Nestled in between Los Angeles’s Har Mar Superstar and Nashville’s Emerson Hart on a list of 1Â 400 bands are Harris Tweed, the latest pop sensation to spring up in South Africa.
The list in question is of the lucky invitees who were selected to play at the international music and film showcase known as South by Southwest (SxSW).
Every year, up-and-coming bands from all over the world send in their applications and their $30 entrance fee, hoping they will get picked to play at one of the festival’s showcase events, before the who’s who of the international music industry.
This year, for the first time, we have our very own South African contingent representing us in Austin, Texas, with Chris Letcher, The Dirty Skirts and Harris Tweed all cracking the nod.
For Harris Tweed, this is just another feather in their cap, following the playlisting of their second single, Ode to Confusion, on MTV and VH1 — and a great response to their debut album, The Younger (Just Music).
Guitarist and producer Darryl Torr admits to being really nervous about playing SxSW. “There are bands there that have been exposed to an extremely professional industry and have learnt from it and grown from it and will be showcasing themselves in that arena. We are going there and it’s all extremely new.”
“In the end we can only do what we can do,” says lead singer Cherilyn Macneil, who admits to sharing Torr’s anxiety. “I think it will be amazing and we will learn a lot.”
She says the response to the band’s music over the past year has been great and admits that, when they applied for SxSW, it was all a bit of a pipe dream.
“It’s insanity,” says Macniel. “We talked about the festival and we were, like, ‘It sounds cool, why don’t we apply? It’s only $30. We’ll do it and then that will never happen.'”
Now the pipe dream has come true for the band, who formed in 2004 after Torr — a record producer by trade — stumbled upon Macniel at an acoustic open-mic night.
“I was trying to sneak out the back door and I heard, ‘Just do one song, just do one song,’ and I thought, ‘Oh no, those are always the worst,'” says Torr laughing.
“So then Cheri got up and I was literally walking out the door and it was, like, ‘Wow, someone can sing.’ I ran back inside to watch her. I went up to her afterwards and I said, ‘You can sing and you have good songs, but you need to learn how to play guitar.'”
Macniel and Torr were soon hard at work recording the songs that would become The Younger, and two years later they have a successful record out on Karl Anderson’s Just Music label.
“We met Karl at a gig and people said, ‘Go meet with Karl, get advice, he is smart,'” says Macniel. “We went to his house and he had this whole room full of albums and he was talking about all these bands we really like, and we were, like, ‘This guy is rad and he loves music.'”
Now firmly entrenched as an integral part of Just Music’s growing local-music roster, Harris Tweed are ready to take on the world with their new video and their performances at SxSW.
They have just completed a nationwide tour with their friends Marching Band, who came out from Sweden to tour South Africa.
“Last year Darryl and I went to England with our half-finished record to play it to a lot of people over there, and then my friend Jacob Lind came to visit me and he had his half-finished record, and we were like, ‘Oh my God, your band is so cute!'” says Macniel.
“I never said ‘cute’; I said it was pretty good,” chimes in Torr.
“I said they should come out here to tour with us,” says Macniel. “The thing is, they don’t really play shows over there because they are really small.
“We thought it would never happen and it only did happen at the last minute. I was so amazed that they made it happen, that they dropped their studies and borrowed money and got here. I have a lot of respect for their songs. I think they can go far.”
So, as their friends fly back to Sweden, Harris Tweed have visa applications to complete and bags to pack. The international music world is waiting.
Tags: Lloyd Gedye