We have had an incredible run of luck with interviews recently, covering various genres and every single one of you that has taken the time to answer our questions. When Hugh Winnie Winton lead singer of The Side offered to speak to us we quite simply (although metaphorically) bit his hand off!!
We guess the suntans have faded since your trip to the Midem Festival @ Cannes earlier in the year, can you tell us about what the experience was like?
Cannes itself was an amazing place, a world away from the sunny sights of Alness, haha. On the second day there we passed this mobile phone shop, £7,000 was the cheapest model, mental. Both gigs we played there were really well received. I had no chance of a suntan, all my time through the day was spent in the Palais Des Festivals attending Midem. The first day in there was really intimidating but I soon got used to it. It was a great opportunity to meet various professionals within the music industry and get our music heard by them. This is where I met Roby Schuder, the promoter for the Rock Um Knuedler in Luxembourg.
Your collecting up quite a lot of high profile appearances including supporting Texas in Luxembourg and Supporting Big Country and Simple Minds, is there a GiG, or GiGs that your particularly looking forward to this summer ?
Rock Um Knuedler and Summer In the City will definitely be the highlight gigs of our summer, and aside from the 02 Arena, probably the biggest gigs we’ll ever play. We’re really grateful to the promoters of both events for letting us play. In Luxembourg we are doing 3 gigs, Rock Um Knuedler and 2 club gigs. All our expenses are paid being paid for by the Promoter, which is a first for us, haha. The festival holds around 15,000 -20,000, so to go on at 9pm (just before Texas) to that size of crowd is going to be Amazing. Summer in the City is going to be fantastic aswell, I think it’s around a 10,000 capacity, so it will be excellent exposure for us and it’s great to see bands like Simple Minds and Big Country coming up to play in the Highlands.
It won’t be long till the Side’s 5th EP is released, can you tell us a bit about the 4 tracks that are going to be on the EP and the process of choosing the tracks?
We were originally thinking of doing the second album, but I think we’re just going to concentrate on EP’s now. It means we can release something every 6-12 months. Aside from the Ross County single, we haven’t released anything in over 2 years. So it feels good to be releasing new material at last. There will be 5 tracks on the EP, 1 of which is an Intro. I would say some of the songs slightly move on in direction from previous stuff, a little bit faster and heavier. We all listen to a wide range of music, so we like to throw it all in the pot. A lot of Indie/Rock bands get stuck in the one trick pony scenario, regardless if we’re successful or not, we couldn’t get up there and play each song with the same old chords, rhythms, structure, harmonies, etc… It’s just too boring!. At the same time, we’re not claiming to be the most original either, we know we have a sound from bygone age, but like to think we add a fair few twists to make it our own. The EP is going to have a bit of more homemade sound compared to the Album. As with the Album I recorded it at the North Highland College in Alness, but I’m going to do the mixing/mastering at my own studio at home. We haven’t done this since our Forever Changing EP.
What are the band’s hopes for 2011?.
As 2010 was our most successful year to date, this year was always going to be a challenge. But so far I think we’ve done pretty well, hopefully there’s a few more opportunities heading our way. We will be chart releasing our next single on the 17th July (Day after Summer in the City) on our own label (no bover lut), and the EP 2 weeks after that. We are putting together a UK tour for July/August at the moment. We will also putting a video out to accompany the single.
Our aim has always been to get a deal, so we can give up the day jobs and concentrate on it full time. But the days of the dream deal are few and far between now. If something comes along, great, but if not, we’ll just keep on enjoying what we’re doing and work hard to try and push the band as far as we can.
If people have not heard of you (shame on them!), what song would you recommend they listen to and why?
I would say “Nowhere Left To Run” or “The Circle/Sunrise”. I think both songs catch the band at their best; you get the melodic pop side of us but also the rocking instrumental side.
The Side will be playing Ceol-Mor on the 4th of June, Summer in the City (supporting Big Country and Simple Minds) on the 16th of July and B-Fest on August the 20th.
