Lacey

Lacey wondering what rhymes with 'James Blunt' - Photo by Amber Ryan Photography

What have you been up to since we last spoke to you?
Well we feel like we’ve spent every waking minute trying to finish this new album; late night rehearsals, even later nights in the studio. We’ve finally finished laying everything down so now it’s just a case of getting everything in place for the release; promo shoots, video shoots, production and everything else under the sun. This is definitely the busiest we’ve ever been as a band. We only get one chance at a debut album and we want it to be perfect. When you enjoy something it doesn’t feel like work and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Hopefully it’ll all be worth it.    

Tell me a little bit about this new album you've been working so hard on...
It’s titled Under the Brightest Lights, a line from our track Contender, and references playing live. Playing shows is what we’re all about and where we really come alive as a band in terms of energy and performance. We’ve tried to capture this on the album so the title just made sense. This is our first full length release, we’ve released a couple of EP’s to date and definitely had to step up our game to get this album ready, not just in terms of writing but in production and organisation as a whole. The whole album was fan funded. We launched a Pledge Music campaign in which fans pledge to obviously help cover costs. We didn’t just offer the album as a pledge but other more personal things such as, an old guitar used to track one of our EP’s, VIP gig experiences, studio sessions, a couple of guys even managed to get on the album, hand written lyrics, all personal things like these and we tried to give any opportunity we could for these guys to get involved in the making of the album. There’s definitely a coherent ‘sound’ and theme throughout the album whilst keeping things a bit diverse from track to track. We’ve gone for that big, epic sound that our Producer Ian Sadler at Emeline Studios can capture really well. You’ll be physically and emotionally drained after you’ve listened to it, in a good way of course.

How fun was it to make the tour DVD earlier in the year?
To be honest, 90% of the time we were unaware we were being filmed. However watching it back, it’s clear to see what an incredible time we had on that tour and the guys at F13 have really caught that in their footage. During the interview sections, there are some quite bizarre and personal topics that are discussed which I won’t repeat. Perhaps that shows how close we are as a band and as people. Hopefully you’ll get an insight into what life on the road is like for Lacey, again it’s perhaps a side of the band you wouldn’t normally see. It’s titled What If You Wanted It All and will be out soon.    

Your recent show headlining at Rock City basement went down a storm, are you planning on doing any other headline shows any time soon?
Well thank you very much. We really enjoyed that show too. It’s great to see so many people coming out and supporting us and singing along, there’s no better feeling. We’re playing another headline show at Rock City on 20th December and have a couple of special things planned. It’ll definitely be an opportunity for us to personally thank all those who got involved with our Pledge Music campaign. Plus you can expect the usual Lacey energy and mayhem, there’ll be sing-a-longs a plenty.

Are there any other Nottingham based bands you'd consider doing a show with around at the moment?
Nottingham is great for music at the moment. We’ve recently played with Adelphia and Cut the Heroics and would definitely love to play with them again. Good bands, good boys.

The James Blunt arena show, how did that come about?
So we heard James was planning on booking a local support act to open for each show on his UK tour, so we thought why not enter, what’s the worst that could happen? Then to our surprise, we were shortlisted by the Nottingham Evening Post. We were one of five acts to be taken to James himself and to our complete and utter shock, he chose us to open for him. Never did we think someone would just give us the opportunity to play at an arena simply off the back of songs we had written. It was such a shock and we can’t thank him enough!

How excited are you about it?
We can’t even begin to explain how excited we are! We love playing live shows, anywhere and everywhere, but playing in an arena to that many people is something we quite simply weren’t expecting. There’ll definitely be one or two nerves prior to that show, however this is what we want to do and where we want to be. We need to step up and make people see that this is where we belong. 

What are your plans for 2015, if you have any yet?
First and foremost we’ll be releasing the album early in the New Year. Of course we’d then like to tour to promote the release. Touring is definitely where we feel we get the most enjoyment out of the band, playing live is what it’s all about for us and tour life is always incredible, meeting new people and playing in new cities. I guess we want to create as much hype as we can for the album and touring is the best way to do that. Then there’ll be a couple of singles and videos and then, who knows? Keep your eye out for us.

Lacey support James Blunt at Capital FM Arena on Saturday 22 November. 

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