14 November 2022

Ziggy Alberts

Spotlight: Ziggy Alberts

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Ziggy Alberts returns with new album, ‘DANCING IN THE DARK’ and will embark on a UK tour next year, kicking off in Brighton at the end of May  Can you tell me about some of the people you worked with on this latest album, ‘DANCING IN THE DARK’?  I’m glad you’ve asked this; I worked with Paulie Bromley, my long-time producer, who I’ve recorded and produced with on and off for nine years. Steve Summers assisted on both searching for freedom & this new record and has become a wonderful cornerstone of these projects. I also worked with Angela Newcomb from The Dawn Light – she did our lady vocals. And of course, the one and only Donavan Woods, a singer-songwriter from Canada, who’s an absolute legend featuring on THE SUN & THE SEA. The mastering we do with Paul Blakey, who is a wizard.    You refer to the album as being ‘Future Folk’ can you tell me what that description means to you?  In short, it’s about time codes, antidotes to dissonance, new soundscapes & topics, tuned backing vocals and synth bass, all intertwined in a folk foundation. I didn’t expect the added Latin influence in some tracks, which is the beauty of letting an album grow and change along the way. I’ve never looked to recreate records, so I add this new one to a growing collection that has already spanned nearly 10 years. The title of the album largely describes endeavouring to continue towards peace and hope even in the darkest of days.  READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF MAVERICK AVAILABLE HERE! Media Contact: Zoe Hodges, Editor Email: editor@maverick-country.com

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Scott Hayley

Spotlight: Scott Hayley

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When did you first know that you wanted to be a musician?  I knew I first wanted to be a musician around the age of eight. The radio was filled with the new sounds of 90’s country hitmakers Garth Brooks, Brooks and Dunn, Clay Walker, Doug Supernaw, Billy Ray Cyrus and many others. I knew one day I would want to be a part in making that type of music. I would constantly sing into the mirror, sing on the playground, or in the car.   When it comes to your songwriting where do you draw inspiration from?  I draw my inspiration from the good and bad that has happened in my life. The pain from those I’ve lost, or a love that went wrong, to a love that will never die. If something makes me mad, I write about it. If something makes me happy, I also write about it. I write about the emotion that comes to heart.   Music is god’s language to the heart. I take the emotions I’m feeling or the things I’m dealing with in my life, and I write a song about it. I think that’s what helps people connect to music. When a singer is writing music from the heart, other people hear it and feel the same emotions. Some of my favorite songs in my life really captured something I was feeling at the time. The singer spoke to me through their music, and that’s what I’m doing when I sit down to write my own music.   READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF MAVERICK AVAILABLE HERE! Media Contact: Zoe Hodges, Editor Email: editor@maverick-country.com

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Savannah Rae

Spotlight: Savannah Rae

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What music did your parents play to you on long car journeys and what are you choosing to listen to now?   My parents gave me a vast love and appreciation for all types of music. They threw everything at me from rock to pop to country to, you know, like fifteenth-century lute music, you name it, they pretty much threw everything at me. But I would say that the main two ones that they threw at me were rock music. Then of course, being from Texas, was country music. Those are the two that I connected with the most, especially nowadays.   Can you remember the first song you ever wrote?  I remember the first song I ever wrote. It was like a play off of the ABCs, I was five years old. And I was like, I’m gonna write a song about the ABCs, but it’s not going to be the ABCs, it’s going to be different. I think I tried to relate it to like friendships, but I never ended up finishing the song.   What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever written a song about?   I do some writing exercises, just to keep my mind fresh, and find different ways to spin things. So I’ll find any inanimate object in a room or just where I’m at and write a song about it. It could be a stick, it could be a rock, it could be this candle. There’s a song by Hardy called ‘About a Rock’ but he spins it into so many different things, I think one of them is like, the church and like God and stuff, he spins the rock into a ring – put a rock on her finger. There’s so many different ways to spin things, so I do like those little songwriting exercises like that.  READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF MAVERICK AVAILABLE HERE! Media Contact: Zoe Hodges, Editor Email: editor@maverick-country.com

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Michael Coleman

Spotlight: Michael Coleman

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When did you first know that you wanted to be a musician?     That’s an interesting question as I don’t really fancy myself as a musician, per se. I classify myself more as an artist. What I mean by that is I am more of a creator of artistic work and my main medium happens to be music. I look at it that way as I do so much more than just pick up a guitar or sit down at the piano. When I composed the theme song to the NAGAAA Softball World Series which is featured on our latest album, “From His Mind” I composed that by tapping it out on the dashboard of the car on a cross country road trip. There were no instruments involved until we went into the studio. With that said, I think I first knew I wanted to be an artist early on in life. When I was 7 or 8 I had the dream of being a dancer/choreographer and that was my main focus for quite some time and it wasn’t until later in life that I decided to write songs and create music even though music was always a huge part of my life.      Tell me more about the creation of ‘See Your Shadow Songwriting’ and what its aims are?     Well See Your Shadow was started initially as a means for me to set myself apart from all the other writers trying to crack the Nashville market. Instead of presenting my work as just another writer, I formed the entity known as See Your Shadow and presented my work as the entity.  Over the years it has morphed into many different iterations, but the cornerstones have always been the songs I write.  I chose the name See Your Shadow because my birthday is Groundhog Day and our original logo before we rebranded was a groundhog coming out of the ground and its shadow was wearing a cowboy hat. See Your Shadow’s goals are simple and that is to create good art – plus I would like to have more recognition for our work here in the United States. We are embraced more in the international markets. 

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Hillbilly Vegas

Spotlight: Hillbilly Vegas

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Hillbilly Vegas, with their blend of Southern Rock and Outlaw Country, have a string of Billboard top 20 Rock singles under their belt and headline festivals in their home country. Now, with a new album on the way, ‘The Great Southern Hustle’, Hillbilly Vegas will make their live debut as they play a show at The Troubadour in London, a venue where Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page & Robert Plant, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Ed Sheeran & Adele made their mark. Steve Harris, lead vocalist of the band, filled me in on how it all began.    Since this is our first time connecting, can you tell me about the formation of Hillbilly Vegas please?     We weren’t a band. We were just hanging out at Johnny’s house out in the country playing songs and telling stories. It was just for fun but pretty soon we were writing songs and the truth is…if you put a a bunch of musicians in a room they’ll eventually start a band. We did and here we are.      Who were your earliest influences when you were growing up?    Honestly, 70s rock along with the early Outlaw country stuff. In my opinion, it’s the greatest era of music ever. For me personally it was Paul Rodgers, Glenn Hughes and taking a weird left turn in there somewhere Hank Jr, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels and Waylon Jennings.     Can you tell me about the process for writing and recording the new record ‘The Great Southern Hustle’?    This is our favourite part. The creation. These songs are our lives.  We are story tellers first. Each song is about us, maybe someone in our lives or just personal observations.  It’s all 100% us. As for the recording process most of the record was done with Alex Gerst at Empire Sound in Dallas. It’s our home away from home. Our producer for the record is also our Keyboardist Geraldo Dominelli. Geraldo is so in tune with our sound and who we are. He makes these songs sound like us. Believe it or not, that’s not always a given. We’ve worked with people early in our career that took our personality away and created something we didn’t even recognise. We promised ourselves we would never let that happen again. So being in control from writing to the finished recording is our process.   READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF MAVERICK AVAILABLE HERE! Media Contact: Zoe Hodges, Editor Email: editor@maverick-country.com

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Engelbert Humperdinck

Spotlight: Engelbert Humperdinck

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Can you tell me about the decision to record ‘Forever Blowing Bubbles’ and its use in the film ‘Bullet Train’?  When I heard about the request to record a song for Sony Pictures, I was very honoured and when I heard it was staring Brad Pitt, I was in. I was on tour traveling on The Bullet Train in ’73….many stations ago!    The song has been a family favourite as my sister Bubbles sang it constantly.  We had a great time at Capital Records Studios.  Your latest single, ’You’re The First, The Last, My Everything’, has a country influence to it, and a number of your past hits have had strong links to genre – what does country music mean to you?  That country thread has run through so many of the songs and decades of my life. The core of country is the relatability of the stories told. The writers are the true artists as a great country song can be covered by many singers and still touch you and the icons of country can get you from the first “Hello Darlin!”   We put some Nashville on Barry White’s massive R&B hit and shot a video and it looks like I’m going to have to learn some new moves and pull out my old boots for stage. A good song can have more than one turn on the dance floor.   The new project has quite a few unexpected song choices that we reached back to. I’m looking forward to putting them in the show.    READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF MAVERICK AVAILABLE HERE! Media Contact: Zoe Hodges, Editor Email: editor@maverick-country.com

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for KING & COUNTRY

Spotlight: For King & Country

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Can you tell me the story behind your new single ‘Love Me Like I Am’?   “Love Me Like I Am” was one of those rare occasions (I hope that whoever is reading this has had this happen) where you have a dream about something, and you wake up in the middle of the night and think, “Oh, that’s a really good idea!”. In our case, Joel actually woke up with this phrase “Love Me Like I Am,” so he wrote it down. He woke up the next morning and still thought it was actually a good idea- because, you know how it works most of the time, the ideas that we dream about don’t usually end up becoming good ideas. So the next day we are in the studio, and he brings that phrase up- “Love Me Like I Am.” And one of the other guys we were working with said, “It’s amazing that you can love me like I am.” And, the truest of loves is when you can love someone for who they are – a father’s love – the love a father has for a child, that’s the truest. The love a mother has for a child, I think, that’s the truest love. Because it’s not based off who they are, or their performance, or what they’ve done, or what they’ve accomplished. It’s simply because of who they are. I think that’s the most powerful of loves.   How did the collaboration with Jordin Sparks come about?  The collaboration with Jordin Sparks actually came from just the idea that she’s been an artist and a voice that we’ve loved for many, many years, obviously since her early days on “American Idol,” and her name just kinda popped up to us. So we reached out to her and said “Hey, what do you think about this?” We got on a zoom call to chat about it. Talked about what she thought of the song. And she was so thrilled to be thought of. We were actually doing a fair out in San Diego that summer, so we performed the song live together. We did a little music video for it…a live music video for it out there as well. She’s just a wonderful person. Super sweet! And she’s become someone we’ve really enjoyed collaborating with. We are very grateful to her for lending her voice.  READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF MAVERICK AVAILABLE HERE! Media Contact: Zoe Hodges, Editor Email: editor@maverick-country.com

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