Lorna Irvine speaks with Paul Whyte from the new band currently making its rounds.
Minor Delilah make
the kind of effortlessly breezy, folk-tinged indie pop evocative of late summer
days, tinged with nostalgia and a slight yearning.
The quartet,
comprising Nick Scroggie, Paul Whyte, Jamie McGregor and Don Wilson, are based
in Lanarkshire and have been spotted busking around Glasgow. They are picking
up quite a following and are sure to be headlining summer festivals this time
next year (...cuts to swaying, swooning girl on boyfriend's shoulder in T in
the Park montage...).
I caught up with
Paul to see what their future plans are, who they are influenced by and, of
course, the Welsh love muscle himself-one Tom Jones.
Lorna Irvine: Have you ever been mistakenly booked as a Tom Jones tribute act?!
Paul
Whyte: So far we haven’t been mistaken for a Tom Jones tribute act. We have had
a few dodgy promoters getting our band name wrong on posters for gigs, people
saying Nick looks like a young Paul McCartney and people thinking we are
Bastille when we cover Pompeii , but not a Tom Jones tribute act. We are
the kind of band where, if the audience wanted to hear some Tom Jones songs,
then we would try and pull something out the bag for them.
LI: Who are your biggest influences, and who would you love to collaborate with in an ideal world?
PW: All
four of us have a wide range of music taste. Our drummer grew up listening to
heavy metal and was in a few metal bands before Minor Delilah. The rest of us
grew up listening to bands like The Beatles and Oasis—and even some dance music
and also experimental artists like Beck. Some of our songs might sound nice
with a female vocalist, so maybe someone like Nina Nesbitt would be cool.
LI: You are not afraid of covering 'pop' songs. Do you think that's because of download culture, or have you always been into diverse stuff?
PW: If we
do a cover we try our best to make the song our own. We have only just recently
started busking in the streets trying to reach a new audience. People always
want to hear something they know. Most people have no interest in your original
stuff if you’re down at the bottom trying to make a name for yourself, so
adding a few covers into our busking set helps lure the people in to listen to
you.
LI: Who should the readers look out for: who do you recommend that we may not have heard of?
PW: There
is so many great unsigned talent out there. Solo female artist Vicki Paxton is one
to look out for. Her voice is fantastic and works very hard busking and gigging
all the time so check her out. Dear Stars and Colours to Shame are also great
unsigned acts we like going to see live.
LI: What are your immediate plans? And where will you be in two years?
PW: We
are currently working on a new album, so we will be putting all our time and
energy into making it the best it can possibly be. There will be fights and
fallouts over which songs will be on the album, but we’ll get there in the end.
We have our own home studio and record all our material ourselves, which is
handy. We also plan to go all over Scotland, and possibly London at some point,
to do more busking. In two years’ time I have no doubts we’ll still be making
music together. It's every musicians dream to be playing the major festivals
and getting your music heard to as many people as possible, so we’ll enjoy the
journey and see how far we can go.
LI: I like that you often use interesting percussion—is that something you'd like to explore more?
PW: We are all for experimenting with different sounds and instruments, from Kalimbas to Keys to handclaps: we’ve got it in our music.
Catch Minor Delilah at King Tut's on 1st August. New download Sorry On Sunday is available now.
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