Interview with SJ and Nicky from Morganway at C2C

Of all the bands and artists I was looking forward to seeing playing at C2C this year, there were none that excited me more than Morganway. Having seen an up close and personal performance at our recent ‘Nashville Calling’ event, it was a sure thing they’d wow the crowd at the event, and they certainly delivered. After their Saturday set I caught up with SJ and Nicky for a chat about all things Morganway!

I just want to start by saying congratulations on being picked to play at C2C! How excited were you when you found out?

It’s a pretty big deal. Like if you look at the people who we’re on the poster with, it’s bit mindblowing really. So yeah it’s a real bucketlist!

I’ve just seen you perform on the Big Entrance stage. What a performances as always! How exciting was that?

It was cool! I mean I was worried that we would be cold because it’s at the entrance! We left our jackets on but we got so excited that we shed them! Although we were packed pretty tightly together!

Who are you most excited about seeing yourself this year at C2C?

So many, just so many names – I’m gonna be like floating around the whole weekend really. For me, I love Chris Stapleton, that voice just melts my heart, and Ashley McBryde. Also all the people on the pop up stages like us that we’ve yet to meet on the scene. I really enjoyed Megan O’Neill’s set and yeah looking forward to seeing everyone else really.

Having seen you play live a few times now I’m so excited to see how far you guys can go! It’s shaping up to be quite a year for Morganway?

Yes it’s quite exciting! We’ve got a plan! And we’ve got people helping us to make the plan (both laugh). It’s really nice, it makes things a bit less stressful actually. Yeah we’ve got we’ve got another single coming which will be ‘Hurricane’ in a few weeks time and then probably another few and then our album which we’re like really excited to get out because it’s been a long time – probably at the end of the summer. We’ve got a lot of festivals like Black Deer and Country on the Coast in Southsea, Portsmouth, so yeah we’re we’re really looking forward to it.

Yeah that’s genuine yeah we do we have fun together! I mean we can’t really fake it can we? Even if we’re like a bit sad, as soon as we start it always makes us happy. Yeah we have fun, we like to stomp away and get into it!

I guess I’ve been singing all my life really, my family is very musical and my dad taught me how to play guitar and piano when I was really young. I only really got into singing that way though when I went to uni to study music and that’s where I met Kieran and I was quite shy and quiet back then with performing – I was more into like Norah Jones, and like singing really softly. (Nicky asked ‘did someone say you were like a little mouse?’) Yeah a lecturer at uni basically gave me a bit tough love. I think that’s what I needed to really break out of my shell and that’s when I got more confident and that’s when the growl came!

To Nicky: ‘You’re simply incredible with the violin. How did it all start for you?

Well, I had free lessons in school back in the day, which was amazing. And I learnt classically, as you did. I didn’t know there was another way back then. But I had some lovely teachers – I played in the orchestra, played Queen medleys and stuff in the school orchestra. Like this is cool! This is great! I wanted to be in a band by the time I was like 30 and I wanted to have made my own violin and play it in a band and then I did – I achieved my goal!

To finish, let’s have a word about the guys in the band!

Right them yeah (rolls their eyes and laughs!)

How good are they to work with?

They’re very different in a way but everyone brings what they need to. Kieran is just on it. Everything that needs sorting out, he’ll do it, sorting everyone else out you know keeping everyone happy. Callum is like obviously more intense like bringing the songwriting so you know yeah he’s more inward but he’s like – it’s got to be that way. Yeah we all have different influences and create a lot of different styles. Ed and Matt are just lovely guys to work with, always so happy and chilled out and it’s nice to have that in a band. We don’t always agree on everything but we always find a happy medium.