Dave for Metal Planet Music had the pleasure of chatting to frontwoman Sky Hunter from blues/rock band StoneWire.
Sky, thank you for taking the time out to talk to MPM, how did the name ‘StoneWire’ come about?
‘Thanks for having me, funnily enough the band and I were just chatting about this the other day. We have a studio in the countryside and one day we had a bonfire outside after a rehearsal and next to us was a field with goats in it. We were all a little drunk and names were flying around and the name goats was mentioned! I was like err NO were not going to be called goats! it got sillier so I eventually laid the law down and said we need to have something with ‘stone’ because bands with that name tend to be successful.
One of the other guys I forget who, said how about something with ‘Wire’, so there it was! We were StoneWire. It’s a lot better than goats!”
You were formed in 2012 am I right?
“Yes and no. We started in 2012 aa a covers band. We wanted to get the line-up right, get the band tight and the best way of doing that is playing other peoples material and just jam a bit.
I think we became a proper band when Gaz Annable joined us which was in 2013/ beginning of 2014. That’s when I started counting us as a real band.”
You released your first EP, then started working on your first album ‘When the Crow Flies’ which was released to great critical acclaim, but while you were working on it in the studio you felt it needed something extra and recruited another guitarist Pete.
“Well Pete is a friend of mine from years back and it became clear when we were writing ‘Crow’ that one guitar didn’t suit our style enough. So once we had the songs together for Crow we decided that it needed a second guitarist so Pete stepped in. Then we realised that this was exactly want we wanted for the band.”
Pete wasn’t a permanent fixture though and you had a long search for you’re a new guitarist.
“We were let down a lot, and I think this is the main reason it took so long for the second album. We are a band that relies very much on chemistry, this isn’t about me, we are a band and we all need to gel together.”
I know you’re a real lover of country blues especially Government Mule.
“Government Mule is my all-time favourite. I love Warren Haynes! I’m not a fan of yeeha country, it has to have some depth but Warren Hynes for me is one of the most underrated singers on the planet, he has velvet in his voice.”
It must be exciting for all of you writing the lyrics and composing the songs with you all having such diverse music influences.
“Well the way we do it is one of us comes with a riff then I have a melody then we build it together. We all write the songs, I’m the one who writes the lyrics, but the songs are all written together. Everyone just puts their own thing in.
As you say I have a very Americana, Country, Southern Rock love so you can hear that in my melody’s very strongly. Steve is the metal head, Rob loves his blues, so this is why some of the songs take a long time to get together, because of the way we write. We think really hard, we don’t just throw in three chords in A for example.”
Five years down the line and you are about to release to the world a brand new album titled ‘Life As We know It”.
HOOORAHH!!!
You have already releases two singles, both on YouTube as video singles.
“Yes, and they’re available for download. We decided to keep them digital.”
The first one ‘FTF’ has a strong political message about the state of the world, the power-hungry despots and politicians, and the way we’re not going to stand for it. You obviously feel very strongly about the mess we are in at the minute and that comes out very passionately in a lot of your songs.
The second single ‘All That Matters’, you wanted it to be totally different to the last one?
“Yes, we were really looking for something different because the pressure is on you as a band to produce quality videos, but you also need to come up with an idea of how you’re going to achieve that and not repeat the usual warehouse band thing.
So, we kicked some ideas around and Steve and I thought about animation. I found Ashley Mills from Hot Frog Animations and I love Anime. Studio Ghibli from Japan is one of my favourite animation companies but they’re very pretty.
Ashley is not! There’s a real darkness to his work, and we thought is was really cool and different.”
Coming back to the album, you must be very excited?
Oh yes! super excited! We think this album reflects us. We wanted to bring a more ‘live feel’, a raw edge to it that ‘Crow’ maybe didn’t. This one is what you can expect from us live.”
You have the album launch at the Hope and Anchor in London on November 14th but kicking it all off in Glasgow on 26th October.
“Yes we’re special guests of the Swamp Born Assassins in Glasgow. We are looking forward to it, it’s our very first Scotland gig so were very excited about that”.
Well apart from you gigging and rocking it up on stage, I must mention your other job, a lot of people might not know that you are a DJ on part of the Monday night takeover on Hard Rock Hell Radio, tell us more?
“Well that is something that simply comes out of my love for southern rock. There is a bit of a surge in Europe of that kind of music at the moment, and of course there’s the bigger bands like Blackberry Smoke but there is also a lot of smaller bands coming up now like Them Dirty Roses, who just toured in Europe.
So I just emailed HRH and said listen you’re missing a trick here. You have your crows event that we just played at, you need a show on your radio station , so I now do my own very special Americana show! My format is different to the other shows. I play old bands and new but I can even put some Wille Nelson in there, it’s cool I have a lot of freedom.”
Is there anything you else can tell your StoneWire fans about what they can expect from you guys in the not too distant future?
“Yea, well the fans are excited about the new album but as I said it takes time for these things to happen and we are already planning the next release! Now that the new album is done and dusted we’re already working on new material. It may not come out for about ten months or so, but we are working on new stuff.
And we are considering something a little bit different down the line, obviously now we’re going to gig the new album too. I’m really pleased the pre order has taken off! Come and see us live!
Interview by Dave Martin for metalplanetmusic