Question. Firstly, where does the name "St. Buryan" come from?
St. Buryan: The name comes from the street name of Ben’s (singer) childhood home. We’ve all been good friends since our school days and we used to spend a lot of time there, playing on the PlayStation, consuming several sugary goods, typical kid stuff, you know?
We’d also been in other bands at school and there was a common theme of not being able to nail down names for the bands, so when we initially got together we made sure we’d sort it quickly. ‘St. Buryan’ came up and I guess we just went “that’ll do!”
We later found out that it’s also the name of a civil parish in Cornwall...
Q. How would you actually pronounce it?
SB: We hear lots of pronunciations. We ourselves would say St. ‘buh-ree-an’, but you may pronounce it however you like!
Q. How did St. Buryan initially form?
SB: We initially formed as a 4-piece. Ben, Callum, Dan and myself (Rhys) had all been best friends since school. When we were about 17 we decided to have a crack at starting a band. Gradually, more and more people seemed to actually like us, so we slowly took it more seriously.
Nathan joined about a year later. I don’t think anyone would mind me saying he’s the most gifted musician out of the five of us, and we went up another few levels after we became the five-piece we are now.
Q. I love Ben's vocals, very fitting for the pop undertones. Did he ever receive vocal training or is it all natural?
SB: He comes from a family of good singers. Both his Mam and his Sister have lovely voices too, and whenever Ben used to sing along to My Chemical Romance or Fall Out Boy etc. as a kid we always used to tell him he was pretty good, and that he should have a go at doing it properly, so he did!
Since then, he’s took music courses at school, college, and now university. No doubt they’ve all helped a great deal along the way.
Q. Has the sound of the band always been a clear direction or have you experimented with other genres?
SB: Our sound had always been pretty inconsistent until recently. It drifted between indie, rock and pop-punk quite a lot. We’ve always tried to merge those three genres all together to create a particular ‘St. Buryan’ sound - and I’d say we’re still working on it - but we’re almost there!
Q. "Forget To Love" is a great triumph, how did it come about?
SB: Thank you very much! The original version of the song would be almost unrecognisable from the one we’ve got now. We initially started piecing it together in Ben’s garage, and it was a fair bit heavier.
We only got a chance to practice every other month or so because of us all being in different cities for work/university. So each time we came back to practice we had new ideas for Forget To Love and bit-by-bit we made the song that we’ve got now.
Even when recording in the studio we changed quite a few parts, but that spontaneity has definitely helped make the song as enjoyable as it is.
Q. What are the thoughts and ideas behind “Forget To Love”?
SB: Ben wrote the lyrics for this one, and to me they tell a story of people who make a habit of falling in love with the wrong people. Perhaps opting for the attractive, ‘laddish’ guys as opposed to the kinder, more gentle souls like ourselves… ha.
Of course, I could be completely wrong. Hopefully everyone has their own interpretation!
Q. "Shout" has followed up, how did that come about?
SB: Shout is quite an old track actually. We’ve had it in our set for a while, and never got around to recording it until recently. It’s quite a powerful song that is easy to sing along to, we’re just hoping it goes down well!
Q. What are the thoughts and ideas behind “Shout”?
SB: Ben also wrote these lyrics. To me, it’s about being there for someone, whoever that someone might be.
But again, no doubt everyone has their own views/ideas!
Q. How has coming from Newcastle helped/hindered you?
SB: I’d never given it much thought until we started getting out and about more, seeing more bands/gigs in and around the local area. I quickly realised just how good the North East’s music scene is right now, and very soon, the rest of the country is going to start seeing Newcastle as a huge hotbed of great music too.
Everyone artist/musician in the region is so supportive of the others. It could quite easily be quite toxic and competitive, but it’s anything but. Here’s hoping that continues.
Q. How often are you trying to create new music?
SB: Most of the times we ‘try’ to write a new song, it feels forced and doesn’t work out too well. The better songs we’ve written have always been unplanned, maybe one of us will jam out a quirky riff at practice, everyone else will perk up, say “do that again”, and 20/30 minutes later we’ve got the foundations for a new song!
As I mentioned earlier, we’re all over the place geographically so we don’t have a lot of time to get together and write these days, but we try and get by.
Q. When in the studio does the music come naturally to you or do you really have to work towards it?
SB: It seems to get more natural the more we go back to record, the first time felt pretty stressful, but the last couple of times have been pretty solid. A lot of hard work goes into it either way though, there’s no point in putting aside time to record and half-arseing it.
Q. Which artists are you digging most at the moment?
SB: We all have very varied tastes and listen to a lot of different music. I pretty much exclusively listen to North East-based artists, and my top, top picks right now would be Cape Cub, The Old Pink House and Bruto.
Q. What is the ultimate goal for St. Buryan?
SB: If we ever got to a stage where we could live off of the music we make, that would be incredible. But right now I’m just hoping to keep going, get better, and see where it takes us. The ultimate goal will always be a simple one though, just enjoy it.
Q. What do you have lined up in the near future?
SB: Our next show will be playing this year’s Meet The North festival on May 5, and we’re also playing Evolution Emerging in June too, both shows will be absolutely huge for us. I can’t even begin to describe how excited we are to be a part of both festivals.
There’s a lot of stuff in the works for the rest of the year too. We’re re-working some old music and releasing some new stuff too. We have an idea of how we want to go about it all, we’ve just got to put those plans into action!
SB: If we ever got to a stage where we could live off of the music we make, that would be incredible. But right now I’m just hoping to keep going, get better, and see where it takes us. The ultimate goal will always be a simple one though, just enjoy it.
Q. What do you have lined up in the near future?
SB: Our next show will be playing this year’s Meet The North festival on May 5, and we’re also playing Evolution Emerging in June too, both shows will be absolutely huge for us. I can’t even begin to describe how excited we are to be a part of both festivals.
There’s a lot of stuff in the works for the rest of the year too. We’re re-working some old music and releasing some new stuff too. We have an idea of how we want to go about it all, we’ve just got to put those plans into action!
Twitter/Instagram: @stburyanband