interview with River Hounds

What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?

Rich - Vocals, Rhythm Guitar (34)

Dimi - Lead Guitar, Backing Vocals (27)

Tony - Bass, Backing Vocals (35)

Manol - Drums (31)

Have any of you played in other bands? Yes, Dimi and Manol played in a successful band called Crush in Bulgaria. Rich and Tony have played in a few bands together, the most recent of which was called The Show. 

How is it that you started playing music? When The Show split up, Rich, Tony and our then drummer Neil wanted to form another band so we put an ad out for a lead guitarist. The first guitarist that we met was Dimi and immediately it clicked and we knew that we had our new band which we named River Hounds. We then just started writing songs and once we had enough we went to a recording studio in Bulgaria and recorded 15 tracks. Sadly after that Neil decided to quite the band so we needed to find a new drummer but luckily Dimi's best friend and drummer from his old band was living in London and looking for a band. We invited him down to a rehearsal and again, it clicked right away and we had our new drummer. We then set about writing some more tracks and went off to Bulgaria again to record 5 more. While we were there we also shot a live video featuring most of our songs in front of a packed crowd. When we came back we shot a load of videos and then started releasing them getting over 300,000 views in 3 months.    

Have you had other previous members? Neil
Did you make music even when you were young? Rich and Tony have been playing in bands since they were 13. Dimi and Manol since they were 18, always writing our own songs. 

Where are you from? Rich and Tony are from London. Dimi and Manol are from Sofia, Bulgaria.

What year did the band form? With this line up 2017

What's your style of genre? Rock and Roll

What inspires you? Anything and everything, from the struggles of everyday life to politics to girls to drugs and alcohol.   

How often and where do you rehearse?

It varies, when we are playing gigs we rehearse 2-3 times a week. When we are writing, it's once a week as we all work on stuff at home. 

We rehearse in The Joint, Kings Cross. 
How have you developed since you started with the music? Writing better songs, it's taken writing a lot of bad songs to get to writing some good ones. 

Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Rich and Tony work in the TV industry. Dimi and Manol have part time jobs but concentrate mostly on music. 

Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? Yes, we haven't played many gigs with this band because we have a real issue with the promoters in London and how little they care about the bands. We really want a booking agent who can get us some really good gigs. 

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? Yes, but only if they are the right one. It would have to be a label that has similar bands on it's books and is also willing to invest in promoting the band. Theer is no point signing to a label and releasing an album if they aren't going to promote it. 

What made you decide to make this music? It's all we've ever wanted to do.

What are your songs about? Lots of things. Some are about how much we hate working and just want to spend our lives playing music, some are about things in our lives, "Lie to You" is about lying politicians, some are about girls and some about struggles with drugs and alcohol. 

Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Some of the songs we write from jams in the studio and then generally Dimi will go away and arrange it. Sometimes Rich or Tony will come in with an idea or a song and we will then work on it in the studio together. The key thing to the way we write is that no matter where the idea comes from, we will work on it together. Generally Rich writes the lyrics although there are a few songs that Tony has written.

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? The music, both Rich and Tony will then get inspiration from the tune.

Have you done any covers live? A couple of times, generally not though. 

What language do you sing in? English

What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? We've only played a handful but generally it's been between 100 and 250.

What ages are most of your concert attendants? 25-35

Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? We have quite a lot of songs so we vary it although there are a few that we always include. 

Do you have a regular place you play live often? Not yet, hopefully soon!

What was your first gig like? It was great, it was in a small room in East London and was packed, loud and really sweaty!
What was your latest gig? It was the live recording we did in Bulgaria. It was a lot of fun as we played in a really cool, old venue in Sofia called Swinging Hall and the place was packed out. We ended up playing for about an hour and 20 mins.

Where have you played live this year? Nowhere yet, January is a slow month in London

Where do you plan to gig the coming year? We are playing a gig at the Monarch in Camden as part of the Camden Rocks Festival on Wed 7th Feb. Should be a cracker.

When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? We don't have much at the moment, just badges. Once we start gigging more we will get some t-shirts and other bits done. 

Where can people buy your merchandise? We will set it up so you can buy through our website and form us at gigs.

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? It's an interesting topic as it makes it much harder to make for us to make any money however generally we think it's a good thing as it means more people than ever can hear our music, which has to be a good thing. We plan to create LP's of our debut album so if people want to buy a physical record, they will be able to.

How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? It's meant that bands like us to have our music listened to by more people than ever before and without it we wouldn't have got the exposure we have. As we've said though, it has made it much harder to make a living out of music.

What do you think of my work? We think it's great, anyone who is willing to help out up and coming bands and to take an interest in their music is great. 

How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? Exposure, hopefully people will read this and listen to our tracks. 

Do you have any role models or idols?

Dimi's idol is Jimi Hendrix.

The whole band has always loved the swagger of bands like Oasis and Rival Sons.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? Both, we listen to a lot of new music but at the same time it's hard to deny some of the classics!

What have been your biggest obstacles? Promoters. They just want to make money and don't give a shit about the bands.

What advice would you give other bands or artists? Write, write, write and work on your songs until they are as good as they can be. It doesn't matter about anything else if you don't have good enough songs.

How do you get psyched for a gig? Rum

Do you have any new material? Loads, we are constantly writing stuff. In fact we wrote two new ones at practice last night.

What are your web sites?

https://www.musicglue.com/riverhoundsband

https://www.facebook.com/RiverHoundsBand/

https://twitter.com/RiverHoundsBand

https://www.instagram.com/riverhoundsband
How can people reach you? [email protected]

What are your plans for the future? Get signed, become rock stars, take over the world

Do you have something to add? Only thank you for getting in contact

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