Spend an evening in modern day York and you’ll soon discover a musical city. Audio echoes within the walls and diffracts about the architecture with tidal consistency, emanating from bars and clubs into the early hours. These sounds are so regular that it shocks to consider the inconsistency of live music in York thirty years ago, when a young Shed Seven was conceived. `York was different to what it is now’ recalls Rick Witter, whose three decades plus of fronting the band have not deterred him from remaining in his home of York to this day. `There didn’t really seem anywhere where indie bands could go at that time.’ Nonetheless, Witter does recall some early Shed Seven shows.
`I remember the old Fibbers on Stonebow that used to be called Ellington’s. It had just opened. We were supposed to be the first band to play there.’ However, it wasn’t long before one of Shed Seven’s first ever gigs became something rather different. “We turned up to sound check and the owner said `sorry you can’t play in here tonight; we haven’t got the music license yet.” So, we put a sign on the outside of the door.’ The sign instructed hopeful attendees to relocate. `We got a generator and setup in a Sainsbury’s car park.’
Ever the shrewd optimist, Witter endeavoured to capitalise on the oddity of the impromptu rendezvous. `Halfway through the set I dashed off to a payphone and phoned the police’ Hoping to provoke interest from local papers for causing noise pollution, headlines like – ‘Loud band causes controversy playing in a supermarket car park’ – were envisaged by an eager Witter. Unfortunately for the band, no police turned up until after the gig’s end, at which point they displayed little interest in reporting the racket. ‘It caused no controversy whatsoever’ he laughs ‘that’s York in a nutshell!’
Once a kid trying to integrate into an indie ecosystem that at the time didn’t exist, Witter now chats to me inside Hillsborough Stadium, opposite Tramlines Festival, where Shed Seven are due to perform in an hour’s time. It’s a stark reminder of the cultural growth undergone over the past thirty years; not least demonstrated by York itself – once a dustbowl of indie within the greater national dustbowl of indie.
`It’s a great, healthy scene [now]’ Witter enthuses. `My son’s in a band called the Serotones. They have a crowd of mates who come to see them and they look like they’re having the best time. It’s brilliant to see live music still having that attention. That’s so important for future generations.’ But Witter has not always been the optimist. `I thought for a while the country had lost that [interest in live music] – having that kind of live atmosphere felt like it was getting lost, but it seems to be back with a vengeance.’
Talking to Witter, one infers that the popularity of indie music is cyclical, perennially perishing before the seemingly impossible to resurrect is reborn. Witter himself is no stranger to the ebbing and flowing of a genre that is the musical equivalent to Monty Python’s the black knight.
`When we had our first flurry of success it became Brit Pop. So, indie music suddenly became mainstream music. [Then] everyone was charting. That’s not independent that’s mainstream,’ Witter tells me, speaking of an industry saturated by Oasis impersonators. For many bands, the sooner the popularity bubble grew, the sooner it burst. `Luckily as a band we’re still here, managing to cling on to that wreckage’ he jests.
But unlike the black knight’s ‘flesh wounds’, Shed Seven are regenerative. Their last album Instant Pleasures was the band’s joint highest charting of their career. They continue to tour, performing to audiences of all ages. Their set at this year’s Tramlines Festival is to a crowd that includes everyone from under 10s to over 60s and features songs from most of the band’s studio releases across their entire career.
Even if indie is currently experiencing one of its periodic purple patches, the genre’s capricious popularity and saturated market prompts Witter to think that newer bands need to be street-smart. As a rule, he advises to keep doing what you love but not to spread yourself thin. Indeed, one of Shed Seven’s earliest influences, The Stone Roses, helped Witter realise this. ‘We liked their philosophy because they wouldn’t do gigs every week. They’d do four gigs a year and make them big events. We tried to do something similar.’
This informs Witter’s advice for younger musicians. ‘Be canny, make [your shows] special. There are lots of bands who play every single week in the same pub. People get bored. You’ve got to have something about you that keeps it special.’ Witter does acknowledge that luck plays a part but worries little about this. ‘A lot of it is being in the right place at the right time but that’s life!’
For Shed Seven, that right place was and will always be York. They’ve never left. It was never even a cursory consideration. ‘We were looked down upon by the music press at the time’ Witter remembers. ‘Everyone descended upon our nation’s capital.’ Of course, London was not anathema to the band as they happily and regularly journeyed there. However, wherever Shed Seven found themselves, York was always in their minds. Every tour concluded with that same thought. As Witter says comfortingly, once the final encores were complete, “there was always that ‘we’re going home’ [feeling] at the end.”
As a result, few know York like Witter, so any tips on how to get the best out of the city should be noted. ‘A few weeks ago, I really enjoyed going to the Crooked Tap in Acomb’ he answers in response to a query regarding York’s best pubs. ‘What I thought was a chap DJing [there] turned out to be a chef! I very nearly went over and asked him to put some Stone Roses on!’ The anecdote sums up Witter and quite possibly Shed Seven in general. Whimsical, charming and grounded by his adoration for the refuge York awards him.