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Singled Out: Sky Valley Mistress

06/14/2013
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Up and coming rockers Sky Valley Mistress won a spot at this weekend's Download festival and to celebrate we asked drummer Harvey William Newsome III to tell us about the song "Dirty Blonde Blues" from their new EP. Here is the story:

Dirty Blonde Blues was the first song that this line up of the band wrote together. The other four songs came from material I had written for the old band that I was in. I'd told the other two when we first started jamming those old tunes that this band won't be anything serious and it will just be a couple of friends making music together for the fun of it (that was a complete lie and they knew it because they knew how much desperately wanted to be in a band) but as soon as this song was written they didn't need any converting or persuading. As soon as that song was played for the first time in practice we all knew this band was going to be our full time career.

The first part of this song that was written was the lyrics. Me and Squire went to watch a band called Kill It Kid at the Deaf Institute in Manchester, September 2011. They have a gorgeous girl on keys who I couldn't keep my eyes off the whole gig. At the time, I only knew one song by them so I didn't really know what to expect at their show. They played a song I'd not heard before called 'In Your Blood' and it blew me away. There was a note she sang right at the end of the song that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck so on the way home after the gig I decided to write a song about that moment. It wasn't until a few months later when I got to put those lyrics to music when me, Squire and Kayley started to jam together. I got Kayley to start singing the lyrics over his guitar part and it took a few tries but then she sang that opening line just like she does on the record and me and Squire couldn't help but start grinning to each other. From that moment we agreed that we wouldn't write a song if it didn't give us that buzz of excitement because that's the feeling you chase after live. You can't get that feeling if a song is just 'OK', meaning we're always writing songs that we feel are the best that we can make.

Squire produced the monstrous riff at the end which inspired the last line of the song 'blinded by the light�' and the idea to have Kayley really show off the soul and power of her voice. We knew we wanted a crescendo to link the two sections of the song together but we decided to put a pause at the end of it as well. With the riff coming in from nothing, it really maximises the effect of it kicking in and the silence and anticipation of it is something we knew we could really play on live. The guitar and drum solo that followed just made sense because we knew this was going to be the song that would end our EP. And what better way to end a rock and roll record with a kick ass drum solo?

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, you can listen for yourself when they rock the Red Bull Stage at Download 2013 on Saturday (June 15th) and you can check out song and download their free EP here plus learn more about the band and their other upcoming live dates right here!

Sky Valley Mistress T-shirts and Posters

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