, more heavy.

Have you got a busy rest of the year planned touring to support the album?

As of right now, only have the, the few dates. I got Country Thunder next week, on the 26th, which is exciting, that’s going to probably be one of the bigger stages I’ve ever played. And I get to share the stage with some great artists. I’m really excited to share the stage with Nolleene Hoffman, Red Clay Strays… Cameron Whitcomb’s playing.

What’s it like to be a Canadian country artist? Over here, we still very much associate country with the South of the US, but it’s such a big thing out there as well!

Well, we have a lot of different influences. Canada has their own styles going across all the provinces. East Coast, they have more of fiddle-infused music. And out here in Alberta, it’s mostly… they have like Western influences. But all across the board, we’re all individually different. There’s a lot of different country rock groups, traditionalists, pop country acts, all over the country. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact type of sub-genre of country music that Canada is, because we’re all all over the place.

I’ve chatted to a good few Canadian country artists over the years. Most recently I think was Julian Taylor. The fact that he’s transitioned from the rock world into this really rootsy Americana thing kind of shows the variety you can get!

The thing about it there, coming back to your question, cuz there’s so many different artists. You got people like Nolleene Hoffman, for example, more in the traditional folk style music, for what it comes to the songwriting.
Colter Wall, he’s another traditionalist, cowboy singer. And then you get the other people that are more the pop-rock side, like Dallas Smith. But I’m a little bit mixed up of all of it!

I feel like it’s almost easier than ever now to be able to blend a bunch of different styles, as well. Like everyone’s kind of drawing influence from everywhere, which is cool!

What I really appreciate with country radio, Canadian country radio, is that they’re starting to introduce the more traditional side of country music, finally. They’ve always had it in the States. It’s never went away because they have so many people and so many stations, right? So they they have the ability to play that type of music. But now they’re playing it here too. Now we have guys like Jade Eagleson and he’s huge, and he’s a really great traditionalist country music artist.

Have you got any hopes to come to the UK any time soon?

Well, if they ever want me to go play country to country, I’ll do that one! That’d be, that’d be a fun festival. Yeah. I always like seeing the lineup for that one. It keeps getting bigger and bigger!

Interviews & Features

Madska: ‘I think it represents a taste of the many musical directions we are excited to continue to explore!’

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We chatted to the awesome US alt rockers about their upcoming EP, the Philly music scene and their plans for the future! Check it all out below!

How would you describe your sound?

Our sound is definitely evolving, I’d say it currently lands somewhere between alternative rock/pop with a sprinkle of jazz influence. This EP is definitely transitional, moving from our first record which was more straightforward indie, toward something with a bigger sound.

You’ve dropped two singles so far off the upcoming EP, are we set to hear any more of it before it drops?

Yes! We have two more!! One is the title track of the EP “More Than Dramatic,” and the other is called “Basement”.

Is there a certain theme or story around the EP? Or is it more individual stories per track?

I’d say there isn’t a very direct theme, but each song hints at sorting through complicated emotions or circumstances in a balanced way. I’m neither a half-glass-empty nor a half-glass-full type of person, I think each song asks the listener (and myself when I was writing them) to hold both the bad and the good of the situation and make decisions based from that place.

What is the writing process like for the band?

These songs happen to be ones I (Maddy) wrote mostly alone several years ago, but never brought to fruition. Bringing these songs to Sean and Gabe was such a lovely experience because they were able to help me arrange them exactly the way I heard them in my head, but better.

Do you have a favourite track from the EP?

I’d say “Medusa” or “More Than Dramatic”. Medusa is the oldest song on the EP (I wrote it in 2018/2019), so being able to finish it was such a healing experience. “More Than Dramatic” is actually a re-imagining of the song “Goonies” from our first record, “The Big Splash”. Gabe and Sean were just playing around one evening on drums and keys and we realized Goonies wanted a reinterpretation. It sounds completely different, I like to think of it as Goonies all grown up.

What went into the decision to put out an EP over another album? 

This is the first project that Sean, Gabe, and I collaborated on. We’ve been playing as a band live for a couple years now, but wanted to put something out that represents not only our live sound, but how we’ve progressed since The Big Splash. I think it represents a taste of the many musical directions we are excited to continue to explore.

Do you have a busy rest of the year planned with live shows to promote the release?

We are playing The BBQ on Aug 28-29, a festival in Ithaca NY that is hosted by our friends in New Planets and are very excited about that. Otherwise, we’re planning to host an EP release show sometime in the fall.

What do you make of the state of the scene at the minute?

I think the music scene, especially in Philly where we are, is so vibrant. It’s truly a lovely and constantly growing community and I feel very lucky to have so many creative friends who just want to play and listen to music. I also think that it’s extremely hard to know the right direction to take as an artist. The constant pressure to promote oneself and the landscape of AI taking over so many creative spaces can be really demoralizing. I think it’s important to just stay grounded in the actual practice of making art, whether or not it’s for outside consumption. Do it for you! At least that’s what I tell myself 🙂

Do you have a dream tour lineup you’d want to be a part of? Anyone you want to support or friends you want to bring with you?

Hayley Williams, Blondshell, DellaXOZ, Lizzy McAlpine, Big Thief, Rachel Chinouriri, Abby Holliday, Now Now….. All these artists I look up to so much.

If you could have written one song from history, what would it be and why?

I really wish I could’ve written ‘Born for Loving You’ by Big Thief. That song just feels like I’ve known it my whole life even though it came out only a couple of years ago. There’s something about Adrianne Lenker’s writing that transcends time!

Interviews & Features

Beyond Salvation: ‘It is kind of quite a team effort, but it’s also very DIY!’

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We chatted to the amazing Beyond Salvation the other week about their debut album, their live schedule and the state of the scene. Check it all out below!

Your album was released just over a week ago now [at the time of recording]. What’s it like to finally have your debut out?

Arun: Yeah, it’s pretty special. It’s kind of something we’ve been working towards for a long time. We do this in our spare time and we do it when we can, but it’s a labour of love. It is something we took a lot of care and a lot of attention over and we’re really, really proud of it. And so to finally have it out in the world is pretty special, actually. I stayed up until midnight and like went on Spotify and Amazon Music and waited for it to sort of come out. And it was like, oh, wow, it’s all there!

John: It’s quite surreal, actually. We’ve been working on this for a long time. And we always knew it would take… I don’t know… I felt like we felt that sort of like stereotypical, ‘we’re going to put an album out and it won’t take that long’. And then it took forever. But there’s been loads of good reasons why. And we’ve done releases in between. And I think then that sort of summed up this testament to how strong we feel about these songs; because we wrote these songs a long time ago. And I just love writing new stuff all the time. So for me, especially when I’m always writing stuff in the background, to still be so convinced of these songs that have lived with us for a bit, it makes me feel the flip side to what I’d usually be. Like, really convinced they are the songs they should be and sit together and just dead, dead, dead proud of it. And it’s like, I feel like it’s a bit like a tattoo, a real timestamp over the last five years of what we’ve been through.

It’s a passion project, isn’t it? And we’ve had line-up changes. If you take the very first song, ‘Incarcerate’, that’s with our old drummer, old bass player, which is mental. And then, yeah, that ended up being a single! So, yeah, a relief in a most positive way possible!

What went into the decision to do an album?

Arun: I actually think the reason we chose to do it as an album was actually artistic, so it was us, because if you look at our history kind of up to now, we’ve always released singles and EPs and, you know, we’ve done loads of those sorts of things. But we didn’t want to break this block of songs up. Like, there have been conversations between me and John about splitting the album into two and releasing it as two EPs or dropping a single here or there. But we feel really strongly about the album and it flows, particularly when I think the lyrics started being penned by John. The story it was telling… it’s not a concept album, but it is conceptual in its sort of flow. We didn’t really want to break that up. But I think it is just the strength of the songs. We just felt, no, these songs need to come out together as a block, as an album.

And although we’re told that the industry does push us towards singles and EPs and the frequency from the listener’s point of view, I think, from the other side, albums are still preferred. And again, maybe we’ve got a bit of an old school mindset in that. If I see a new song come out by a band, ‘I’m like, oh, that’s great. Right, when’s the album out?’ It’s still a bit of a stamp in time. Maybe that’s a little bit more of a metalhead way of thinking as well!

I’ve noticed it does feel like it’s a little easier to get a tour and do the festival circuit when you have an album as opposed to just the odd track.

John: Yeah, definitely. I think if I checked out a band that they hadn’t got an album that I could just invest in, I’d be a bit like, really? So, it still ticks that box for me. But, that’s me. It’s just constantly not trying to constantly say, oh, is it because I’m old? It’s just like, it’s a good body of work, you know, it’s a good way to get a good cross-section of a band. I’m not dissing singles or EPs at all. I think they’re great. They’re a great way to kind of dip your toe in. But I think particularly in metal, there is that thing of people like to invest and immerse themselves in the music. I would have a guess that probably doesn’t happen in R&B. I don’t know. Maybe it does. But, you know, particularly in metal, there is that sort of thing.

What’s the writing process like for you guys? Has it evolved as new members have joined?

Arun: There’s a general framework. Basically songs start either from John or from me. And they usually start with riffs. And often, like me and him, we’ll tend to sit back and forth between us. It’ll either be a verse idea or a chorus idea or something from me or from him. And then we’ll send it to the other person. That might spark some ideas. We’ll send it back, send it back. And we’ll sort of put a very rough but not final at all structure together just in a demo just so we can listen to it. And then we’ll send it on to the band. And then we’ll bring it into the room and the guys will have their ideas. Bringing Owen on board, he’s got some really good ideas for grooves and things that will lift certain parts in certain ways, which John and I don’t think of because we’re not drummers. So there’s definitely ideas from them. Sometimes we find the recording process can be a bit creative as well. We’ll sometimes, you know, we won’t change structures necessarily, but how something’s played or whether a fill goes in a certain place, for example, might change depending on when we record it. So, it is kind of quite a team effort, but it’s also very DIY.

Do you guys have a favourite track from the album?

John: Like you say, you’ve had them for a few years in the chamber now, so it might have changed since you first wrote them. I also had the reactions to the songs and people doing, like, little top threes really, really cool and really interesting. And it being really, like, quite broad, like, it seems to have been, like, a really different mix, which is really cool. So, that kind of spreads it across the album. And then, I think, I don’t know, emotionally attached, I’ve got a different, probably, stance because there’s lyrics in there, aren’t there? And they’ve changed and developed over time. And I think I’ve written some songs in the past where I’ve written them about someone else. And then you fast forward two years and suddenly realise I’m relating them to even more than when I wrote them about a friend or a loved one or something like that. And that’s happened on numerous occasions. The single we put out called Aftermath is a really good example of that, but that’s definitely happened on a few of these. So, yeah, I don’t know, but I think if I had to pick one for me, I think it’d just be the final nail. Like, it’s that kind of sad but true sort of groove, headbang, but it still goes fast and heavy.

Arun: for me, I think it really depends what day you ask me, because it’ll be almost a different song every day. But if I had to pick just one, it’d probably be Broken Reflections. But I’m also very, you know, I really like The Storm. The Storm means a lot. I think that’s quite a good indication of where we might be going. Yes, I think. And it was quite collaboratively written, which I quite like as well. that song is quite a few people picked up on that. And I feel like at the moment it’s not one of the singles, so it’s not been one that’s pushed in people’s faces. So the few of the people that have checked out the album for them to zone in on that song is quite cool.

Do you have a busy rest of the year show-wise in support of the album?

Arun: Yeah, we’ve got a few. So the main thing that we’re pushing quite a lot is on the 18th of July, we’re doing what’s essentially an album launch show. And it’s kind of the closest thing to an evening with Beyond Salvation. But what we’re doing is we’re playing the entire album in full from start to finish. And then some old songs at the end as well. So that’s the one we want to push the most. Yes. But aside from that, we are doing a few shows around the country. we had to take a conscious decision to go, right, we’ve got to fucking stop gigging. Yeah. We’re going to get this album finished. that’s been something that we’ve not done much of. So hopefully it’ll all work out like a perfectly oiled machine. We’ve got this album. We can push that. We’re going to be dotting around the country with some great bands.

John: What’s going to be really cool about the gigs this year. So until this point, we’ve constructed sets in a certain way with, as any band does, which is largely from your released music and particularly with what you’re promoting at the time. Live, we have played Incarcerate a few times, not since we released it as a single. We played it back in 2021, actually. But we haven’t really played any other song off the album live before. We didn’t want to fall into that trap of like just playing new stuff and getting excited about it and then no one can buy it. But actually, when we start writing sets for the gigs coming up, we’re going to be primarily, it’s going to be new for us, actually, because, you know, we’re going to have to write new sets that we’ve not done before.

What do you guys make of the music scene in the UK at the minute?

John: I think we’re spoiled in Manchester because it’s brilliant! I was talking COVID. It’s quite weird now because it’s half a decade ago. But like, the band started like four or five years before COVID. And it was interesting to come back after COVID and then suddenly you’ve got this like whole fresh generation younger bands suddenly coming out and feeling like they’re already like, Tortured Demon would be a really obvious example. But yeah, I think Manchester genuinely were like pretty spoiled because a lot of the gigs get a really, really good turnout for like an underground scene. So that’s really nice. And then broader… I don’t think we’ve had good gigs. We’ve had iffy gigs. So it’s just one of those where I’m really, really intrigued, excited, curious to see what this back half of the year holds. But I mean, particularly with stuff like Metal to the Masses that happens around the country for Bloodstock that gets such a good reaction. I mean the Manchester Metal to the Masses final was the weekend just gone and was rammed from the second the doors opened. I also know that other ones around the country get really, really busy as well. I think I saw like one or two of them were sold out a couple of weeks before the finals, a couple of weeks before the actual date. It’s almost like are there more bands than fans now?! That’s got to be a good thing, right? Because it means more people want to have a go. More people are feeling inspired.

Arun: Also, I think these days, some of my very, very favourite bands are British. Not even just like, oh, I like it because they’re from the UK. Like, they’re genuinely some of my favourite music that I’ve listened to lately. I remember being a teenager growing up. I don’t want to name anyone, but it was all America bands that were like, the ones. Do you know what I mean? It just meant nothing really from the UK seemed to click with me at all. I would say growing up, obviously you had your UK pioneers, like your Judas Priest and your Black Sabbaths and stuff, but we were a little young for when they first came on the scene! But growing up, all my favourite bands were American, and quite a lot of them still are, but there are lots of really, really cool British bands. Everyone seems to, you know, kind of go along to each other’s gigs and everyone’s pretty supportive. And it’s, yeah, it’s quite a nice vibe at the minute.

You guys are quite up on the whole social media thing, any advice you could give to bands just starting out?

John: You’ve just got to do it! Arun’s more the daddy on this and the guys we’ve been working with from DC Sound Attack have been a massive help and stuff. But try and make it as fun as you can. But you know what, I have really fucking funny, happy, fond memories of just me and the guys trying to pull things together to try and get content together. So you know what, just be genuine, I think. Be yourselves and have fun with it. But unfortunately, it’s like a necessary evil.

Arun: Planning ahead actually works really well. And you know, we’re doing this for the music, so the music’s still got to be really good. You don’t want to let the music suffer because of the content you’ve got to create.