When Rivers Meet — Nurturing Voices, Passionate Performances & the ‘Breaker of Chains’ Tour Experience
Words by Glenn Sargeant
Photo Credits: Laurence Harvey/Rob Blackham
1 – April and May 2023 will see you embark on the headline ‘Breaker of Chains’ UK Tour. How are you feeling about playing bigger venues what was the inspiration behind the tour name?
We are really excited to be stepping up into larger venues for this tour. We’ve been performing together for a long time now, and we always get a kick out of playing live, so it is really exciting to get back on the road and into the tour, especially after being in the studio for the first three months of the year. The inspiration for the tour name “Breaker of Chains” was taken from a song on our debut album “We Fly Free” and it signifies how far we’ve come and the obstacles we have had to over the years and how we’ve come to be in the position we’re in now. It just felt like a really meaningful tour name to us.
2 – Who will be joining you in the band for the shows?
Us two (Grace & Aaron Bond), Adam Bowers who is also our producer is on bass, James Fox on drums and Mike Curtis who does all of our mastering and mixing our latest album is on live sound. Sarah our manager will be on the road with us on this tour. And Stu, Aaron’s best mate will be joining us on a few of the dates to help out.
3 – Is it difficult picking a setlist or do you have a specific way of selecting what will be included?
It’s difficult because there is quite a lot of choice. When we did our first tour, we’d already released a 9-song EP collection and two 12-song albums, so we had a lot of material to go at, and now we’ve also got some of the new singles that we are going to be including in the set, so it is really nice to have a lot of options. But it does make it difficult to select the set list because we just want to play them all. 50% of the “Breaker of Chains” set is new, there are certain songs that we really don’t want to pull out of the set, so it is going to be really nice to mix it up and switch it up for this new tour.
4 – Do you have any favoured stage guitars/other instruments/ pedals and effects?
Aaron – I have my friends really cheap old Stagg guitar that’s not the nicest guitar in the world, but it’s just got an amazing sound and really good for slide, so that’s always my go-to guitar. And I have some other really cool handmade guitars that have been customized for me that I’ve always got with me. My pedal board has been growing continuously over the last year and it continues to evolve, I’ve got more pedals than ever now as we bring in these new sounds, so that’s really exciting.
Grace – I’ve got some new favourite peddles that I love to put on my peddle board, and they are a Wah-wah peddle that I have just started using and POG Octive peddle.
5 – You have recently released your latest single ‘Play My Game’ which is taken from your forthcoming album ‘Aces Are High’. What was the idea behind that track?
The song is about people trying to convince you to go along with what they’re saying and to play their game, there is only one way to win in this world and that’s if you sign away your soul with the devil and play the game their way. We feel we are navigating those sorts of situations quite frequently with Vultures above and Sharks below.
6 – Will When Rivers Meet be releasing their own set of branded playing cards as part of your merchandise perhaps?
Bloody good idea! We might have to do that.
7 – How do you look after your voices?
Grace – I do vocal exercises every day and before a show I do at least an hour of vocal warmups, which is the main thing I do to look after my voice. Make sure that my technique is healthy and simple things I make sure I don’t do like eating too late which can affect me, and things like avoiding dairy and the more known stuff. But mostly for me, it’s the vocal exercises.
8 – What two things do you hope to have achieved once you have left the stage?
We think the first thing is connecting with people, we play the music that we feel, and hopefully, other people will feel the same way as us. So definitely as we leave the stage, we feel that we have connected with people and the music has connected on an emotional level with the people there. The second thing is just to know that we have come off stage and put on the best show we could possibly do, and we’ve given everything and haven’t held anything back.
9 – Without giving away too much, what can people expect from the new album?
It’s definitely WRM, the latest single shows that we are sticking to the sound that has evolved through our last records but there are more extremes on this album, so we go bigger with the rockier numbers, but we still have the contrasts of the sentimental ballads that bring in so many emotions, so probably a lot more extremes on this album. You can still hear the uniqueness of our WRM chemistry and the WRM sound still runs heavily through everything we do.
10 – What makes When Rivers Meet happy and what makes you unhappy?
It is very much a lifestyle for us and it’s such a key part of who we are, we’re travelling, we’re writing together, it means we get to be together all the time, which is something that really suits us, we love being together creating music and being able to just be creative. The WRM team is also our family and our friends, so we’re spending time with people that we love, and doing the thing that we love the most. There isn’t really a better situation that we can think of, for us, music is exactly what we want to be doing, and we’re so great full to be doing this.
