Interview: The Savannahs

Regular readers of our Americana, Blues & Country picks will be well aware that there’s a great local scene for Beards, Blues & Twang and at the heart of the twang are The Rosellys. Their Rebecca Rosewell took time out to tell us all about an exciting new group  she’s involved with (The Savannahs) that are taking part in Pitch Battle on the Beeb, quite an achievement for a new outfit. You can find out more below and catch their battle on Saturday July 8th, 7.30pm.

So first of all, who’s in the band – introduce yourselves?

We’re a new all-female country roots band who sing and play originals and rootsy covers. We’re all singer-songwriters and guitarists and perform in other bands alongside this exciting new side project. We are Hannah Rose Platt, Emily Moment (Mahoney & The Moment), Rebecca Rosewell (The Rosellys) and Becca Reid. For this project, we’re all singing lead and harmony vocals, and we mix up playing guitars, ukuleles and banjos. Hannah, Becca and Emily are based near London and Rebecca lives near Bristol, but we still manage to get together in London to rehearse on a regular basis.

How did the band get together?

We all know each other from playing gigs and meeting up at various Americana events, especially around London and we thought it would be great fun to get together to work on some cool cover songs from bands that we love, sang in our own style, as well as work on original songs…especially ones that lend themselves well to four part female harmonies. We thought there was a bit of a gap in the Americana scene for a UK based, all female Country group and thought we’d give it a go!

Do you have a strong & stable natural leader or are you a coalition of chaos?

We don’t have a “leader” as such, and we’re much more of a coalition, but it’s luckily not chaotic at all! We all seem to blend really well as a group, with everyone pitching in with ideas for songs, harmonies & arrangements. But if one particular song is brought forward by one of us, then that person tends to lead it and we all work around that. We’ve found we’re harmonising really naturally together and making the cover songs unique to our sound.

What are your immediate plans for the band?

We’ve been really busy getting ready for our BBC One performance on Pitch Battle, so we’ve been rehearsing lots in London and getting songs added to our repertoire. We’ve got our first few live gigs coming up this summer, which we’re really excited about. We’re also working on some original songs and been busy filming some videos for YouTube with a fantastic musician, friend and producer, Thomas Collison as well as photo shoots with top band photographer John Morgan. We’ve created lots of social media outlets for The Savannahs, building our fan base and letting people know about our new project.

And what are the longer term objectives?

Longer term, we’d love to be playing regular gigs and festivals as The Savannahs, alongside our other bands, which keep us all busy enough! We want to keep working on cover songs that we love, as well as original songs, and getting our arrangements out there for people to listen to.

Given that it’s early days for the band are you working up original material?

We’ve mostly been working on great cover songs, but also started rehearsing original songs written individually by us, which we’ve bought along to rehearsal, and the other girls have been great at working out beautiful harmonies and instrumental parts. We want to perform a mixture of covers and originals in our live set.

How do you select covers?

We all bring ideas from other singers, songwriters & bands that we love to try out together, for instance Bruce Springsteen, Pistol Annies, Dolly Parton, and more.

Anyone suggested a cover that has been rejected with either howls of derision or laughed out of the studio?

Funny enough, not yet! Doesn’t mean it won’t happen! We all have pretty similar tastes in music, but we do have different influences too, which makes us more interesting I think.

How does the writing process work, all pitching in together, each member bringing material or some other process?

Yes we are all bringing material for the other girls to learn. We often send rough tracks and ideas ahead of rehearsals, so we know roughly how the song sounds, but it changes in the studio once we’re all together, which makes it more exciting!

Given the current situation both here and abroad, do you think current affairs are going to influence your writing?

As with our other bands, we all write songs about what we know and experience, and certainly the current political and social climate naturally affects us as people, and as singer songwriters. So I’m sure some of that will come out with our new material. We’re often trying to channel emotions into songs, so if there’s a lot of strife out there, one of our songs may be comforting and about finding peace, whereas another song may be about struggling with things, and letting people know we all feel like that sometimes. It’s an amazing feeling when someone sees you at a gig, and mentions a particular song that affected them that night, and how they connected to it. It makes the whole process even more worthwhile.

You’ve a classy selection of influences, so which act or artist really brings you all together (and by the same token, is there an act that divides you?

Becca is bluesier & influenced by Americana; Emily is a big Ryan Adams fan, as well as Hannah, who also loves alt-country and Rebecca is a big fan of Eva Cassidy, and Chris Stapleton. We all love Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and The Dixie Chicks, as well as The Old Crow Medicine Show!

What’s the one tune you all totally love playing?

Bruce Springsteen, I’m on Fire.

How did the BBC Pitch Battle gig come about?

An opportunity arose to be part of the show, which is a vocal harmony group competition for BBC One, and we all knew straight away we wanted to be involved, and we are proud to be representing a more country style group. We are also one of the only groups playing instruments, and perhaps even the only group during the series where we all play an instrument throughout our performances. We want to show the importance of playing guitars, ukuleles and banjos, especially as a country band, and there aren’t many all-female groups out there who play instruments.

How does it feel being part of a National programme and in the public eye?

Fantastic! We’ve loved it… It’s been great fun getting together to rehearse for the show, and we’ve met so many lovely people along the way, from the production company staff to the other acts in the competition. We’re excited to see ourselves perform on prime time TV. Not something you get to do every day!

Finally, when can people see you on a stage locally?

We’re playing a gig in Buckinghamshire, at Penn Fete, Sunday July 16th, and in London at The Monarch, as part of ‘Chalk Farm Folk’, Wednesday July 26th. We’re also in the process of booking a date to play our favourite Bristol venue, The Golden Lion, over the summer. We’ve got lots of interest for gig bookings, throughout the UK: Watch this space!! And the website!

All pix John Morgan