Image: Courtesy of Dancing Years
Dancing Years have been pretty busy of late. A couple of jaunts around Europe supporting some well known acts, some vinyl releases, award winning music videos, and a pair of shows to finish the year off nicely. Whist they drove from Italy back up to Leeds we invented a new car game; ‘The State Of The Arts makes you answer some questions whilst driving!’
TSOTA: 2014 hasn’t been too bad a year for Dancing Years! What’s happened that you’re all most proud of?
DY: Yeah I guess we’ve had a pretty busy year! Some highlights have been touring with Boy & Bear around the UK, Ireland and Europe, and also a fun tour with George Ezra. We had a decent festival season too. Playing at Reading & Leeds for the first time was awesome, and we had a great time at a festival in Germany called Folk Im Park. Having one of our tracks featured on the BBC film ‘X+Y’ was pretty cool too. It’s time to start gearing up for next year now though!
TSOTA: You seem to have toured pretty consistently this year then, how has it been making the change from relatively local band to big European tourers?
DY: Yeah our touring schedule has been growing this year. Playing live is what we enjoy most so touring’s great for us. It’s good fun and you meet a bunch of cool people and see some great places. We’ve just come home off a 6 week UK/EU tour with Boy & Bear which was amazing – and back just in time for the turkey!
TSOTA: Are you all still managing to hold down real jobs, or is Dancing Years becoming the main focus for you?
DY: The band’s definitely taking up more and more of our time and is our main focus, but for now we all still do some other stuff on the side to tie us over. From music tuition and marketing to catering, decorating and call centre work, we’ve got it covered!
TSOTA: Are there plans to quiet down at all next year, or to keep up the pace of 2014?
DY: Not at all, we want to just keep on going and hopefully get busier and busier with the band. If we can keep growing, writing and playing live shows then we’ll be happy guys this time next year.
TSOTA: You recently won an award for the music video for ‘Places We’ve Roamed’, and now have a handful of really distinct videos. What is involved in the process of putting together these videos?
DY: We owe a lot to our good friends Nick and Luke, of High Six Media, who are such talented film makers. The whole process feels really special. For all three videos, the cast, crew and everyone involved in putting the films together have all been family and friends. It’s a great thing to be able to rely on the talent of people around you. And it means we have a lot of fun putting them together.
TSOTA: You’ve a couple of of nice gigs coming up towards the end of the year, particularly a semi-hometown one at the Brudenell. Are those gigs very different to regular touring dates?
DY: We always enjoy playing a few shows towards the end of the year before everyone winds down for the Christmas period. Playing headline shows in Leeds is always special, and we get to see friends and family and have a good catch up which we don’t get the chance to so much when we’re touring. We’re looking forward to these two shows in Leeds and London! And we’ll have some new songs! Finally! But other than that you’ll have to come along and find out what else we’re up to on the night..
TSOTA: And finally, because my girlfriend will injure me if I don’t ask, when do we get a full length Dancing Years album?
DY: We wouldn’t want any injuries on our behalf, but unfortunately we don’t really know! Maybe towards the end of next year or earlyish 2016, but in all honesty we’re not sure yet.
Paddy Garrigan
Dancing Years are playing at The Brudenell Social Club on Tuesday 16th December. You can still get tickets here.
And you can buy their most recent single, ‘We Danced Last Night’, from their store here.
For more about Dancing Years visit their website or follow them on Twitter @dancing_years or Facebook.
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