A conversation with Rick Witter of Shed Seven

As we settled down to talk, I broke the ice with a question that Rick may never have been asked in an interview: What’s your favourite pudding?

"Well that's a really difficult question because I have a really sweet tooth,” said Rick, before adding, after a moment of thought, “I was on an all inclusive holiday with my family and there were these sweets, all sorts, and I kept going back… In the end I'm probably the reason they’ve cut down on the portion sizes now. I think I like anything with chocolate in it though!"

At this point, I gave a plug for delicious local chocolate maker Luisa’s Vegan Chocolates, mentioning their presence at Sneinton Market. 

“I’m amazed that lots of vegan things taste the same as non-vegan now, but my wife will be eating something and just say ‘that's vegan’... I really can't tell. I'll look out for the chocolates!” said Rick.

Keeping up with the local theme, we moved on to talking about Selectadisc, which closed 15 years ago. A get-together is being organised at The Dragon on 23rd November with a suggestion that all the songs played have to be from bands they discovered at the store. 

“That’s a really great idea and will give it a real eclectic mix of styles. Sounds like a great night,” Rick responds. “I saw a list of 10 venues from years ago and only three are left. I remembered how important places like Leicester’s Princess Charlotte were to us when we were starting out as you learnt so much from such venues.”

“I feel it’s a loss of these record shops where you could go and check out records and see requests for joining bands or who was playing locally.  Sometimes just buying something on the basis of what was on the cover… You might have been taking a chance, but you could get something sounding great out of it.”

“I used to spend ages going to places like Red Rhino in Leeds with my money from my paper round in a bag and I'd spend all day looking through the stuff there.”

I asked Rick where he feels bands get their influences from now.

“Well you get suggestions online, so there is that, but there are so many influences now and each style of music has its own charts and lists,” he responds. 

“My son is in a band and I stand at the back out of the way, the oldest person there and it's fantastic seeing all these young kids really enjoying the music and jumping up and down and getting involved in the live scene, so there are other great new bands out there,” Rick adds.

I mention here that I had been looking – unsuccessfully – for details in old music magazines of when Shed Seven first played in Nottingham, and ask Rick for his thoughts on playing in our city.

“We love coming to Nottingham and we could have done two or three extra nights at Rock City and still sold out,” he answers. “I think Nottingham was one of the first places to sell out on this tour. We are doing about 23 places on this tour.”

“We don't make any money out of the records, so all of it has to come from the live gigs and then we have to pay for all the hotels, transport, food, all the people,” he explains.

The conversation moves to a topic which has made headlines recently: ticket websites and dynamic pricing.

“Well I couldn't comment on the particular situation and band,” he answers diplomatically, “but for a company to say the price is say £130 and then keep you on hold for ages in a queue and when you get through it has gone up to £450 is disgraceful and you feel pressurised into buying it, or not seeing the band at all… Personally I feel you shouldn't pay more than about, say, £35-45.”

Shed Seven’s latest album was released on 27th September (on Cooking Vinyl). Named Liquid Gold, it revisits many of their greatest hits, but also includes Waiting for the Catch, a  collaboration with Issy Ferris which was previously released as a "bootleg" CD. Issy, from Ferris & Sylvester, joined in as a guest vocalist. 

"We had Waiting for the Catch from a series of songs that weren't finished a few years ago and didn't fit into other albums, so we put it out as a 'demo' extra eventually, and then people started messaging us asking why wasn't it on the album, so with Liquid Gold we decided it fitted in really well,” Rick says. “We wanted a female voice on it as it fitted in with the theme of the song – the whole ‘can't live with you, can't live without you’ sentiment. We asked people to send in sample vocals and then Michael, one of our production engineers, asked if we’d contacted Issy Ferris… So we did and she sent a sample and we said that's exactly what we want. She has a lovely voice which contrasts with my gravelly growl.”

You can catch Rick’s unmistakable voice, with the rest of Shed Seven, on two dates in Nottingham before the end of the year. They play at Rough Trade on 2nd October and then at Rock City on 13th December.