Meadowlands Special: We Interview Cultured Duo VONA VELLA

Published on 5 June 2022 at 18:00

Photo: oursoundmusic.com

 

OurSoundMusic.com was in attendance at Nottingham's Meadowlands Festival over the Platinum Jubilee weekend and we had the opportunity to interview several of the day's performers. First up is Daniel and Izzy: Vona Vella.

 

OSM: How was it? (The band had not long performed, unfortunately before the gates opened due to a delay; despite this the pair were upbeat).

Daniel: It was alright actually. There was surprisingly a few of the artists there as well, it was nice, it was intimate. We could play the songs and connect to people.

 

OSM: What other festivals do you have coming up?

Daniel: We are playing YNOT and Kendal Calling. We are doing quite a few festivals.

 

OSM: You are working with Strap Originals, Peter Doherty - how did that come about, how did that form?

 

Izzy: Well really I think we've got Dean, Dean Jackson (BBC Introducing) to thank - it all kicked off when we had a remix of our first ever song, 'Sun', by Morcheeba and Dean Jackson picked up on that. He gave us a BBC session which did really well online. And Strap Originals came from that. Since being with the label we have been on a The Libertines tour, toured Europe.

 

OSM: Was that France you were in?

Daniel: Yeah, we went to France, to Belgium, The Netherlands. Germany as well.

Izzy: We are a lucky pair.

 

OSM: Has Pete Doherty had any input in how you approach things, have you been able to pick his brain?

Izzy: Certainly influenced us musically.

Daniel: Yeah definitely. I mean like from being on the tour bus with him, travelling for eight hours from place to place, we played guitars in the lounge area of the bus.

Izzy: Really relaxing

Daniel: He would be like "why don't you try this..." kind of thing. So for sure he has put his foot in slightly but not too much that it's like he has taken over, he still gave us space. You can only appreciate it from someone like him. 

 

OSM: Ross Godfrey (Morcheeba) remixed your debut single 'Sun' - how was that connection made? How did that come about?

Daniel: It was basically in the middle of lockdown we had a covers account on Instagram - when we could get together again we had written this song, ('Sun') put a minute clip of the song on Instagram, put about six quid promotion on it and Ross saw it. 

Izzy: We had no connection with him.

Daniel: No connection beforehand. It was just luck. He messaged us saying he'd love to remix this and inviting us to go on tour in the future. We were just like this isn't real.

Izzy: I think the most incredible part of it is that Morcheeba had struggled with their name, whether they could use their name due to certain people leaving the band. So our single was the first release by Morcheeba in years.

Daniel: About ten years.

Izzy: And our remix was the first release under the Morcheeba name for years, loads of people got notified on Spotify.

Daniel: And it did amazing.

 

OSM: You recently toured France with Morcheeba, how was that experience? In terms of the crowds and things like that?

Daniel: Amazing. We found that in most of the countries we went to out of the UK everyone was so much more attentive, listening - more respectful. To be fair our music is a little bit softer it's much more lyric and harmony driven. We found that most people really - we played the best show of my life The Olympia..

Izzy: It was the first night of the tour. And it was sold out.

Daniel: It was three thousand people and everyone was clapping, I was like what's going on.

Izzy: That was a glimpse wasn't it.

Daniel: Yeah. We were playing our songs and everyone was silent. Every now and then the lights would go up there would just be this sea of people. It was like what am I doing here?

 

OSM: What's next them, in terms of releases and things like that?

Daniel: So we've got some new songs. We've been writing quite a lot recently. we are going to be going into the studio in the next couple of weeks. Sort of picking the songs out we want to choose.

Izzy: Pretty much picked haven't we?

Daniel: Yeah we've picked them. We are trying to put our music in a genre now. We need to get some more music out.

Izzy: And a headline show is definitely on the cards, we've not done one yet. Which is kind of crazy to think we have done some tours and amazing shows out of the country and we haven't done our own headline show yet. So we are gonna look at doing that later in the year. That's the scary one.

 

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