It’s time to start getting excited, Dear Reader. We’re less than a month away from the unofficial start of our 2019 festival season. That May Day Bank Holiday weekend means one thing – Live At Leeds. Packed with (literally) hundreds of the best new bands on the planet, it sees one of the country’s most vibrant creative cities turned into a mecca of buzz, hype and awesome live music.
To celebrate, we’re holding a special Live At Leeds takeover. Over the course of the day (11th April 2019, in case you’re coming to this late – Ed), we’ll be bringing you all kinds of stuff from and about the acts playing this year’s event. If you’re going, it’ll help you plan out those all-important spreadsheets. If you’ve not yet picked up your tickets – well, what are you waiting for? You can grab ’em here, right now.
Scottish foursome The Snuts are gaining traction in all the right places – ridiculously huge sold-out gigs in their homeland, festival sets aplenty, massive indie tunes spreading like wildfire online. It’s all going on. Bassist Callum ‘29’ Wilson takes a break from recording to fill us in.
Hey Callum, how’s it going?
All good, can’t complain…
Congrats on signing with Parlophone last year, how are you finding life on the label?
Aye great! Recording right now in London. Just good for somebody that’s not just all your friends believing in the music.
So how did you guys meet and decide to form The Snuts? Were any of you in other bands beforehand?
We’ve known each other for like 15 years or something, Jordan, Joe and Me all went to primary school with each other, then met Jack at the start of secondary. We’ve played music together since we were 15. We’ve only ever really played music together so I can’t really imagine it any other way.
When did you first realise you wanted to make music, did you have a musical upbringing?
Not musical so to speak, always music around you affecting you but none of us were trained in music from an early age. Joe and Joko done music in school then that transferred loosely to me and Jack. We’ve all kind of learned together as one, and we learn more off each other than any formal lessons. Jack’s always been able to write songs though, and we’ve reached a stage where we’re all comfortable bringing our shit together.
What’s been the highlight of your time as a musician so far?
Honestly, it’s all pretty unbelievable, every month shit progresses for us, and it gets more unbelievable every time, insane to finally get to hand in my notice to my work and get out the building site thought that was pretty special.
You guys are at loads of festivals this summer, how do you prepare for so much travelling?
We spend a lot of time fucking with each other’s mental well-being, mainly our Tour Manager Gaz. Talk shit, generally just piss about and kill time. We’re really good mates, so it’s kind of no holds barred, sometimes it’s a laugh, sometimes it’s tense, but it’s sure as fuck better than having another winter on the tools. The main rule is to buy a portable phone charger and keep that fucker charged and don’t forget earphones.
What’s the best festival set you’ve ever seen?
Arctic Monkeys at TRNSMT last year was a master class in how to do indie rock n roll for me.
Is there anyone you’re especially looking forward to seeing this year?
Would love to catch Foals, but travel plans sometimes mean you miss the stuff you want to see. The Ninth Wave and Lucia are two Glasgow bands we’re really digging. Obviously, the sheer wonder voice of Lewis Capaldi is a must!
What are you working on at the mo?
New sounds, big beats hopefully have some shit out in the very near future.
Anything else we should know?
You get sore arms hanging from apple trees.
The Snuts play Live At Leeds (4th May), Handmade (5th May), The Great Escape (9th-11th May), This is Tomorrow (25th May), Reading & Leeds (23rd-25th August) and more.
