The blurb for The Winter Tradition goes; “Woolly jumpers, catchy choruses and the tightest live show around. What is there not to like about The Winter Tradition?”, they have a good point.
A firm favourite of the local crowd, the band return to Inverness on the 9th of February, we spoke to Mark Morrow (guitar and backing vocals) about the forthcoming tour and new material.
The band saw the recent single release of “Departures” which is the first new material since the release of long player “Gradients” in 2012. When asked about the new material Mark remarks that it’s the same but different; ” I think the best way to describe our new tracks is that it definitely follows in the same vein as ‘Gradients’, but we are exploring a lot more paths and approaches to the way the songs are produced and written.”
Of course “Gradients” was very well received indeed, with one reviewer describing it as “Weaving waltzing vocals with harmonic hooks – The Winter Tradition’s debut sounds like a dream you don’t want to wake up from.”. For Mark, he is obviously thrilled by the opportunity to follow up the album; “I’m excited! I’m really excited about all our new ideas and the songs that we’re making at the moment,” Mark adding ” I think we are all stronger song writers now, so yeah! excited!”
At the moment the band are balancing maintaining a live profile with the creative demands of developing new music, a challenge, Mark explains that brings with it advantages and challenges; “It’s sometimes hard to find the time to really get down and work on new tracks as a band whilst trying to juggle our life’s and touring but it’s an excellent way to try a new song out and gauge a reaction.” Subsequently more tunes will be debuted, “We will be playing a couple of new tracks on this tour for that very reason!”.
2014 promises much for The Winter Tradition, and Mark teased some big announcements when he spoke to Gignmix where he teased “We’re going to be writing and recording lots more and prepare for our biggest year yet! We have lots and lots of exciting and big plans that we can’t wait to share with everyone.” Despite attempting to prise some further information, we were getting nowhere, ” We can not at the moment :) If we gave you all our plans for this year at the start of the year then we would have no new news to announce later!”. Can’t blame us for trying though.
Mark was keen to promote the current single; “We just put up a video for ‘Departures’ and are doing a UK tour to promote it. Go check it out if you haven’t already!” (see below). The aforementioned tour takes the band back to England, Mark comments “It’s going to be great going down south again. We haven’t been down for a while now so I’m excited to play down there again!”.
The band are obviously looking forward to the tour; “We’ve been working hard creating a set list that we think will go down well in each city.” Mark adds; “We spend a lot of time with our production team making sure everything is good and our live show is the best it can be.” Given their previous live performance we have no reason to doubt them.
Doors open on Sunday the 9th February 2014 at 8pm. Support comes from Neon Knights and Dougie Scott. Tickets £5 from Hootananny or www.thewintertradition.com
