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TRNSMT 2025: Shed Seven singer Rick Witter on Glasgow memories and festival sets
GlasgowWorld
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02/07/2025
Shed Seven singer Rick Witter on Glasgow memories and music ahead of TRNSMT festival
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Music
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00:00
Rick Witter from Shed7, you join us just before making your way to Glasgow once again
00:07
to take part in Transmit Festival.
00:11
You've had a long association with this city.
00:15
What do you remember about your early visits to Glasgow?
00:20
We always absolutely love coming up there, genuinely.
00:24
We've done so many great gigs up there.
00:26
I remember the first time doing King Tut's, which was incredible.
00:31
In fact, the very first time we played Glasgow or anywhere in Scotland was at King Tut's
00:36
and we were supporting a band called Compulsion on a nationwide tour.
00:42
So I do remember, I think Dolphin, our second single, had just come out.
00:48
But we were supporting and I think most of the crowd were obviously there to see Compulsion
00:52
and they were just around the corner where the bar area is in King Tut's.
00:56
So there was only like a smattering of people actually watching us.
01:00
And I think we played Dolphin as the first ever song on Scottish soil.
01:05
And at the end of that song, there was a little bit of applause.
01:09
And then somebody swore quite loudly and then wished that they had a gun.
01:15
So we thought, oh my goodness me, well, this isn't going to go down too well.
01:20
But ever since then, we've had such a lovely, lovely time up there.
01:23
And everyone's so nice and respectful and knows good music when they hear it.
01:30
Yeah.
01:31
One of the benefits of still, King Tut celebrates 35 years this year.
01:36
And, you know, like having a venue like that, that local bands can still start out at.
01:42
And then, you know, they build themselves up and then they go for the Barrowlands.
01:46
And then they go for things like Transmit.
01:48
And even in the life of Transmit, there's bands that have started off in the King Tut stage
01:53
and, you know, made it to the main stage or to headline like Lewis Capaldi and Jerry Cinnamon.
01:59
Like, was it pretty important in terms of your journey as a band that there was those networkers
02:08
that welcomed you in at first, that, you know, that you were able to build things up
02:11
and then before you know it, you're on top of the pops and the world's your oyster?
02:15
Yeah, totally.
02:15
And I think it still is so important.
02:18
But the sad thing is so many of these smaller venues are actually going.
02:23
And it doesn't bode well for the future for young kids who just want to pick up a guitar
02:27
or play a keyboard in front of the mates and see what happens.
02:31
It's such an important part of a life's kind of tragedy.
02:37
You know, it's where you learn what you do.
02:43
You know, you can be in your hometown and you can be in each other's bedrooms
02:47
or in a rehearsal space.
02:49
But to stand on a stage says a lot about if you want to carry on doing it for a start.
02:54
And then obviously with us, when we started to get a bit of a name,
02:57
we were up and down the country playing all of these really small venues.
03:01
And it's character building and it instills that faith if you really still want to do it
03:06
after playing in certain venues.
03:08
So it's really important.
03:10
And as I say, it's sad that so many of these venues around the country are disappearing.
03:15
And yes, certainly it's a stepping stone to getting where you really want to be, as you say.
03:21
You still return to the Barrowlands.
03:24
Is that a venue that you kind of like enjoy the relationship that you have with the fans there?
03:31
Because, you know, like the fans are right on top of you and they're singing along.
03:34
They even sing the guitar parts in Glasgow, Rick.
03:37
They really do.
03:38
Yeah.
03:38
It's such an incredible venue.
03:40
I mean, you hear this a lot by loads of different bands, but the Barrowlands is always name checked.
03:45
But there's something about that room.
03:48
It's kind of magical.
03:49
You know, you can sense it even before you've arrived.
03:53
You can just sense how great it's going to be.
03:56
I mean, obviously, we play the Academy as well.
03:57
And we would do that ordinarily because the promoters feel that we can sell more tickets.
04:02
So obviously, it's a win-win for everybody.
04:05
And that's a great venue as well.
04:06
But that's more like a cavernous hall, isn't it?
04:08
Whereas the Barrowlands, you can just see the whites of everyone's faces, just even the stars on the ceiling.
04:15
You know, it's just, and obviously the springy dance floor.
04:19
There's just something magical about that place.
04:23
Everyone just looks like they're having the best time.
04:25
And yeah, if you're going to start singing the guitar solos, then you can't go wrong, can you?
04:31
Starting out in King Tut's and being in that situation where you're supporting,
04:36
like, you'll come to a festival like Transmit and you'll be bringing your own audience.
04:40
But there's an element that you have to grab people's attention.
04:44
There could be someone just wandering around at the back looking for chips.
04:47
But you want to try and grab their attention as much as anything else.
04:50
Do you approach festivals in a bit of a, you know, combat kind of like headspace
04:59
where you want to go out there and really kind of grab people's attention?
05:02
Because you've got a very tight window to do your thing.
05:05
Yeah, that.
05:06
I mean, in the 90s, I didn't really enjoy doing festivals for that very reason.
05:10
I always felt that we're here, so why aren't you watching?
05:15
And it was always a little bit kind of disappointing when you can see people at the back
05:20
wandering from one stage to another and not really showing any interest in what we're doing.
05:25
So I never really enjoyed festivals way back in the day because of that.
05:29
But now I cherish them and I look forward to doing it because of what you've just said.
05:34
I want to prove it to people and I want people to stop in the tracks and go, who's that?
05:39
And, you know, the best, the biggest buzz out of doing any gig, really, is people leaving,
05:44
going, well, that was incredible.
05:45
I'll go back and watch that again.
05:46
So I find it really important to just put as much effort as possible into every show we ever do,
05:52
wherever we might be.
05:53
And I think we're quite lucky because we've been doing it for so long that it doesn't
05:58
really matter where we are now in the sense that we could be playing somewhere on a drizzly
06:04
Monday night, but the atmosphere in that room is just as good as what it could be in a huge
06:09
city on a Saturday night.
06:10
You know, I think people just love the fact that we're there and they're going to hear
06:14
those songs.
06:14
You know, it's funny because we did take a little pause for a while in the early noughties.
06:20
We took about four years off.
06:23
So when we kind of came back in 2007, some of the songs that we were playing are like
06:29
12, 13 years old at that point.
06:31
And the excitement that we were back in that room playing songs like On Standby or Going
06:37
for Gold and everyone was singing every word back was quite a shock for us because we had
06:41
no idea that we'd left some kind of mark on people's growing up.
06:47
You know, so the fact that fast forward so many years later and they're still doing it
06:52
is just absolutely amazing.
06:53
So we don't take anything for granted anymore.
06:57
You know, when you're in your 20s and you're swanning around thinking you're the best band
07:00
in the world, you take things for granted because you think the next day is going to bring
07:04
something equally as good and then suddenly it stops and it's like, well, where did all
07:09
that go?
07:10
So nowadays, we're enjoying all the success that's coming at us and we're remembering it
07:17
a lot more than we ever would have done.
07:20
Yeah.
07:20
And long may that continue.
07:21
But yeah, Transmit, an amazing thing to come up and do.
07:26
The last time we played it a few years ago, I remember the sun was beaming down.
07:31
It was a really glorious day and there was just thousands of people looking like they
07:35
were having a nice time.
07:36
So fingers crossed for all of that again.
07:39
When you come up to Glasgow, is it a case of just being kind of shipped in and shipped
07:43
out or have you ever actually had like a chance to kind of have a wander about, go to record
07:47
shops or go to pubs or any of that kind of stuff?
07:49
We have in the past quite a lot.
07:51
You know, I do love wandering around the city and there's been plenty of times over the
08:02
years where I've perhaps drank a little bit too much and become a little bit worse for
08:07
wear.
08:08
But, you know, hey ho, it's part of the day, isn't it?
08:10
It's a rock and roll environment.
08:12
I do remember going to, I think we played The Garage once in the 90s.
08:16
And I remember there was a club night on after it and we all went to that and we're meeting
08:22
people and dancing and having fun.
08:24
And then I just seem to remember being on the floor looking up at people.
08:30
So I think that was the time to think, right, I better go now.
08:34
Yeah.
08:34
It sounds quite cinematic though.
08:36
And The Garage is where I used to dance to Disco Down pretty much every Thursday night.
08:41
So you were in Home Tough at The Garage.
08:46
Yeah.
08:46
Brilliant.
08:47
So were they doing the actual Disco Down dance off the video?
08:49
Well, I was.
08:50
I don't know.
08:50
I can't speak for everyone.
08:53
Amazing.
08:54
So we did that as a bit of a tongue in cheek joke, obviously.
08:58
We were kind of thinking, because this is way into our career at this point.
09:01
This is 90s.
09:02
We spent two days learning that dance routine and we went to Pineapple Studios in London,
09:08
which is quite a big, renowned dance studio.
09:10
And we had a proper dancing instructor.
09:13
And I think he had a little bit more, he had better moves for us.
09:17
But I think after about an hour, he realised it wasn't going to work.
09:21
So that was kind of a watered down dance routine.
09:24
But our kind of buzz from that was thinking, if this is going to be shown on the telly anywhere
09:28
and nobody's heard of Shed 7, they might think we're a new boy band with an awful sense
09:34
of dance.
09:35
You've had an extraordinary couple of years, you know, like you're probably as an exciting
09:44
point of the Shed 7 journey as it's ever been, you know, like with the reaction to the last
09:52
album, the shows that you're doing, the size of the crowds that you're getting.
09:56
And does it give you guys like a new kind of renewed sense of purpose?
10:01
Yeah, massively so.
10:02
I think we probably are now bigger than we've ever been, weirdly.
10:06
I mean, it's taken a long time.
10:08
I think Shed 7 should be added to school curriculums just for self-belief, never giving up, you know.
10:14
But yeah, I think to be fair, a lot of people will probably think that's just come from
10:20
nowhere, but it hasn't.
10:22
We've built this up over probably about 15 years, you know, we've been touring and touring
10:27
and then eventually decided to release some new music, which we were a kind of a little
10:31
bit, will people like this?
10:34
But, you know, we'd never dream of releasing any new material unless we were 100% into what
10:39
we were doing.
10:40
And we kind of knew with the Instant Pleasures album in 2017, which was the first new material
10:44
for like 16 years or something, you know, with songs like Better Days and Room in My House,
10:50
we knew that we'd kind of would, we'd win over our existing fan base.
10:55
And then the idea is to try and spread the word far and wide.
10:58
And then fast forward to the last album last year, A Matter of Time.
11:02
It's all culminated, but it's taken a long time and a lot of hard work to get there.
11:08
So we all feel really proud of what we've done.
11:10
But equally, to start breaking records is quite unbelievable, really.
11:15
So, you know, after being around for so long.
11:17
So I just wonder what it's going to be like in another 30 years.
11:21
God knows how big we'll be.
11:22
What do you do for a festival show?
11:28
I mean, like, obviously, because you've got like a body of hits that people will be expecting,
11:32
but obviously you want to kind of drop in kind of interesting things and stuff that you've
11:36
been working on.
11:37
Yeah, well, we do do that.
11:39
I mean, I don't really want to give too much away about what we've been doing this summer,
11:42
but equally that's difficult because somebody films everything these days online.
11:47
But yes, we like to throw in the odd cover version, something slightly off the wall.
11:52
Um, we add little bits to certain existing songs, but people will see this if they come
11:58
to transmit.
11:59
But at the end of the day, if you've got an hour, it's very difficult.
12:03
We're in, I call it our happy problem.
12:06
If you've only got an hour to play, I mean, what do you not play is our problem.
12:10
So we sit and argue for half an hour about which songs to drop from the set.
12:15
Um, and then we all kind of come to some kind of agreement, but there's certain songs that
12:21
we couldn't not play, you know, and we're very lucky that that's about at least 10 songs
12:28
that we just would have to play ordinarily because people would be really disappointed.
12:32
I mean, you can never please everyone.
12:34
I mean, loads of people always say, why don't you play that very early B-side?
12:38
But you cater a crowd of about 20 people there out of about 4,000 watching you.
12:43
So it's a difficult one.
12:45
Maybe, um, maybe we should do like an early B-sides tour just to cater for those fans.
12:50
But perhaps only 50 people.
12:53
You could go back to King Tut's and you might still be people standing at the bar.
12:57
We could do that.
12:58
Yeah.
13:00
So I was watching Glastonbury at the weekend and Franz Ferdinand brought out Peter Capaldi
13:07
as their guest.
13:08
Yes.
13:08
If you were to bring out any Glasgow musician or band to guest with Shed 7, who do you think
13:15
it would be?
13:16
Well, do you know what?
13:18
I was, when I was about 17, I was a huge Soup Dragons fan.
13:23
And I'm talking Soup Dragons before they kind of went baggy and did the I'm Free song.
13:28
I'm talking their debut album, This Is Our Art.
13:31
And before that, when they were really kind of buzz cocky, you know, songs like Hang 10.
13:38
I've got a great compilation, actually, of their first few singles.
13:42
I can't quite remember what it's called.
13:44
But even the look of them, I even had their logo paint drawn, hand drawn onto the back of
13:48
my denim jacket at school.
13:50
And I do follow Sean on Twitter and he follows me.
13:54
But that would be pretty cool to get a couple of Soup Dragons up with us.
13:58
For me, personally, anyway.
14:00
Yeah.
14:00
Nice one.
14:01
Well, look, I'm hoping for good weather and good vibes and look forward to seeing you in
14:06
Glasgow, Rick.
14:06
Thank you very much for the time.
14:08
Thank you, Paul.
14:09
Cheers, mate.
14:10
Bye now.
14:10
Bye now.
14:10
Bye now.
14:10
Bye now.
14:12
Bye now.
14:14
Bye now.
14:16
Bye now.
14:20
Bye now.
14:22
Bye now.
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