For those people that haven’t heard of Single By Sunday could you tell us a bit about the band your story?
Well, we’re now officially 6yrs old as a band, although it’s hard to count last year as an official year (if you get what we mean), we couldn’t really do a lot. We got together when Jonny left a band that he was in. He already knew Josh from school, although they weren’t actually friends at the time. He asked Josh if he fancied doing some vocals and maybe joining/starting a new band. Jonny met Jack at music college and asked if he fancied joining a band, as he was also in another band at the time, who it was felt, weren’t really doing a whole heap. He said ‘yes’. Simon is actually the newest member of the band. He’s been with us for just over a year. We’ve had a few different drummers over the years but each one carries their own story. Let’s just say that we’re happy with Simon. We think he’s a keeper.
Who inspired you to get on stage and perform?
When it comes to inspiration, we all kind of come from different places. Josh is a lover of anything that is generic pop (Ed Sheeran etc), Jack comes from the heavier end of things like System of a Down, Slipknot, etc. Jonny is more eclectic and ranges anywhere from The Beach Boys to ABBA, to The Smiths, to All Time Low. Simon is quite similar to Jack, in that he likes the heavier genre. We all have our particular heroes, some good, some bad, and some that we really shouldn’t mention in public…lol.
Having said all of this though, we all enjoy playing our version of Pop Punk/Guitar Pop.
Are there any particular artists or albums that have inspired you and informed your sound?
I think we’d have to say ‘no’ to any particular albums, but we’re definitely inspired by the likes of early Blink 182, Green Day, Sum 41, Good Charlotte, etc. The list goes on. Those guys set the original tones for Pop Punk. They preceded the likes of Busted or McFly and even Neck Deep.
We’re also influenced by the likes of The 1975 and even people like Bruno Mars and Nile Rogers. We really like to play with sounds and we aren’t afraid to try new things and add new sounds. A little disco might find itself sitting next to grunge who might find itself sitting next to some synth. That’s the beauty of music.
No, not really. We don’t have to lock ourselves away in a cupboard or anything like that just to get inspiration. We pretty much sit and start writing and go with the flow. If we need to research, then we’ll research. Of course, relationships, good or bad, are always a good source for songwriting, so sometimes there are some real emotions being poured out in a song. We think that sometimes that can be kind of overlooked in some of our tracks. Sometimes people don’t realise that beneath the coloured hair there are guys with real feelings that aren’t afraid to show them. I know that we generally don’t like to spend loads of time on a song e.g., if it’s not flowing, it can be hard to get the vibe. Jonny and Josh tend to be the songwriters. That doesn’t mean that Jack and Simon can’t write but we acknowledge that those guys are better storytellers, so we let them get on with it.
Could you tell us a bit about the writing/recording of the ReverbNation winning track “Give it to me now?”
Firstly, we really like Reverbnation. We think it’s a good platform for artists to get some good exposure. ‘Give It To Me Now’ came about because we wanted to change up our sound and introduce a little more ‘funk’. The track came out better than we expected but we weren’t sure how it was going to be received given that a lot of people associate ‘Single By Sunday’ as just being about the heavier guitar sound, however, the reception so far has been fantastic. The track is basically about the unrequited passion between one person and the need to share the feeling. It’s a ‘feel good bop’. We even used dancers for the first time in the video. We’ve never gone in that direction before and you never know, we might do it again!
Are there any plans for an EP or album coming up?
We are currently working on a new EP. It’s going to be the first one in a while. We decided a while back that we just wanted to put out singles and that way we weren’t wasting tracks. We just kind of thought that sometimes tracks got wasted on the EP format. We started thinking that if we just put out singles then people would be hearing what we wanted them to hear and not what we hoped they might discover.
We’ve always been asked about an album, when are you putting one out? Or why haven’t you put one out? The simple truth is, we haven’t wanted to put out a full album and also, we haven’t felt that the time was right for that body of work. Yes, we have plenty of material, we’re always writing and coming up with ideas, but we just haven’t gone down that route as yet.
What’s it like to be back on the road performing after the year we’ve all had?
It’s nerve-wracking, to be honest. Performing live is absolutely what it’s all about for us and it’s probably the same for lots of other artists, so its been kind of surreal. We were actually out on tour in America when the pandemic hit and at the time, we just thought it would blow over and we’d be done with it in a couple of weeks and then it all went sideways. We suddenly went from gigging almost every night to not gigging for a whole year, scary.
Being back on stage is just brilliant. The feeling of getting the energy back from the crowd is just amazing. We decided that as a ‘thank you’ to our fans that we would make all of our shows ‘free entry’ apart from the VIP tickets. To us it just made sense and it felt like the right thing to do given that lots of people have lost their jobs and lost furlough payments etc. We thought to ourselves that some of these people had very kindly still supported us though they were suffering as well. To be honest, we had actually planned to do two free shows in 2019. We had the venues booked etc but then everything went crazy. So, all we really did was pick up the original plan and expand on it.
Here at Artistic Echoes, we are always on the lookout for new artists do you have any to recommend?
Unfortunately, ‘no’ we don’t and that’s not because there aren’t any, it’s just that there are too many to mention. That’s one of the very few good things about the C-19 lockdowns; new bands/talent have managed to come through.
What plans do you have for the rest of the year?
For the rest of the year, apart from finishing up our tour dates, we are writing and continuing to work on some great songs that we’ve been working on. We have lots of plans for 2022 which we are working really hard on and we’re collaborating with some great people, so as they say, ‘the future is bright’. We’re hoping that we can pick back up the other American tour that we should have done along with the 7 week tour and 7 festivals in Germany that we had planned. Things like that and some writing collabs are already in the pipeline which is really exciting
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