10 Questions with Bluewalk

If you could share one thing with an audience before they first tuned into your music, what would you say?

It’s not a girl singing; it’s actually a 22-year-old man!

Give us a song origin story. Where did the idea come from, and did you know straight away that it was something, or did it take a while to reveal itself?

One of our new songs (soon to be released!) actually came about after we’d all moved into a house together last year. We’d just set up the drum kit in a bedroom with not much else in it, and Dan started playing a sort of modified Bossa groove; we began jamming over that and made a little voice note. It felt so fresh and natural, I went away and scribbled some words and melody almost instantly without thinking, which is a rare but exciting thing for a songwriter.

Since playing it live and recording it, the song has taken on a life of its own, and Dan’s drumming and harmonies drive the song in a way that pushes the band into an interesting place.

Pick a song that you’ve released that could only have been written at that exact moment in your lives. What was going on, and is there any part of you that wishes you could still be in that moment?

There’s a song in our set called ‘Trip to Town’. It’s been released acoustically on a Room 2 recordings session we did a while back (shoutout), and it’s soon to be coming out as a b-side on our next single.

It’s an old song that was written just at the time I’d finished school and was figuring out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be, but was in that awkward time period of change where you’re stuck at home, losing friends and having that feeling that you need to move on but not knowing how. While the song itself isn’t a direct expression of those feelings, it’s more an observation about my life at that time and going into my shopping centre, trudging into charity shops and that small town attitude and mentality which I’ve always found fascinating.

Tell us about a gig that went somewhere unexpected: a night where the room, the crowd, or just something in the air made it feel like more than a show. What happened?

We hosted a series of house/garden gigs last year, and for our final one we began outside, but halfway through the set it started to rain. We rallied the crowd to help us move everything inside, and within 15 mins we had everything re-set up in the open-plan kitchen. What resulted was over 40 people crammed into this house singing along to our tunes whilst we played.

What would’ve been a nightmare scenario for an outside house gig turned into an amazing moment as the party atmosphere continued and the buzz from everyone was just amazing.

What’s going on in the world right now, nothing to do with music, that’s quietly making its way into what you’re working on?

We all met at uni and have more or less finished that chapter, so our personal lives are in a state of change and apprehension about the future. Being at this stage in life conjures feelings of excitement but also of sadness and longing about what today is like, what has been, and what might come.

We’re all in this stage in life where there’s lots of uncertainty about our futures: where we’re going to be, who with, etc. Because all of these are going around, either spoken or unspoken, I feel as if it naturally seeps into the music. I rarely write with specific themes or concepts in mind and choose instead to try and capture moments but package them in a way that feels familiar to anyone without knowing why.

There’s a sound, an instrument, a texture you haven’t used yet, but it’s there in the back of your head. What is it, and what’s it waiting for?

It’s not exactly a sound we haven’t used at all, but I think in future we’d like to incorporate more piano-based songs into our set in a live sense and both from a compositional perspective. Dan is a very talented keyboard player and so has contributed some parts to recordings before, but I think making it a more permanent fixture in a live setting would add a different flavour and is something fresh (guess I’ve gotta start learning!).

Which artist, alive, dead, from any era, would you most want to play your music to?

Beethoven. No further comments.

Forget the big moments. If your music was the soundtrack to one small, ordinary moment in someone’s day, what would that moment look like?

That moment when you think you’ve got work but you actually don’t, and so have gained a whole free day, and so for that hour after realising anything and everything is possible.

What’s next for you? Tell us what you’re working on and if you have anything exciting in the pipeline.

We’ve been loving being creative in the studio recently, and have got some new tracks that are close to being released. Most notably, we have a single coming out in less than 2 months!

Any final words to leave us with?

We’re super proud of the music we’ve been making recently, both the EP that we released earlier this year and the music we have coming out soon. Hugely grateful for all the support so far, and we’d love for people to keep on listening. Keep streaming and make sure to come and see us at a live show!