The Hedrons interview

eGigs caught up with Tippi, lead singer of the Scottish all-girl group The Hedrons, for a chat about the recent departure of their bassist, gigging in a virtual reality world, and their plans for this year’s SXSW festival...



Where abouts are you at the moment?

On the bus just heading up to Glasgow. We’re about 50 miles away now. We’ve just travelling up from London.

What was last night’s gig like in London?

Yeah it was fantastic, I’m nursing a really bad hangover at the moment. It was a great gig, very busy, and was all good fun.

Is that the furthest you’ve played away from home?

No, we played in Southampton, Cardiff, all over the UK and we’ve played in Southern Island too. We did a tour over there at the end of last year and I think we’re going back over at the end of March.

You’re one of quite a few new bands that are emerging from Scotland at the moment, what’s it like to be part of the current scene?

Yeah I think in Scotland there is a lot of talent, and I think people are only just recognising it. You’ve got some great new bands like The Fratellis and The View.

What’s it like to be selling out King Tut’s for the third time in a row?

Yeah, it’s our home gig, and it sold out for the third time in a row, what more can you ask for? It would be nice to play a few different venues in the future like Barrowlands and The Academy, but King Tut’s is fantastic.


You’re an all girl band, but it’s a predominantly male driven industry, did you find it difficult to break into?

We do sometimes, but we see ourselves as a band of girls rather than an all girl band. We’ve just been having a joke about that over the last few weeks and everyone’s going to be laughing at me for saying that. No, we’re just like any other band and we work as hard as any band, and at the end of the day we just all happen to be girls.

Ever consider adding a male member to your group?

Goodness no. All girls – there’s no room for men!

What would you say makes you different from bands like The Donna’s, The Faders, and all those other all girl bands that sound a bit like Hole?

I dunno, I think it’s just that we get stuck in hard and we work hard.

What’s the reaction been like to your album?

The reviews have been really amazing; we’re all really chuffed at the ones that have been coming in. We’ve been working so hard so it’s so good for people to write how they’ve enjoyed all the songs.

Unfortunately, one of you left the band because of an accident...?

Yeah, Chi was in a car accident and couldn’t play any more and had to get an operation on her neck. It is unfortunate because of all the work she put in but we’ve got Gill who is our new bass player, and it’s added a totally different dynamic to the band, she’s just come in and fitted so well.



You also played a gig in ‘Second Life’, what was all that about?

Second Life is a virtual community and you can create a person and you create a house, or whatever you want in a virtual world. We heard about it through our Myspace, went along and checked it out and thought it looked quite good fun, and we contacted our promoter and asked him if we could put a gig on.

He then built us a venue called The Hedro Dome, which we performed in, and it was the funnest gig we’ve ever played. We were in a studio in Glasgow playing live, and that music was then transported to Second Life’s servers in real time, and the promoters had created these avatars for us and were moving us all around. It was amazing.

That must have been a bit weird?

It was because we were looking at the monitors and as were playing live we could see these little avatars moving around and all the audience watching us.

After the gig we ‘came out’ and chatted to all the people that was there. It was a strange experience but we’re really glad we did it. I think we were the first band in the UK, and Europe to do that.

You’re playing this year’s SXSW festival in Texas, are you looking forward to that?

Yeah we’re really excited about going to America. We’ve only been touring in England, Scotland, and Ireland so it will be really nice to go another audience, especially as we have been getting lots of feedback on our Myspace from people in America, so it will also give people a chance to see us. We’re also playing New York and LA, and we’ll be in Canada for the Canadian music week.



The Hedrons will also be performing live tonight (Monday February 26th) at King Tut’s as part of the ‘Road to SXSW’ event. eGigs will of course have a full review of the night online within the next couple of days.

FUTURE GIGS

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