An apt name for a venue, as it was bloody cold last Friday when we arrived at the venue (part of the INCREDIBLE Castle Rock Brewery). However, we had three awesome rock bands to warm us up with, and they did exactly that! Somehow it was my first time seeing both Preacher and Revenant, though I’d been a fan for years, so to say I was excited was an understatement! Let’s dive right into the night’s fun, shall we?
Eddie & The Wolves opened the show and killed it if I do say so myself. Those who came down early saw, I’d like to thing, a good hard rock set! As usual, I’d like to thank everyone that came down to watch us, brought our merch, gave us such kind words, you’re all the reason the four of us do it. And, while I’m happy to tongue-in-cheek type here that we put on ‘the best set of all time, and anyone who missed it will never see something so glorious’, I just hope that we gave people an enjoyable half an hour! I had a blast up on stage, and I know the other three did too, and it sounded good to us, at least!
Next up were the incredible Revenant. They’ve been building a lot of momentum over the last couple of years with a handful of great EPs, and that momentum truly carries over to their stage show. The four-piece filled the room with their energy, and sounded just as good live as they do on track. Opening on the run of maybe my two favourite tracks from them, ‘Public Service Announcement’ into ‘Best Medicine’, before blasting through a lot of the rest of their awesome three EPs, it was one hell of a setlist. And the band put their all into playing each and every track! The bands stage presence as a whole is undeniable, and Sugarman held the crowd in the palm of his hand throughout. The band have put in the work to get to where they are at, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch!
After a short break, the legendary headliners took to the stage. The North Carolinan Southern rockers have really been embraced over here in recent years, which reflected perfectly in their ability to pull off a headline tour like this to a packed out, adoring crowd. I still spin By the Horns now, so for it to get so much love in the set (I mean, it was the tours namesake) was awesome. However, having never seen them live before, getting to hear the classics was also amazing! From ‘Old Joe’ and ‘Writing on the Wall’ to ‘Olf Fashioned Ass Whoopin’…’ and ‘Not Today’ we got a great spread of their back catalogue, a journey through the bands whole career. Ronnie is still one of the best frontmen in the genre some nearly 20 years into the band, and the rest of the guys compliment him perfectly. Special shoutout to drummer Josh Wyatt, he blew me away not just in his solo but throughout the whole set, what a phenomenal talent! The whole band were excellent from start to finish though, playing their asses off and keeping the crowd singing and clapping along throughout!
And there you have it folks, another great night for underground (ish) rock music! What more could you ask for? Three incredible bands working their ass off, a good venue, a great crowd, and surrounded by great beer! All the wins! I cannot recommend any of the bands or the venue enough, check them all out our as soon as you possibly can. I already need to see Revenant and Preacher again, and hopefully we can get a run-back of the whole tour sometime in the future!
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Ronnie and Darrell of the awesome Preacher Stone last week to chat about their latest album and upcoming UK tour. Check it out below!
I heard the album release show went well the other day?
Darrell: Absolutely, it went great!
I always get curious, how do you guys decide what to play off a new album? Is there any magic to choosing when the audience aren’t as familiar with it?
Ronnie: We played the whole thing! Played the whole album, not back to back, but spread out over the set.
How do we choose? It’s usually a lot of good spirited arguments. We’ve got six records worth of material, somethings going to get left out. God bless them but there’s always some fan that personal messages us like ‘can you play this song?’. I’m the only guy that’s been in the band since the beginning anymore. There are songs off some of them earlier records that if you threatened me at gun point I couldn’t sing. I’d have to go back and listen. There were a few that we recorded that we maybe played live once or twice but not regularly, and they’re usually some of the more elaborate pieces, and you can’t just pull them out of the hate last minute. It would be a disaster!
It’s been nearly three years since we last chatted. How’s the last three years been?
Ronnie: It’s been rough. Best of times, worst of times. It’s been great with the success that we’ve had and the name has grown and more people have come on board. But we went through a period of loss, we lost two band members, that’s been tough. But the bright thing is Darrell’s in the band now, it’s like he’s always been here, it was a great fit. We’ve been busy, and doing a lot of things that people don’t see.
The last album was V after a fair bit of time off. What prompted you to return with another album just a year later?
Ronnie: We absolutely couldn’t have another long stretch without a record! We also really needed to make a statement that we were still swinging the bat. With the loss of a founding member and the keyboard player, a lot of people were looking at us like ‘what’re they gonna do?’. None of us have ever been good at backing down from a challenge. We HAD to put out a record. And this record had to be damn good, we couldn’t just put one out to put out a record. There was a lot of pressure, but it was good for us. It pulled us together and made us closer as a unit. We rose to the challenge!
Was it all written by the current lineup, or is there stuff that’s been hanging around a while?
Ronnie: We had one that had been hanging around, and a couple of songs that Ben had worked on. ‘Think yen Now’ was somewhat formulated. It was everyone throw your ideas in a pile and let’s use the ones when we play them that speak to everybody.
Darrell: Outside of that it’s all new material. ‘Blessing and a Curse’ was sent to Ronnie by Marty’s wife. Luckily they had it recorded so I got to hear what he played and use that as my foundation. Everything else was written pretty fresh since I joined the band!
It sounds like a pretty healthy way of working together. Have you [Darrell] worked with many of the other members in the past?
Ronnie: Other than Daryl this lineups been together over 10 years. The earlier method was Marty would bring his ideas, and if you had an idea and it was as good as the other idea then we all worked on it and became a song. It’s still a pretty similar method, but ‘Saddled and Rode’ and ‘Old Joe’ were Daryl’s ideas. But anyone can take an idea and go their own way with it. I hope you don’t get your feelings hurt! It’s a wonderful thing if you can deal with that.
Darrell: Everyone in the band seems really healthy about not getting their feelings hurt by it. It’s good to have a fresh set of ears on it. If I bring a song and get Ronnie’s take on it, more often than not I like what he’s done. It may not be what you started with, but it comes out being a much better listen in the end.
Ronnie: It’s never really finished until it’s mixed and mastered! It’s one of the most fun parts of being in a band for me; everyone bringing their ideas and trying to create the best song you possibly can! Then we take it into the studio and our producer goes ‘try this’. One of the last steps, after it’s all recorded, Jim and I get across the table from each other with the lyric sheet in front of us and the song playing and Jim takes a marker and edits it all.
You guys are touring over here soon, right?
Ronnie: We’re coming in January! Late January, early February.
You’ve been here a fair bit over the last few years or so, are there any comparisons you can make between her and back home?
Ronnie: Our show Sunday night was a lot like a UK show. It’s a supreme compliment to the audience for being so supportive because we’re treated so well in the UK. It’s starting to feel like home. Southern Rock is not as big a deal in America as it is in the UK. In the UK we’re authentically Southern Rock, in America we’re five guys from America that play Southern Rock. We’re authentic, we’re all about as authentically Southern as you can get. I think anything I sing is gonna be Southern because I’m Southern. Ours comes in a little on the heavier side, we have a lot of classic rock influence too. And I’m an enormous Thin Lizzy fan. We had a review that compared us to Black Star Riders, I was like ‘I’ll take that!’.
What can we expect from the tour? I can’t imagine we’ll get the album in full every night but some will be there, I imagine!
Ronnie: We might! There are certain songs we have to play, songs that if we didn’t play we’d be in trouble. But we’ll mix it up, there’ll be something for everybody. And Daryl always comes up with songs that he wants to play. We want to play them all. If we played everything for everybody every night, our set would be 3.5 hours long and I don’t think anybody wants that!
Darrell: I think we should do a five hour set every night!
Ronnie: What do you want to play, Daryl? It’s his first time over in the UK. We’re excited about showing him the food and the culture and screaming like a little girl like I did when you’re driving on the wrong side of the road.
Darrell: I’ve been to the Bahamas so I’m ready for that! I’d stand up there all night and play these songs, they’re fresh to me! But whatever the fans want to hear and Ronnie wants to sing, I’ll play it! And that’s the reason we’re there, is for the people!
Ronnie: We’ll play the songs people request if we can. But sometimes on a tour you’re one place then the next night you’re somewhere else and it doesn’t leave you a whole lot of time to work up anything.
The awesome Southern rockers Preacher Stone are back with a brand new album, following up last year’s excellent V. I’ve loved the band for a while now so have been rather impatiently waiting for this release, so when I got it through our email there was no way I wasn’t checking it out early!
The title track kicks things off with plenty of energy; a fantastic blues riff and some powerful drums! The riffing continues between the lines of the verse, keeping the track bouncing perfectly. The vocals fit perfectly immediately too, and it all feels like it builds to the massively catchy chorus, the harmonies adding even more awesomeness to it! We also get some amazing lead guitaring in the middle and to close the track out, the duel soloing being fantastic and again fitting the vibe of the song so well. It’s a simply arranged yet very well written southern rock song, and sets the tone of the album perfectly!
‘Saddled and Rode’ opens on another fantastic riff, it having a stomping pace and energy to it when the drums and bass come in behind. It strips back in the verses, the dynamics of the track being fantastic as it makes the choruses hit even harder! The drumming in particular on this track, and throughout the whole album, is incredible, Josh Wyatt being hugely underrated behind a kit. Everything he does fits the riffing perfectly and adds so much to the song. Not that the rest of the band aren’t hugely talented too, however. As I said, the riffing and soloing is incredible, and Ronnie’s vocals fit the tracks awesomely. The chorus is so simple yet is going to be stuck in my head for days to come! It’s another excellent song, and an easy album highlight!
‘Writing on the Wall’ follows a similar formula to the previous two tracks, but again does so so damn well that it’s hardly a complaint! Everything about the track is so very catchy too, the dropped-down verses giving me early 2000s Black Stone Cherry or Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it building perfectly through the pre into an absolutely amazing chorus made to be played to massive festival crowds. It’s another fantastic song, and one that easily makes our playlist!
Tracks like ‘The Devil You Know’ , ‘Old Joe’ and ‘The Last to Know’ are all pretty similar, slightly slower and more blues oriented tracks. They all have a great stomp and swagger to them, with the former surprisingly reminding me of some of Iron Maiden’s modern stuff in its guitar work. All are truly excellent tracks, with the latter being another big favourite of mine from the album. The only reason I’ve grouped them together is so that I don’t repeat myself over and over!
‘Blessing and a Curse’ slows things down with a beautiful acoustic ballad. It’s the perfect change of pace slap bang in the middle of the album, and is an absolutely fantastic song in its own right! From the acoustic and slide guitars to the great vocals and incredible use of harmonies, it’s a really well constructed track. It’s honestly one of my favourite tracks on the album, everything about it is awesome. It’s catchy as anything, and the instrumentation throughout is amazing. It’s another made to be played to huge crowds in arenas around the world, and definitely one to check out if you’re going to try any from the album!
The final two tracks, ‘Come What May’ and ‘Think by Now’, are more awesome southern/hard rock from the band. It’s two more great, mid-tempo tracks, with the closers chorus in particular being another high point of the album! It’s also the perfect album closer, seemingly bringing it all back round to a similar point as the title track. Again, but are fun, boot-stompin’ songs that are simply rather similar to each other. However, that shouldn’t take away from either track, as both are great and worth listening to!
Overall: This is a damn good southern rock record! It’s short, sweet and right to the point, and because of that is very much all killer, no filler! All nine tracks on this are great, with some standing out among some of my favourite from the bands growing discography. I’m so glad the band returned to the studio faster this time after their last release, and what they have come out with is something excellent! I’d recommend it to anyone even slightly into southern, country or just hard rock in general!
One of the fastest rising stars in the country world, Tyler Braden, is set to finally release his highly anticipated debut album this coming Friday. I’ve really gotten into him this year after seeing himsupport Brothers Osborne, so have been rather impatiently waiting for its release. So, when it came over our emails, I jumped on it almost immediately. I’ve heard a few of the tracks before as we’ve had a handful of singles, but this thing is LONG, so I’m sure there’s plenty more awesomeness to sink my teeth into!
The dark Southern single ‘ME OR THE DAWN’ opens the album up perfectly. From the strings to Tyler’s fantastic drawl, the verse builds up to a massive, pretty rockin’ chorus! It’s catchy as anything too, certainly set to be stuck in my head for the next few hours/days. I remember hearing this one live too and it’s just as good on track! We even get some awesome little guitar lead lines in the bridge, adding a nice little variety to the track. And Tyler pushing his vocals in that last chorus is amazing, his power and rasp being phenomenal and almost reminding me just a little of Shaun Morgan of Seether. It’s certainly got that rock edge to it, but it’s also so very radio-friendly; no wonder it’s done so well already! A fantastic choice to start the album on!
Another single, ‘MORE THAN A PRAYER’ is up next. It has a bit more of a traditional country vibe to it, at least at the start. The pretty quick pace and great guitar chord progressions, alongside the absolutely amazing vocal harmonies in the pre, again all build perfectly into another arena-filling chorus. It’s a fantastically written chorus too, it dropping out to just the drums and vocals for the first two bars, the guitars working between the vocal lines before exploding back in at the end. It’s incredibly memorable and very catchy! It once again has a rock edge to it too, giving off vibes of Shaman’s Harvest or Sin Shake Sin. It’s a sound that I absolutely adore, and love that it’s slowly slipping into more mainstream country. It’s another simple-structured song, but one I love and is an easy highlight for our playlist!
The first new song of the album, ‘THINK ABOUT ME’, is a slower, radio-ballad. Having said that, the guitar tone still firmly grounds it in a rockier sound. And somehow, despite that, it’s still rather beautiful. Tyler’s lyrics throughout are awesome, and his lyrics are on point! It’s yet another massive highlight on an album that’s so far packed full of them!
Single ‘ABOVE THE WATER’ is another slower track kinda like the previous, though overall more stripped-back. It’s an acoustic-ballad, focusing almost entirely on the guitar and Tyler’s brilliant vocals. It does still build throughout, keeping it consistently interesting, but the core of the song remains. It’s an interesting choice for a single as it is so simple, but there is no denying that it’s a fantastic song nonetheless. Another one that’s definitely worth checking out!
‘YOU DON’T GET TO CRY’, much as is expected with the lyrics, is another slower song. It’s very much like the previous song in that it’s mainly built around the guitars and vocals. However, the rest of the instrumentation is present at times throughout. Arguably, I prefer this to the single previous; it feels like it has a bit more heart and umph to it, and I can certainly relate to the lyrics. It’s a damn good country ballad, and one that I’d recommend to anyone into the style! It’s maybe my favourite ballad track on the album, as similar songs like ‘LOVED ONCE’ and ‘EVERGREEN’ are still fantastic, but don’t quite come close.
Single ‘HOW IT STARTS’ just begs for all the radio play in the world. Combining elements of country, rock and pop perfectly, it’s a lot of fun and so well crafted and written. From the simple verses to the chorus begging to be played to huge festival crowds, it’s very much a summer anthem! It’s very much another absolutely massive highlight of the album for me!
‘SO LONG’ is even more rock than the rest of it, giving off very big HARDY vibes for me. That’s not an issue at all either, I love it! From the simple electric guitar and Tyler’s vocals building to that MASSIVE chorus, it’s really awesome. My only slight complaint is I really hoped we’d get a little more of a guitar solo in this one, as it really felt like it was gearing up for it. Still, it’s an excellent song and yet another high point of the album, another song that’ll be stuck in my head for days!
The next few songs on the album, for some reason, are all in lower case and are classified under the ‘(b stage)’ moniker. I assume it’s an indicator of these being even more stripped-back songs than any of the rest of the album, very much acoustic-folk/Americana over the more country-rock rest of the release. All are great songs in their own right, and fit pretty perfectly together. However, with the album already being long and a touch bloated, I do think slowing it down for 13-minutes in the middle is a risk that doesn’t quite pay off, at least for me. Still, as I said, none are bad songs at all, with ‘nothing looks good on you’ being a personal highlight. Plus, Tyler’s vocals on ‘dear old flame’ honestly gave me goosebumps. And I wouldn’t even say spread them out either, as I like the idea of them all being together as almost an intimation. But it does make a long album even longer.
‘BREAKING IN THESE BOOTS’ picks the pace back up perfectly, being maybe the rockiest track on the album. To I’m sure no one’s surprise, I loved it. It’s a blues-tinged, swagger-dripping country anthem with plenty of energy and memorable moments. It’s pretty heavy for even country rock too, and it’s wild that Tyler’s vocals fit this just as well as an emotional acoustic ballad. It’s another awesome song and, you guessed it, another massive high point!
One of the latest singles ‘GOD & GUNS & ROSES’ is another slower one, but as a massive GnR fan I can’t help but love and appreciate the cleaver lyric writing, and the song itself is well crafted. This deep into the album it’s a little hard to talk about it without repeating myself, but it is a damn fun little song. And indeed, thank (80s) Guns n’ Roses!
‘CALL ME FIRST’ and ‘RIGHT ON TRACK’ are both other good songs but damn, after such a long album already, they do give off slight filler/album track vibes. I hate to be ‘that guy’ as I definitely can’t write music this good, but when the album is 19 tracks long and packed full of awesome, amazing songs, these couple do kinda stand out as ones that maybe could have been cut. It’s a shame too, as I really enjoy the latter, especially the more I listen, but it just doesn’t live up to a lot of the rest. They worked well as singles too, but in the context of the album I’m sadly less into them.
Friend of the companyKaitlin Butts features on the next track, ‘MIGHT BE DANGEROUS’, and honestly it kinda meshes the two’s styles perfectly. Not only that, but their voices compliment each others just as well. It’s a real epic-feeling song, their harmonies being beautiful and the strings behind them filling everything out the sound incredibly. I’m shocked it’s the only feature on the album, but it makes it even more impactful, honestly. This is utterly beautiful and another firm highlight of the album. I’m honestly shocked it isn’t a single already, but surely will be in the near future!
The closing track of the album, surprisingly, is Tyler’s biggest hit to date, ‘DEVIL YOU KNOW’. It was the one I was familiar with before I’d even seen him live, and it’s one hell of a banger. No wonder it’s got him this far already, as it really is a Brantley Gilbert-style masterclass of modern country-rock. That chorus is incredible, but the whole song is awesome and so damn catchy. And it’s another song that is just as good live as it is on track! Tyler was onto a winner with this song, but honestly it fits just as well on the album as it works as a single. And not many artists these days close things out with a big song, which is wild to me as I love it as a concept and it works well here. Of course it’s another huge highlight of the album, and the perfect way to end things!
Overall: I really enjoyed this! There are so many incredible songs throughout. Yes, I’d still say it’s a little long, but it had a pretty great flow to it and there was so much variety that it didn’t actually feel it’s length as much as some country albums do. And there were so many amazing songs that it would honestly be hard to cut it down by much. And the fact that this is his debut album too, with just a couple of EPs prior to it, is utterly insane. He is already becoming a big name in the country world, and this release will very much solidify that fact! I’d recommend this to absolutely anyone out there into country and/or rock!
Sam: We’d call it Southern rock with a modern twist, I guess. Having said all of that, though, we have gone more of a classic rock sound, all of our influences are that. But yeah, I definitely think Southern rock with a classic twist!
And so the lead single for the EP last week? It seems to have gone down well!
Sam: Last Tuesday, 18th of Feb it came out! yeah, we’re really happy! I think today it’s been streamed over 10,000 times, which is mad! It’s always a nerve wracking thing because you put your heart and soul into these things and when you release it it’s like watching your kid go off to school, how’s it gonna do? But we’re chuffed with it!
It’s the start of the EP cycle, is there a theme surrounding it or is it more individual stories?
Sam: I wouldn’t say there’s a theme. We’ve kinda… we’ve got five songs… I guess the theme is we write about what we know and we write about things that we think other people have experienced as well. So there’s a song about being a teenager and not wanting to listen to anybody. There’s ’Best Medicine’ which is effectively a love song. ‘Runaway Rage’ is about being super angry. There’s ‘Least I can Do’ which Matt write about his other half and his crow children. Then ‘Miss You’ I wrote after my grandparents passed away. So all of these things, although personal to us, everyone can relate to it!
And what’s your writing style like?
Sam: From my point of view I’m a guitar player first and a singer second. I really struggle to see an overall song so I generally tend to bring in a riff or a lyric idea and then the four of us really get together and wrap our heads around it and contribute our own bits and pieces. Matt and Carl (drummer) are really good producers, they can see the whole thing from above and put it together that way!
Are you planning to let us hear any more of the EP before its release?
Matt: There’s som more singles planned but there’s no point putting out previews or stuff like that. There’s no point going ‘here’s a preview of a song you can’t listen to’. I think gone are the days now of buildups to releasing songs, I think it’s pretty pointless. Just get the song out and then promote it.
We’ve got a couple of singles coming off the EP, though! They kinda follow on from where ‘Best Medicine’ started, really. It’s a very catchy, hit you in the face straight away kinda thing. I don’t know who or what it sounds like, but yeah, I think it makes people listen. I think the next two tracks, ones really happy and the other is just angry and pisses you off. So there’s a mixture of emotions that come out of it and, from that, a mixture of sounds too.
And looking ahead, are you planning on sticking with more of an EP format, or are there talks of an album?
Sam: I think we’ve got… we know what we want to do and what’s gonna come from that. All I can say to you at this point is that there is more music coming and we’re always writing and always looking to see where we can take things. This is the second EP we’ve done and the reason we did that is that today’s society is quite immediate. Matt’s really good at looking at what the audience wants; everyone wants it now. I think you’ve gotta be really established before you can do an album and get people to commit to that.
Matt: also an album… realistically if you were to write 10-12 actual good songs, or even if you went away and wrote 15-17 songs and threw away five of them, that’s not a quick process. We’re not into going… well, we did it with one song on the EP but we got lucky, where we’ve had a two-hour period where the bare bones of a song has come out of it. But we don’t work that way. The riff that we had that grew that song, Sam and I had been playing that riff for about four years. Sam finally said ‘we’re gonna do something with that riff today’. We had a studio day where we were in there all day. To be honest they don’t always come like that.
Going back to the whole album thing, being an independent band at this level, how much time and effort does it take to write an album and go ‘cool the album’s out’, and it’s like ‘sounds good, what are you doing next?’. It’s just taken us a year and a half! Maybe we’ll do another EP, maybe we’ll do an album, maybe we’ll just put out singles. I think it’s an ever-changing landscape. You’ve just gotta keep doing what you’re doing, and we’re still working it out really. It’s taken us seven months to get the EP ready, we need a bit of a breather to work out what the next step is!
In terms of the live stuff you seem to be all over the place this year!
Sam: I think we’re definitely a live band, that’s where we thrive. I think we just want to get the music out to as many people as possible. Again I’m sure it’s the same for fans like yourselves. Matt and I have come into contact with people who are more obsessed with how many people they can play in front of and what they look like. With us though, if you said to us ‘there’s three people in the Dog and Duck, do you wanna go play a gig’, we’d go yeah! Having said that though, we wanna get out and play as many high quality shows a we can and deliver.
Matt: I think that’s the necessary thing to do, to start to step up and network in this environment. However, that’s not taking away from smaller shows. We’re playing the Coin Exchange on March 14th that holds 450 people. It’s 50% sold out at the moment which is great, it’s looking like it’s going to be a massive gig for us. A week later we go play at The White Heart in Basingstoke, which is just a pub. But then we’ll taylor two different things for those shows. For the Coin Exchange it’ll be a more professional setup, the whole show is completely thought out, from a fan perspective. Then in Basingstoke, we’ve got three or four new songs, we need to play them live to see how they are live and what we can do with them.
But yeah, we are getting about here there and everywhere. Maid of Stone I’ll be good. And they seem to be bigging us up! We’ve never met them, well we know Darren Wilson, one of the scouts, but he just became a fan, that’s how we know him! But they seem to be sharing our music. They said the other day, ‘current Maid of Stone favourites, Revenant’, which is lovely! We are so new on the scene so it’s just nice to see that really!
We’re playing up in Sheffield for Steel Paws, too. I’m struggling to remember them all now. And I don’t mean that in an arrogant way, there’s nowhere near as many as last year, but when there’s so much going on I can’t remember!
Sam’s big thing is let’s create a show and take it out there, inside of let’s go on stage and play some songs. But yeah, the gigs are coming in thick and fast! We’re lucky that it’s all coming in towards the end of the year, but we’re looking good!
You’re relatively new to the scene, but what would you say it’s like at the minute?
Sam: Now, I say this a lot. The great thing is about music is that anyone can do it. I think the scene, particularly with the NWOCR one, there’s good bands, and then there’s great bands. And I think it’s a case of how much you want it, and what you’re willing to do to get your music out there. I can’t knock anyone who says I’m in a band, I love doing pub gigs, I love what I’m doing. Fine, wicked. We all know it’s really hard making a living out of this. The bands like us and like The Dust Coda and AK and the Red Kites that look people in the eye and go ‘we’ve got good songs and we’re coming for it’. I love building a show and delivering that to people, making the live experience different from the recorded experience. But yeah, it’s just how much you want to do it and put on the line and back yourself.
Matt: I think a big part of that too is how far can you take it. You’ll never know if you never try! I don’t think we’ve got any delusions of grandeur, but I don’t see any reason why we… I’d be personally happy if in 10 years time we say we’ve had enough but we look back and say ‘well we supported them and played these massive shows and in this country’. Yeah, it’s just great fun. We’re musicians, we don’t know what to do aside for be musicians! We’ve gotta play, so why not take that as far as we can. It’s not about being the biggest and the best, for us it’s just giving it a good crack and see what happens.
The scene is really good, we’ve met so many lovely people! The guys up in Manchester and Firevolt, leaf promotions, we’ve made so many fans up there. It’s lovely really. We got invited up there for the Christmas do and stuff like that. It’s a lovely scene, but maybe there could be more for bands to do to connect with each other. Like you said, we saw your name on the poster, but we’d never connect if it wasn’t for this. Is there more that bands can do to like gig swap and stuff. There needs to be more of that, more working together for everyone to rise, instead of bands trying to step over each other. I think it needs to be more prevalent in any music scene, really. A few nobs as well, let’s not shy away from that!
You guys seem to be doing good on social media, any advise for bands just starting out on that front?
Sam: hire Matt as your social media guru!
Matt: Social media can be the key that really unlocks a lot of doors, but it isn’t the be all, end all of what we’re trying to do and achieve as a band. A lot of people, and who wouldn’t, want their song to go viral. Okay, but the how are you going to back that up, what’s next? Are you even ready to be thrust into it. If we went viral on a song and then Slash was like ‘wanna come out on tour’, we’d say yes but then we’d be like a rabbit in headlights, we wouldn’t know what we wear doing. But obviously we would do it!
One of the main things with social media, and it’s the hardest part, is consistency. I struggle, I’ve got a family, I don’t have time to always be like ‘let me sit down for an hour today to work out what to post, and then another hour to make it’. But there are ways that you can approach it to get a good result out of it. I put up a video about buying Black Sabbath tickets, I was really lucky and I’ve been studying these creators that teach you how to get views. And one of the main reasons that video worked really well was because that was the hot topic on that day, on that week, so people are gonna sit and watch that. Then you’re like ‘cool, our new songs out’, and 2000 views. It can be pretty disheartening. But at the end of the day, if you’re gonna post a video about your music to get people to listen to it, you’ve gotta be genuine about it. If you’re gonna get 2000 views a day, do it for 10 days. That could be 10-15000 eyeballs on that song, all it takes is 500/600 of them to listen on Spotify and then Release Radar is triggered. It’s all about a snowball effect.
But it is so disheartening, you’re just trying to cut through and keep going. But then randomly last night, I got a message on TikTok from a kid saying he and his dad were listening to ‘Best Medicine’ and they love the track. And I had no idea who he was, I’d never spoken to him! So yeah, you’ve just gotta keep going and attack all of them!
We sat down with our good friends Sons of Liberty while at Winters End the other weekend, catching up about their latest album and plans for the year. Check it out below!
How was the set?
Oh, it was great! We haven’t done anything since October last year. So we’d had a bit of downtime, we’d had a couple of rehearsals, but a big gig like Winters End is always a bit of a challenge! But, it was really cool! Kira Mac were super early with their soundcheck so we got loads of extra time to get more comfortable with what we were doing. We were at least an hour earlier than we should have been so we got to have a bit more time. And a shoutout to Rich Brinley of NWOCR who did our front of house sound tonight! Everybody’s reporting how great it sounded.
It’s been a couple of years since we last daw you and since you’ve had a lineup change, how’s that been?
Oh wow, that is a little while! So yeah, Russ has come onboard after the songs were already written, we’d demoed them up and we’d been in the studio a couple of times, the backing tracks were down. It was like “what the hell do we do now?”. So we sent a couple of mp3s to Russ on email and like an hour later two songs came back with some worked up backing vocal ideas. So the click was right there! We put him under a bit of pressure as we’d spent way more money recording than we really should have done. Originally Rob left, then Rob #2 was fronting the band for a little while but when he came to the studio that didn’t quite work out. So we thought okay, we’ve spent a lot of time… but Russ stepped up to the plate. Three or four days in the studio, after about 10 days doing demo versions. So we worked him really hard, but the reaction has been fantastic!
Yeah, the album seemed to go down really well!
Thank you! And live too, there’s a lift in the energy of the band. Yeah, he’s a bit younger than we are, not beating around the bush here! But he’s brought a challenge to the rest of us to lift our game a bit.
It did look like you were having fun up there!
Oh Christ yeah! And that’s absolutely what it’s about. We’re not gonna make one million pounds out of Sons of Liberty, but we are going to have a damn good time doing it! So as long as that comes across on the stage too, that’s wonderful!
And you played an unreleased track for an EP, right?
So when we recorded the album we had 13 songs recorded that were all treated exactly the same way. When it came to… vinyl is really challenging, like 44-minutes maximum. Once we worked out which songs would fit the vinyl we thought we should just go with the 11 songs on the CD and keep the other two back for future use. So for the October gigs that we played the two unreleased tracks we put out on a little EP and it’s gone really well! Six songs from the album, one from the EP, and it seemed to work pretty well!
I imagine there’s some writing going on still too, right?
Yeah, I mean Fred is prolific. He sends me stuff… after the week you can log in and there’s another message or track or riff idea that he’s come up with. That’s where most of the songs start. A couple have gone a little further with Russ doing some lyrics and vocal ideas, but we’ve not rehearsed or got together as a band. We’ve just been focused on making the most of what we’ve got in the can, so to speak!
Have you got quite a busy 2025 planned?
Yes! So kicking off late February until early May pretty much every other weekend we’re doing three or four gigs. It looks really cool as a tour poster! Couple of festivals in the summer. We’re playing A New Day which is a new one for us. It’s associated with Alford rock and blues. It’s quite eclectic, it’s more of a mini Glastonbury-type festival with lots of different types of music. But they’ve slotted us onto the bill! We played Alford last year and off the back of that we got the booking for this.
Then in the Autumn another run of gigs around the UK. So yeah, the diary for 2025 looks pretty damn good! I think we get to o to Scotland twice. We seem to have gathered quite the crowd up there having played the Winter Storm festival a couple of times. And that seems to ripple over onto your own gigs in Edinburgh or Glasgow! It’s nice that we’ve latched onto a few people there!
Do you have song you wish you could have written?
Most of us have pretty big classic rock histories. Freddie would probably say ‘Rock Bottom’, UFO. Me and Mark are more Blackfoot, so something like ‘The Highway Song’. Steve’s a bit strange because he likes his extreme metal stuff, or the operatic stuff, so he latched onto Nightwish and stuff like that. Russ, being a bit younger, he comes up with something a bit crazy. He loves his Bon Jovi, but loves to throw in a bit more of a pop thing.
Yeah, it seems like bands like to throw in a bit of a pop cover every so often!
Yeah well me and Freddie go back a long time playing in bands and we did the whole cover band thing. My approach was to take things like ‘Footloose’ and rock up the guitar riff a little bit and turn it into a rock song. It always went down well! The craziest thing we ever did was ‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe but with kazoos doing the keyboard run!
We had the pleasure of sitting down to chat to Greg of the amazing Hush Money about their new album and plans for the future! Check it out below!
The album just came out a couple of weeks ago now, it seems like it’s gone down a storm?
Yep! It seems to be going over well! That’s a good thing. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback. A lot of… I don’t want to use the term unexpected but it’s more than we thought would happen. Especially given our previous catalogue! It was a nice surprise!
What went into the decision to hold off on putting the album out on streaming, to just sell physicals for now?
Yeah, so we had gotten some advice from an executive, an A&R rep from our record label, who basically said to do it right there’s certain things we’d have to have. So we decided to got into a hybrid release mode where we were able to recoup of the money we’d lost for that. I saw a calculation that for every CD you make $10 on you have to have 5000-7000 Spotify streams. So when you’re a growing band… we’re not on the levels of Metallica at this point so every dollar counts right now. It was due in part due to being able to recoup some of our costs but also because we do have a lot of fans who do genuinely enjoy the physical copy, to have the CD or vinyl in hand, which is cool. It kinda gives them the opportunity to say ‘I heard all of this before anyone else’. We want to give something to our fans in that regard!
How would you describe your sound? Any specific inspirations you draw from?
I would say our music is very Southern influenced. I know that’s a very broad-stroke term but you look at our music and it’s got the southern rock, it’s got the outlaw country, it’s got the traditional country stuff in it. But it’s also got aspects of like Otis Redding R&B in it, it’s got some blues in there. It’s a hodgepodge of all southern music meshed into one. It even has gospel elements in there! It’s really where we’re from so it’s indicative of the music from our area. We grew up listening to everything. My dad was a traditional country artist for years so it was all Waylon Jennings and Meryl Haggard and stuff like that. But we’d get in the car with my mom and she’d be turning on Zeppelin and AC/DC. We listened to everything growing up!
Though the album’s only just come out, I imagine you’ve already got some new music in the works?
Oh, it never stops! As soon as we finish one project we start working on something else. We never stop writing. Whether it’s quality and makes a new album remains to be seen, but we never stop writing, we never stop working, trying to get better. We draw inspiration from everywhere so at any one time we’ll have a whole Catalogue of stuff to work through. As any songwriter will tell you, half of them may be shit, but if you find one or two of them in there, that’s good!
Have you got a busy 2025 planned?
Yeah, we’re compiling dates right now. We’ve got stuff coming in all the time so we’re trying to sort through it and piece together the travel. We’ve got plenty of shows coming up this year. Should be a good year! The new record has been very well received, we’ve seen a lot of engagement on it. So that tells me people are enjoying it and they’re maybe more likely to come out to see us now!
Any plans to come back to the UK at all?
We had an offer to come play a festival over there so we’re just trying to see if it’s viable for us, if we can make a trip out of it. Hopefully it does come to fruition! But our absolute ambition and goal is to come back. When we came over the first time, it was something like we’ve never experienced. We were talking like ‘oh this is cool’, but we didn’t realise how cool it was. We were excited for the opportunity but we didn’t realise the fact that the scene over there is so much stronger. People enjoy the music. When we were out there we weren’t competing with the TV or the game that was on. Beer in hand, in front of the stage they were rocking out, then afterwards we were taking pictures with folks, we were signing records. It was absolutely a phenomenal experience. Especially Call of the Wild festival, that was one of the most fun things we’ve ever done! I have people from that festival reaching out to us all the time asking us when we’ll be back. It makes us feel so good, that it was well received!
You’ve touched on it a bit, but are there any differences between here and back home?
It‘a like people are more invested in the music, in of itself. I think that a lot of times when you have so much, it’s so oversaturated in places… over here there’s very much a few top styles of music: pop-country, hip hop and pop music. Anything outside of that is like pulling teeth to try and get visibility on. It’s amazing that we were able to land on so many different radio stations out there and Spotify playlists. But when I sat down and made a call to 100 different radio stations out here I was met with ‘if it’s not charted, we don’t want to play it’. That’s kinda discouraging, especially for an artist trying to gain visibility. So there’s a big difference in the acceptance of all styles of music, over there. They show up, they’re invested, they’re enjoying it. They actually go out to hear new music. That’s something that doesn’t happen a whole lot any more. We’re met with a lot of cover show offers. I use this line a lot but at some point ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was an unknown song, and now it’s played in every bar across the world! How are people gonna learn out music if we can’t play it?
Yeah, I thinkthe southern thing is really taking off again here, too.
And that’s a good thing, diversifying your music. I think the world is starving for real music again. I hate to use that word but it’s all very overproduced these days. I know our record was a high quality production but I feel like there’s so much it’s just overkill. I think people are longing for music that makes them feel something, and there’s not a lot of that any more.
I’ve been a pretty big fan of this band since discovering them off their first album a few years ago now. The band’s unique blend of southern rock and Americana/folk had me hooked immediately. And since interview them a couple of times and seeing them live, we’ve gotten pretty friendly and I’ve only become a bigger fan. I’ve been rather impatiently waiting for this album to drop since the singles started coming out months ago, so now that it’s finally here I can’t wait to finally dive in!
Opener ‘Rotten Apples’ has almost a punk beat and feel to it behind the southern rock guitaring. The slide guitaring throughout is amazing. Dave’s voice comes in over the top of the bluesy verse, fitting in perfectly. It also builds to a massively catchy chorus, one that sounds like it’d be a lot of fun live! We also get an amazing guitar solo tucked in the middle of a real cool bridge part. It’s a simple song in terms of structure, but is a lot of fun and crafted perfectly. And it sets the tone for the album excellently!
The riff for ‘S.O.S.’ is heavy and fantastic, the track having a real driving energy to it. It’s also again catchy vocally, throughout this time too, the verse and pre feeling just as sing-a-longy as the chorus! The lyrics in this are pretty fantastic too, a lot of fun and very well put together. It’s a very 70s/80s hard rock style track with a Southern edge still, that then takes a surprising, abrupt but shockingly fitting turn to Iron Maiden with its bridge. The band are no stranger to wearing their inspirations on their sleeves but blending them perfectly and still making it all feel very Outlaw Orchestra. This is another excellent track and one that makes it onto our playlist!
‘Fear the Bite’ slows things down into spooky banjo time territory, another sound the band pull off amazingly. Dave’s raspier, whispered vocals are incredible over the top of the simple percussion and banjo riff. I also love that it stays at the same steady, low dark-folk level throughout. I imagine the temptation was there to build it up into a stomping rock song, but I love this sort of style and a full track of it from them was amazing. It also still works perfectly in the context of the album and the band, and breaks up the release with something completely different early on. The band are so far three for three on awesome songs!
Then you have ‘El Dorado’ that is arguably the previous song with the rock elements like I mentioned and damn, it’s incredible! I love the distorted guitar over the quick, amazing banjo playing from Pete. And the riffing all round is incredible, just like the vocals are. I love it slowing down in the middle too, the guitar replicating the banjo riffing, almost turning the track metal for a moment. The dynamics of the track are incredible, it taking multiple twists and turns throughout, keeping the listener constantly on their toes. It’s another amazing track, and another easily playlisted song!
We’re very familiarwith ‘Holy Ground’ here. I feel like I gushed over it enough in that reaction video, but months on I still LOVE this track. It’s a dark, plodding Western-blues track that is once again something rather different to the rest of the album, but still is distinctly Outlaw. I adore the lyrics throughout the song too, being maybe my favourite on the album. And those heavy bridge riffs and southern rock solo… *chef’s kiss*. Fans of the band will have enjoyed the hell out of the song for months already, just like me, but for new listeners or anyone who hasn’t heard this yet, I can’t recommend it enough. It showcases the bands talent for songwriting perfectly, and is packed full of excellent moments.
‘Small Change’ is a quick, steady-paced blues-rock pallet cleanser, and is an infectiously fun track. It’s completely different to the last few tracks but picks up the energy perfectly. It’s another track that sounds like it would be amazing live, too. At sub-two-minutes it’s the perfect short slightly sleazy southern rock track at this point in the album!
‘Sunday Drivers’ slows back down the pace again into a plodding, subdued blues track, and I love it! It fits the name of the track perfectly, and has some absolutely incredible guitar playing throughout. There are brief glimpses of distorted, heavier guitars in the chorus, but they are fleeting (in the best way). It also perfectly fits the name of the track, it being a truly excellent choice. It’s a chilled-out track that almost begs to be played in a smoky dive bar somewhere. As a massive blues rock guy, I absolutely loved this.
Lead single of the album ‘Bag of Bones’ is amazing, and really draws together every sound they have showcase over the album into one epic sound. There’s some awesome riffing and guitaring, some awesome lyrics and some damn catchy vocal melodies throughout. It has a chilled-out feel but is still distinctly rocky, even in a late 90s/early 2000s pop rock or grunge way. Honestly, it’s the same feeling that ‘Graceless Time’ has, though that track also includes a healthy dose of incredible gospel to the proceedings with the massive backing vocals, making the chorus sound huge and incredibly catchy. Yet again it’s two more amazing tracks!
Single ‘Born to Be a Thief’ is another we are rather familiar with. It’s yet another fantastic change of pace; a darker, foot-stomping, folk/Americana-drenched rock track. I’ve spun this a lot since it was first released, and it fits so well within the album that I’ve listened to it a bunch more since. Everyone works their asses off through the track, the drums, banjo and guitaring all being highlights of the track. It’s been on our playlist for months at this point, and is a huge high point of the album!
The closing track, ‘Outlaw’, is straight up rock in all the best ways. I love that in a time where most bands slow things down for the final track, TOO instead play the biggest, highest energy track they have on the album. It’s somehow the perfect blend of 70s/80s Southern rock and that again more 90s pop/almost indie rock sound. That chorus is amazing, as is the heavy blues middle part and the excellent solo over the top of it. It’s a cracking, high-energy way to close out the album that once again draws together a lot of the elements that we’d heard prior perfectly. And it’s yet another huge highlight of an album packed full of them!
Overall: This was an incredibly fun, amazing listen. I wasn’t expecting to talk about almost every song in so much depth, but the band constantly changed things up and did something new throughout that was impossible not to touch on. There was never a dull moment, and all three members are so incredibly talented for crafting something so unique and with clear passion and heart too. They put their all into this release while still sounding like they had a blast, and it in turn makes the listener have a lot of fun too! There are very few, if any, like The Outlaw Orchestra these days, and with another incredibly solid release like this, they are very much at the top of the pack in their style!
We had the pleasure of sitting down with the awesome Elvie Shane last week to chat about his latest album, his touring plans for the year and the state of country music. Check it out below!
How would you describe your sound?
With Damascus I was dead set on not having a specific sound, I just wanted to create a record that was very diverse. Each song way recorded in a way that catered to the song and the lyrical content as much as possible. I grew up listening to a lot of heartland rock; a lot of Steve Earl, Bruce Springsteen. So message wise my inspiration comes from them, but sonically my producer is a huge Black Keys, White Stripes, Alabama Shakes, so we managed to incorporate a lot of that. We also enjoy a lot of lo-fi and hip-hop, so we got to implement a lot of that into this record.
I would just say that my sound is honest. It’s a sound that is true to each song. Whether it sounds like honky tonk or gospel or rock or R&B… the whole goal is to evoke some kind of emotion from the song, so whatever caters to that!
What would you say about the state of country music at the minute?
It’s beautiful chaos. I’m not a fan of all of it, but I’m a fan people being able to come in and do whatever. I think the days of genres are coming to an end; we are all melting pots this day and age with music. We have grown up listening to so much. The country sound was the country sound because it was just being developed. Same with rock. A lot of people my generation and younger, we’ve been listening to all of this stuff and we come from so many different places of the world, there’s so much to draw from. So you can have Zach Bryan on one side, Shaboozey on the other. You can do what you want to. Music City is officially Music City and not just Country Music City. Some people hate that, I really couldn’t give a shit. I just want people to live their live and create, to do what they love and have a good time doing it. Of course I have my knee-jerk reaction sometimes when I hear stuff. But in then end we’re all trying to do the same thing; we wanna sing and write songs and do what we love, and kudos to anyone who’s doing that!
The album came out a couple of months ago now, what’s it been like to see the reception to it?
I think it’s been much better received than my original record. Backslider; I’m very proud of that record, but it was very bright eyed and bushy tailed, life was going really good when I was making that record, while with Damascus it was going much more normal. I don’t know what people were thinking truly, but I do believe my overall theme for the record was the struggle that I see in the world. I think that a lot of people are struggling, a lot of people are pissed off, and I just want them to know that someone sees what’s going on and wants to talk about it.
With Backslider everyone was really excited for a little while and then it went away. With Damascus it seems like the longer it’s out the more people start to talk about it.
Did that understand of people’s struggles play into the album title?
Yeah, Damascus is obviously the story from the bible with the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus is where the idea originally came from. I had no idea where I was going after that original record. I’d done everything I’d ever dreamt of. I got a record deal, a number one, my life was in this amazing place that I wasn’t familiar with. But with Damascus, the first two songs that we wrote for it were ‘Baptized’ and ‘Forgotten Man’, which are two very different ideas and different sounding songs. I was like, how in the world do I put this all on the same record. So the idea of Damascus steal came to me. You’ve probably seen the kitchen knives made out of it with all these black lines in them. The way they’re made is you take all these different types of steel, you throw them in a forge together and beat it together, and all those lines are the different layers of metal. And it creates a really strong metal and really beautiful knife blade.
So I thought what if I approach this album like I’m making a knife, and I’ll listen to as much Mac Miller, as much Johnny Cash, Foo Fighters and Alabama Shakes as I can. I’ll use all of that as my metal and create a Damascus knife and hope that it cuts deep. That was the plan and I feel like it came together!
What was it like working with Little Big Town and Jenna McClelland?
So Jenna is actually an old friend of mine who is probably the most amazing female vocalist I’ve ever heard in my life. She lives down in Alabama and doing the bar scene and putting her music out, but she also came on the road with me for about a year singing backing vocals. So I was in Alabama, at a beach house on a writers retreat, when I wrote ‘Jonesin’’. So I called her as she was like an hour away to come and sit in on it!
And then with Little Big Town, the day we wrote that song I’d listened to ‘Boondocks’ on the way to this writers retreat. So I had it in my head and wrote that song. And while we were writing I got a little drunk and looked up at the guys and said ‘I’m gonna have Little Big Town record on this track with me’. They just looked at me and laughed. Well, when we got done I got on Instagram and sent a Karen Fairchild a video of us just jamming the song and was like ‘Hey, I listened to Boondocks today, thanks for the inspiration!’. And then about 20 minutes later I had some more shots and went back and sent ‘fuck that, what I actually meant was if you like this, it would be really cool if you guys sing on it with me’. The next morning I woke up to a message from her saying ‘we love it, let’s do it’.
They’re so awesome to work with, they’re such good people. They’ve not forgot where they came from. They worked very hard to make sure the song got what it needed. We actually ran out of time because they were working so hard on the background vocals. I didn’t get to feature them on a main part. But it came together really well. I love the contrast of their smooth, beautiful harmonies with whatever the hell this raspy thing I’ve got going on is!
It’s certainly a highlight of the album!
I wasn’t feeling the song that much at first. Then my buddy, Adam Wood, says what if we go ‘I’m tired of coming in last’. I was like ‘hell yeah, I agree with that shit!’. I’m putting in a first place effort every day. We had come first with ‘My Boy’ off the first record, we got to ring the bell which was amazing. But after that it was like I was forgot about, you know? I was the dog that got kicked out the house and lives in the yard now. I’d grown frustrated, and when he said that line I felt that way, and I know the guy swinging the hammer or turning the wrench does too. So we brought it to life and I’m glad to have it on the record. That song is also my tip of the hat to country music.
I imagine you’re writing some stuff again already, too?
I have no earthly idea what I’m doing next. I’ve been writing a little bit, but I don’t wanna be. When Backslider came out I couldn’t wait to write more as I felt like I hadn’t said it all. With Damascus, I feel like I finally created the record I always wanted to, and said what I wanted to say. So now, I’m toying with the idea of maybe doing a more R&B/soul record. I’m never going to try to put out the same record twice. I don’t want to do that. I just wanna explore all the things in music that have inspired me. One thing I’m not really great at is writing love songs. So I’m interested in trying to approach that with the next project. I’m lost right now, I don’t know what to do.
I might just do the reverse Jelly Roll and put out a hip-hop record! Can you hear my ass rapping?!
You’ve got a fair few dates planned for the rest of the year now, right?
Yeah, I mean, I’ll take more if they’ll come. We’ve got some shows with Brothers Osborne, Miranda Lambert, Travis Tritt, Midland. We wanna come back over y’all’s way. Last year I broke my ankle a week before I was supposed to fly out there, so hopefully they’re not too gun-shy to invite me back! It’d be cool to get back out to you guys.
But yeah, we’re just out here grinding. Just trying to spread the word and spread the music. Keep gaining new fans. I’m doing it like Noah’s Arc baby, two by two, come on in!
We had the chance to sit down with the wonderful blues rock guitarist/singer Tom Killner, to chat about his latest album (review here) and his touring plans for the year. Check it all out below!
How’s it’s been to see the response to your new album?
It’s been great, to be fair! It’s different to the last albums we’ve done. It’s great that people are on board with it and like what we’ve done, which I’m really grateful for!
And it’s been a little while between releases, right?
Yeah! Somebody said it’s been six years since the last one, one of the reviews was like ‘it’s been over half a decade’ and it’s like wow, where’s that gone?! Yeah, time seems to slip by rather quickly. Especially with ‘that thing’ that happened that we don’t like to mention. So yeah, six years now. But we won’t leave it that long until the next one!
And what’s the writing process like for you? Do you write it all and then bring it to the band or do they sit and write with you?
It’s a mixture sometimes. Generally I’ll have a riff idea or the lyrics or an idea of the lyrical content. And I do like to chat with the band and get musical ideas. I do like other people’s input into stuff. It’s important that it’s not just a singular vision for the songs. The track ‘No More’ was originally a ballad, I wrote it on acoustic guitar. It just didn’t work. And then Rich, the drummer, said ‘let’s try it this way’, and this was like a week before we were due to record. Like lyrically there were no issues but musically we were struggling a little bit. And that’s when we take it to the band and swap and change it and things.
So it’s sort of a mixture between myself doing bits and pieces and the band coming up with ideas. I more or less let them have free rein with what they want to do on the tracks. That’s down to them.
Is there a particular story or theme throughout the album?
I don’t think there’s a story, you can’t call it a concept album. It’s an accumulation of songs I’ve written… some I wrote years back and we’ve toured them for years. Some of them were done literally the week before we recorded the album. But all the songs are from a certain point in my life, pinpointing what it was like then. Some are just pure fantasy, some are observations on everyday life. So that’s kinda the theme from the record, pinpoints through life.
I imagine there’s some music floating round for the next project still, too?
Yeah, I would say so! The vinyl format that we did, you’ve gotta cut down to a certain length or you start to loose audio quality, which a fun constraint to have. And the cost of having a double LP is unattainable at the moment. But yeah, we have got ideas and songs and riffs that didn’t make it onto this record that will be on the next one. And hopefully it won’t been too long before we start getting those together and having the next one written.
And do you lean more towards albums as opposed to single or?
I’m in both camps, to be fair. The industry is changing with how to capture your audience; you’ve got to move with what is happening, really. I would say I’m in the camp of I like a full album but I’m not afraid to have a couple or three singles from the album before the release. It sort of gives the people an indication of where it’s gonna go. Today it’s really hard to keep the attention of people. We’re in the world of 15/30 second videos. I’m 28 now so I sort of caught the end of when you used to go into shops to buy singles. So the singles thing has always been there, but it’s a rarity these days that bands are purely releasing LPs or full albums.
And so you’re on tour next month, right?
Yes! We are headed out with Hush Money, from Georgia. I can’t wait to be heading out with them. It’s crept up on me, seems like this year has disappeared already! We have a few dates with them across the UK; Scotland and the North-East and down to Wolverhampton and finish off at Call of the Wild. Really looking to that!
Then in July we’re heading out with Preacher Stone. These shows that we’re doing, we’re playing venues that we’ve never been to before, meet in new friends, so we’re looking forward to it!
Have you got much planned for the summer/back end of the year?
We’ve got quite a few festivals throughout. There’s plans for a tour later on this year on our own. It’s not been announced yet but we’re working on that! But mainly through summer it’s festivals.
Do you have a dream tour lineup you’d want to be a part of?
This question comes up a bit and I think it changes on a daily basis! A big one for me would be Blackberry Smoke. They’ve been on the playlist today so that explains why! Lukas Nelson, he’s really cool! Jason Isbell is one of my favourite artists in the Southern rock camp, phenomenal songwriter!
