Wishing Wolf – Interview
Interview with Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (http://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: What type of artist are you?
WW: Wishing Wolf are a five piece alternative rock band based in Kettering Northamptonshire. We take influence from loads of alternative genres including Emo, Pop Punk and Post Hardcore. Having said this we also have individual influences including Progressive Rock and Indie, honestly we like to find ways of mixing things up.
PD: Tell us the brief history of yourself.
WW: Wishing Wolf began as an acoustic project written and performed by singer Danny Ray Holmes. In 2017 after writing a full band EP danny decided ask friends and family already involved in the local music scene to perform these 5 tracks live. members James Moodie (drums), Jazza Wallace (bass), Kyle Donnelly (guitar) and SKye Sturgess (guitar) all met through social media. After changing the EP name and a few line up changes we ended up with our Debut EP ‘True Eyes’. Our current line up is Danny Holmes, James Moodie, Jazza Wallace, Ben Essam and Kyle Donnelly.
PD: Who are your musical and non-musical influences?
WW: As a collective we are very much inspired by the emo bands we grew up with. This includes artists such as Taking Back Sunday, The Used, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, Having said this we all like to think we bring our own personal influences to the band, for example Ben is very heavily influenced by progressive rock bands and tends to show off his understanding of the genre in our music. We also take influence in a lot of modern artists for example the bands ‘Wvnder’ and ‘Lydia’ were a big inspiration for getting this project started in the first place.
PD: What are your dreams and goals?
WW: Honestly id say our dreams and goals are to keep doing what we love for as long as we possibly can. Each of us enjoy different aspects of being in a band. I think a big goal for us would be to support some of our favourite artists and influences, to be on stage alongside the bands that we loved growing up would be an honour. We have also said we would love to play Slam Dunk Festival, again this is a place i got to see my favourite bands and to think someone may possibly see us the same way is amazing.
PD: Who writes your songs, what are they about?
WW: Danny is the primary songwriter, all of our original tracks begin with Danny, honestly most of the song has been mapped out as well as all lyrics written and recorded. After this we tend to listen as a group and talk about what we do and don’t like. Ben tends to write his own lead sections as well as Moodie adding his own drum sections.
PD: How do you promote your band and shows?
WW: Band promotion for us starts in the most important place, people! we always make sure were discussing music and potential shows with every band we meet. I think a lot of local bands forget how important it is to make friends in this industry. We try to make friends in every city we play and it works, we are forever supporting our friends and are lucky enough to have them support us. As well as this we are always up for some shameless self promotion on stage, we carry merch everywhere we go as well as making people aware that all of our stuff is on all streaming platforms.
PD: What do you think about downloading music online?
WW: We all have very much the same opinion on this, we feel its a double edged sword. We are so lucky to live in a world where our music is there to listen to at the press of a button, bands can make money elsewhere, but the most important thing is having your songs saved on someone’s device. Having said this, due to the amount of amazing unsigned artists it can be difficult to make yourself stand out against the crowd. We as musicians enjoy music in lots of different ways, we have vinyl collectors in the band as well as people that listen to CD’s or streaming.
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
WW: ‘I don’t wanna miss a thing – Aerosmith’
PD: What are some of your pet peeves?
WW: We don’t have many but no parking at venues stresses us out!
PD: What is your proudest moment in music?
WW: Recently we had our release show for our album, there were many moments that evening that made us proud. Selling out our merch for the first time was an amazing feeling but i don’t think anything comes close to having our friends, partners and family singing back the album that we’ve worked so hard on.
PD: So what are you working on at the moment?
WW: Well now that our album has been officially released we are working really hard on promoting that, doing lots of interviews playing lots of shows and getting on as many festivals as we can. We are also working very hard on filming and releasing the remaining videos for our album.
PD: Tell us about your next shows and why we should be there.
WW: Our next show is Corby Steel Fest on 29/06/19. This is our first festival of the summer and were very much looking forward to playing with the finest of the local music scene.
Wishing Wolf links:
Band/Artist location – Kettering England
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