January 2008 I went to Tenerife for 4 days. I read a book called “Booky Wooky” by Russell Brand. I came across a the quote “Happiness Occurs Arbitrarily” I fell in love with the meaning behind this and in the next 5 minutes I had written a song based on those words. Only problem was…I didn’t actually have a band.
Over the next 2 years I started a band called This City Sleeps that took over my life, I put everything I had into it, we released 2 demos and one EP. We toured, met amazing people, had some amazing opportunities and made our mark. But as all good things do, it came to an end summer 2010. After something is such a big part of your life for 2 years when it’s not there it’s strange.
Summer 2010 before This City Sleeps went on our EP launch tour I read a book called “Junk” by Melvin Burgess. Once again I found a quote “Fishing For Hearts & Souls” it stayed in the back of my head for weeks. One particularly day the bassist of TCS texted me saying he wanted to leave before tour, I then wrote a song called “Fishing” based on this. TCS carried on and we went on tour and that song stayed in a notebook somewhere.
Fast forward to October 2010 and I’m jamming in 306 practice studios with Conor Dawson and Shaun Dillion. We’re playing The Swellers track “Fire Away”. A couple of months passed and I’m in Abbey Lodge studios with John Devlin, Andy Castle and Conor Dawson and we’re playing my song “Fishing” Things were falling into place but not yet.
Random studio sessions happened with just me, conor and andy over the first few months nothing major. We had been into the studio and recorded 2 demos, but we still weren’t a band.
On February 2nd It was the first Saturday of the month i.e. Pinky Swear @ Cockpit. I went down to this for the first time, met up with Conor, Ben Abbott, Glenn Sutcliffe and a few others. I met a drunk guy called Justin Myers, apparently he was coming to try out for our band.
February 7th 2010 that drunk guy Justin showed up at practice (obviously not drunk) We played him some songs and andy had forgotten his effect pedals and we had forgotten some other stuff and things were going wrong. We sounded terrible, we sounded not like a band. But then Justin brought out his guitar and jammed with us. Safe to say he was in the band, and none of us actually asked him properly, and no one has to this day, but that day was when Hearts & Souls properly started.
A year on we’ve toured a lot of the UK, released 2 singles, played the biggest venues to the tiniest ones. This year, more tours, and a record release. Only difference is we’ve actually found ourselves.
6th February 2012: I’m sat in my bedroom, I’ve sacked off uni, I had the worst possible last few days at work. But in a few hours I’ll be in the venue in Hull I grew up playing with 8 of my best friends, and tomorrow I’ll be in a bigger room with more of my best friends playing our first ever headline show as band, doing the one thing that makes me extremely happy.
One year in the making, wonder what I’ll post on here 7th February 2013…
