It seems that the city of Canterbury may soon be home to some upcoming stars in the form of new band CWB! Millie Wilson, Tommo Bailey and Neil Stockley are all students from the Canterbury area and after two years of performing together it looks like they might have finally caught their big break after landing a record deal.
What started out as a hobby has turned into a possible career choice for Millie, Tommo and Neil. All three share a huge passion for music and after two years of hard work; it seems that their dedication may have finally paid off. The three of them describe their music as ‘alternative indie rock’ which is made up of Millie on bass and vocals, Tommo on the guitar and Neil on the drums with contribution from all of them towards writing their songs.
After a while CWB’s potential was recognised by those in the local area, and they managed to land gigs around the county including performances at venues such as The Dog in Herne Bay and The Farmhouse in Canterbury and most excitingly were even asked to perform on the main stage at Canterbury’s annual festival, Lounge on the Farm.. Soon enough, a music producer was browsing through the social network site, MySpace, and happened to come across CWB’s fan page. Having listened to some of their music and noticing all of the positive feedback that people were leaving on the page, he decided to offer CWB the chance to record their own album with his company, Knitting Factory Records.
During an interview I had with the band last week, the three of them spoke of how excited they are about their possible music career. ‘We never expected anything like this to happen to us’ said Millie, when commenting on their recent success, ‘I mean, we’re only a student band after all. At first we just performed together for fun, but now we know that people actually think we have the potential to go further’.
In fact, it turns out that there is more to this record deal than meets the eye; they were actually offered two record deals! After receiving the first offer from Knitting Factory, another company showed some interest towards the band and after speaking to both parties CWB ‘decided not to go with Knitting Factory Records because they were located further away from us and the communication with them wasn’t that good, the other company are in Maidstone which is much more convenient’ Tommo explained.
As well as this benefit, the second company seem to be offering CWB much higher prospects regarding their upcoming album by allowing them to sign something called a distribution deal ‘which means that after recording our album it will eventually be available to buy in stores and on to download via ITunes’ (Neil). This deal is hugely promising for the band, considering names such as Lily Allen and Sean Kingston were also offered similar deals to this before they became globally known stars.
Of course, with all of this drama with both companies, it means that the band have indeed gathered some setbacks; their first single ‘Carrousel’ was meant to be released in March, but will now not be available to buy until the summer. But this definitely is not affecting the bands optimism whatsoever, ‘we’re so excited, we just hope that everything goes well from now on because we’ve been working so hard and so many people are counting on us now!’ Millie commented in our interview.
It seems that all we can do now is wish the three of the best of luck, and look forward to hearing their single later this year, and who knows, it may not be long until CWB hit the big-time!
By Nicole Muller
