Next month sees Lewis Watson embark on a full UK tour (TICKETS). Lewis started off on YouTube filming his often unique covers and gaining quite a bit of notoriety, he followed this up with a few EP’s before releasing his début album ‘The Morning’ just last month which shot into the official top 40 album chart. We cannot wait for the tour and love the album so thought we would catch up with the man himself…
Hi Lewis, what have you been up to today?
Hello ! A rare day to myself today, I played a bit of golf, and now I’m sat down to do a few QnA’s.
Congratulations on the new album and breaking into the album chart, has the success of it been a shock?
thank you very much ! that means a lot. the opportunity to make an album and have people actually want to listen to it in the first place was quite a shock, so to have it in the charts is something that i’m still pinching myself over. crazy.
How is the album different to your previous EP’s?
it was a bit of a different process because the EPs were always designed to be slightly lo-fi and to never contain the finished versions of songs (demos, monitor mixes, etc.) so making something and actually trying to make everything as good as it possibly could was different. i definitely enjoyed it, though !
So what can we expect from the new tour?
me and the band playing some old songs, songs from the album and some new ones, too. i’ll hopefully be experimenting with an electric guitar for a few songs and just making it as good of a show as we can
Is there a city in particular you are looking forward to playing?
it’s a bit obvious but it has to be london. we’re playing shepherd’s bush empire this year and that’s such an important venue to me. i’ve seen countless bands there and i love it. that being said, i can’t wait to play nottingham, either.. we always have such a great crowd there.
You started off uploading covers to YouTube, do you play any of them out on tour?
nope, the covers on youtube were purely a way of teaching myself guitar before i was confident in writing my own songs. i may play a cover that i’ve done recently but not the youtube covers, the tour is a chance for me to play original stuff !
What is your favourite track to perform live?
i’ve got a couple, into the wild is always fun because people join in, clap and dance which is so amazing to see. i like playing ‘castle street’, too. i think the arrangement is really nice to play and the band always nail it.
Have you been to any decent gigs recently?
we’ve been doing festivals recently so we’ve seen quite a few people. i’ve personally really enjoyed bipolar sunshine, saint raymond, sivu, rae morris and royal blood. i also saw scott matthews on the sea front and it was amazing, i’d never seen him before and i think he’s incredible so it was great to finally see him after all of these years.
There seems to be a mini revolution of solo and acoustic artists at the moment such as Ed Sheeran, Ben Howard, Paolo Nutini, would you agree and why do you think that is?
i think music is a lot like fashion where styles come in and out of trend. i’m so grateful to have caught the ‘wave’ of the solo artist and i think it’s so good that people are into it at the moment. let’s hope that it lasts !
Is there a song you wish you had written?
there are loads.. it’s quite strange because i have a really strict criteria when writing songs, they have to resonate with me, i’m not a big fan of middle-eights so i tend to avoid them, etc. but they are so many songs that i wish i had written. number 1 is probably ‘brothers on a hotel bed’ by death cab for cutie, it’s such a beautiful song. others include ‘re:stacks’ by bon iver, ‘runaway’ by matt corby, ‘so long, see you tomorrow, by bombay bicycle club, etc. etc.
What are your plans for the rest of the year?
to write, tour and enjoy it. this year has zoomed by and i’ve spent most of it wrapped up in album land, so i’m looking forward to just enjoying it !
Which tracks are you listening to at the moment while on the road?
Here goes…