“I think her stuff is phenomenal, beautiful vocals.”
On the final day of Rewind, I sat down with singers Alison Wheeler and Gaz Birtles from The South. Formerly The Beautiful South, The South features some of the same members as their previous outfit. With popular tunes like ‘Perfect 10‘ and ‘A Little Time‘, they put on an incredible show at this year’s Rewind Festival, and had the whole crowd up and dancing to their catchy songs.
We had a chat about a range of things from new artists, to their favourite places to perform.
Q: What are some of your favourite things about performing at shows like this [Rewind]?
Alison: “On a purely selfish level, I really enjoy it for watching it back really. It’s a bit like being in a sweet shop for me, it’s all the acts that I grew up with as child. It’s just really nice to get out there and make people remember what great songs that we have and we’re celebrating, and getting to see people’s faces when they recognise a song they’d forgotten about.“
Gaz: “Just playing to that massive crowd. We do a few festivals a year, it’s a real privilege and honour to play in front of all these people. Rewind is so well organised too.“
Q: Have you played any festivals or shows this year already?
Alison: “Summer season is starting to pick up, so yeah, we’ve done a few summer festivals. It’s just a great opportunity whenever we get invited. As long as we can make it work in our diary, we’ll always do as many festivals as we can. And yeah, we travel all over the country, trying to do as many as we possibly can.“
Q: Have you got any upcoming shows anytime soon as The South?
Alison: “Yeah, we’re touring aren’t we, pretty much throughout the year.“
Gaz: “Every year we seem to do about 40 shows a year, a lot on weekends.“
Check out the link at the bottom of this article for details of The South’s UK tour.
Q: Do you like returning to certain venues each year? Or do you enjoy playing at new places?
Alison: “We have one venue we do every year, in December. It’s become a bit of an annual pilgrimage, for us as well as the people who experienced it the once, and think ‘wow this is really special’. So we go to Holmfirth in Yorkshire every year and it’s the biggest Christmas party you can imagine. It’s just, everybody is there to have a great time. It’s an electric atmosphere, we always diarise it as soon as we can, so it’s in the diary, so we know we’ve got that to look forward to.“
Gaz: “It’s great to go to places that we know like Holmfirth. We’ve also played in Worthing, that seems to have become a regular one now too. It’s also great to go to new places, although since we’ve covered this country, we sometimes find the odd new one keeps popping up.“
Q: Are you excited to see anyone perform here today?
Alison: “I’m really excited, I mean, like I say, it’s all my music from, like, when I grew up. Unfortunately, we’re having to roll out really quickly. I’d love to see Tony [Hadley].“
Gaz: He jokingly said “I’d love to have seen China Crisis,” who were performing while this interview was taking place.
Q: The website I write for, we focus on smaller, lesser known artists. Is there anyone you know of, or you like, who you think more people should have heard of?
Alison: “I’ve been doing a lot of co-writing post-covid and I’ve got the opportunity to meet some amazing people from all over the world via Zoom. And I get to meet them in person when the situation arises. It’s really hard for new musicians, it’s really really hard to build any traction. It seems to be about 90% business now and 10% creativity, so my heart goes out to anybody who’s struggling. I’ve got to put out a shoutout to Katya Mansell, she’s a Scottish lady, I think her stuff is phenomenal, beautiful vocals. I’ve had the pleasure of working with her, so yeah, I can see it’s a struggle for new artists.“
Q: Based off that answer then, do you think the music industry has moved more towards financial and commercial gain, rather than for creativity?
Alison: “I mean the goalposts have moved considerably, from being the person who is the creative person, and if you’re fortunate enough to get a record company backing you, then there’s a creative team behind you doing all the business. Now, it’s a one-woman or a one-man show it feels, we’re constantly being asked to keep our social platforms updated, and it’s a struggle, a real struggle to spin all these extra plates at the same time.“
And once you get the grasp of one platform, another one shows up!
Gaz: “Yeah I’ve not even gone onto TikTok yet.“