Where can we find you right now and what are you up to?
You can find us all across South Wales! We've been aiming to expand ourselves out from just appearing in Swansea and have played several gigs in Port Talbot and Cardiff, heading east to hopefully start playing shows in England and wherever else people want us!
How would you define success? What is your goal?
We started the band out of pure love for music, both listening and playing, and so I think we'd define success as unbridled enjoyment. Everyone wants to play The Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, and obviously if we were invited we wouldn't say no, but as long as we are enjoying playing together and sharing our love of music with people then I think we'd consider that a great success. Our goal is to make and release music that we're proud of, and to be able to reminisce on live performances and say to each other "Yeah, we were pretty good that night".
How did you start?
We all attend Swansea University, so we met there as a lot of bands often do! Our drummer, Will, met both Travis, our bassist, and Michael, singer/guitarist/frontman, separately. He met Travis at a social for a society, and he met Mike in a lecture as they happened to do the same course! We all shared a passion for music, and after developing a friendship as a 3 we decided to start Stone Deaf and see where it would take us.
What is a typical day in your life as an artist?
It gets hard sometimes to balance being students, having jobs, AND being in a band. Our days are a lot less action packed than some may think, but we do put time aside at least once a week to have a long rehearsal and lunch together where we discuss which of our songs we would like to record, which need working on before our next show, which covers we'd like to learn that we think would excite a crowd, and all manner of things.
What worked for you marketing-wise? What advice or tips would you give to new artists?
Our marketing has mainly consisted of social media campaigning, and for a new song we often do a Single Release Headline show in Swansea to get people excited. Our advice for new artists like ourselves would be to really research into any marketing campaigns that you need to pay money for, as while they can be far more successful than simply posting on Instagram, for example, there are also a whole host of risks.
Your music has really good dynamics, riffs and build-up with great vocals, tell us a bit about how you write your songs.
Well, Mike is really the brains when it comes to lyrics, and as the guitar player he also generally takes the lead on chords/keys etc. Travis' speciality is probably his riff writing. Typically, Travis will improvise a riff, Will will add some drums to it, Mike will add in some chords and we just go from there! We try a lot of different things out during our rehearsals in regards to dynamics and the structure of the song; there's a lot of trial and error to produce a song that we're really happy with.
Tell us about your latest or upcoming release.
Our latest release, Treat Me Like Dirt, was actually one of the first songs we ever wrote together, and while it's remained true to how it was when we first played it, the final record has been improved upon countless times. Before it released, we would use it as our opener for our live performances as the boom of the drums and the power of the chords at the start instantly grabs everyone's attention and revs them up for the coming show. We're very proud of this song and how it's turned out. It's one of the crowning jewels of our catalogue.
Photograph credits: Sarah Farooque (Instagram - @sarahjfq)