Glasgow two-piece Saint PHNX have released their brand new single Magic and announced their autumn tour. The pre-sale sold out in under an hour and remaining tickets are on sale now. The tour kicks off in Liverpool on 24th September and wraps up in Paris on 5th October. They will also be part of the line-up for the Tenement Trail festival that takes place across nine venues in Glasgow later this month. Full details of the tour and tickets can be found on the band’s website here.
We phoned singer Stevie Jukes to talk about an exciting year for the band since they played their debut gig.
So, how much time do you get to spend in Glasgow these days? Are you out on the road most of the time? Do you still try and record at home?
Stevie: Well, we’re up and down, really. I mean, in the last couple of months, we’ve been in London, America, Glasgow and then just jumping about all the festivals, basically. We rehearse in Glasgow, and then we record in Glasgow, and then we just jump about.
And in terms of songwriting process, do you usually try to set aside time for that, or does it just kind of hit you, and you just start recording?
It’s a weird one, I’ll be driving in the car, or I’ll be in a rehearsal or I could be going a walk, and that’s when you find that inspiration hits you. So, you grab your phone out and you’ll just do a wee dictaphone version, hum a tune. If a melody comes into your head, you just sing something, sing a one-liner, and then bank that and take that shit into the studio or grab out the guitar and sort of strum something out. So, that’s how it comes, I think. That’s how the best songs come out. When you try to force something out, it doesn’t really turn out the way you want it to.
The latest single, Magic, what’s the story behind that one?
The whole idea for that was from the old band. We were in Vigo Thieves, basically, so we were in this place where we weren’t happy with. It was a dead-end road and we were thinking what were we going to do and that, so we started Saint PHNX, and that was the sort of magic, when we put some demos together and we found that inspiration and it gave us a new lease of life out of nothing. And it came from a universal standpoint that if you are in place where you’re going down a one-way street and you don’t know where to turn, just keep going, because magic can come out of nothing. That was the whole sort of mindset of the song.
It’s just over a year since your first show, which was at Nice ‘N’ Sleazy, has things gone to plan and built up the way that you imagined?
Yeah, everything’s went pretty crazy. We’ve been going from strength to strength in terms of getting festival slots. Every show we’ve played has been pretty much packed. Following on from King Tut’s at New Year, we did The Great Escape, which was absolutely rammed. You couldn’t get any more people in the room, and then we went and supported Imagine Dragons at The Roundhouse, a sold-out show, which was unbelievable, and then from there we did Community Fest, we did Boardmasters, we did V Fest, Reading and Leeds, Belladrum, tent was rammed at every stage. So it’s just built up.
We’re streaming unbelievable numbers on Spotify, you know, our single King has hit eight million plays. One of our singles, Rise, is about to hit a million in the next couple of days, and from that aspect, it’s been immense, and we’re just going to keep building up. Now we’re at the time that we just want to get ready to put out an album at the start of next year and really kick this thing off.
Do you feel like you have the freedom to take your music in the direction you want at the the moment?
The good thing is that we’re not pigeon-holed. There’s no-one to tell us, “it has to sound like this.” Well, basically, the dynamic for the band now is, “are the drums big, is the chorus big?” And that’s basically what we do, the two things you try to do, make the vocal prominent and make the drums prominent, and then we’ll focus on one more instrument after that. We’ll play that live and that will just be how the track’s built, where before it was, you know, five guys that play in a band, five guys need to be playing on each track, there has got to be guitars, there has got to be this and that.
With this thing, anything goes, which is great, and the good thing about doing it yourself, initially, is, you’re not bogged down on getting things signed off with marketing people
Being in front of a crowd so consistently and jumping right into that festival circuit, how does that help you both refine your performance, I suppose, or learn more about your own stage show?
Well, we need that. There’s only so many hours you can do in the rehearsal studio, it’s a completely different thing when you’re out there playing in front of real people. It’s a different environment. It sounds different.
When you do live gigs, especially festival sets, you’ve got maybe a 15-minute changeover, so you’re met with challenges at every festival, and it’s how you adapt to that challenge and meet it face on, so it’s been great for us to get out and really develop our sound, develop our characters and our stage presence, playing these massive, massive stages.
We’re well versed, we’ve done it before but it’s different this time because there’s only two of us making such a big noise, so we try and do that justice.
The tour coming up, that includes Tenement Trail as well, so plugging back in with a lot of up and coming bands and also the local scene as well. What kind of set are you going to bring?
It’s full-on. King, Magic, Reload, Rise, they’ll be getting played. We’ve got a couple of new singles coming out. They’ll be getting played. So it’s 30 minutes of fun, pretty much. We’ve got an idea of what the live show is and it’s a hometown show, so we’ll be giving it extra when we come to Glasgow.
Saint PHNX live dates
24.09.2017 – Studio 2, Liverpool*
26.09.2017 – Oporto, Leeds*
28.09.2017 – Underground, Newcastle*
30.09.2017 – Tenement Trail Festival, Glasgow
01.10.2017 – Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham*
02.10.2017 – Gullivers, Manchester*
03.10.2017 – Sebright Arms, London*
05.10.2017 – Supersonic, Paris*
*Saint PHNX headline dates