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
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 think the 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.
