Red Sky July Interview

Red Sky July are one of the UK’s most distinctive Americana acts. With their sound centred around the spine-tingling harmonies of Shelly Poole and Charity Hair, their breezy emotional insights have resonated with critics and music fans simultaneously and propelled them into the spotlight. With their third studio album building their signature sound into a bigger, almost poppier explosion, we caught up with Shelly to see how she, Ally and Charity are feeling about The Truth and The Lie.

Hi Shelly, how are you?

I have been extraordinarily busy. Mad busy!

We love The Truth and The Lie. We understand this is your first fully home recorded release…

Everything is kind of home recorded initially, then we either choose to take it to a producer or do it ourselves. To be honest a lot of it is done ourselves anyway. I often think it is a good idea to have fresh ears on it. Whether it sounds exactly the same or not, it is the producer’s job to bring something to it. But this time they sound exactly like I wanted them to sound so there was no need.

Was it just a case that this time around you knew exactly what you wanted, so didn’t need the external influence?

If I played you Shadowbirds how it was, it was very similar apart from the room sound. The guy that we used has a studio with an amazing room sound. If you are playing live, which is how we recorded that, you need the room sound. We don’t really have the room sound for that. I have a very dry room, which is fantastic for studio sound – for something crunchy and good. But if you want that live sound with the roomier feel, we couldn’t really get that. The untrained wouldn’t hear that, but I would. This one we did everything in layers rather than play it all live. We sang a lot of it live. I produce for other people and so we sat there and wondered why we were paying for someone else to produce it.

It is lovely to have other ears on it, especially if you really respect the people you are working with. It turns into a bit of fight really as we all think we know better really. So this time we just approached it as we are making an album and we just made an album.

While The Truth and The Lie has all the signature ingredients, it is delivered with bigger finish. Was that a conscious decision?

We’ve been touring so much over the last year that we’d write our set out and we’d need a fast song but had used them all. Doing the live stuff showed us what we really needed in our repertoire to make an exciting set for us to play. The things we needed was the big songs – the show openers and the show closers. We just wrote those basically. We just wanted some bigger songs for our set.
How has the success of the first two albums altered your ambitions?

I hope so! I just want to put any pressure on it, it’s too nice. When you put pressure on it, it foes to another place and you don’t enjoy it. We want to go out and play to as many people as possible. We want to stay in our little Americana niche but musically just doing what we want to do. There’s no sound shift, it’s just more built up.

With the production seeing you working solo, is the songwriting process more of a collaborative thing?

No, same thing. Just sitting up late. I’d bring the songs in and we’d decide which one we’d work on. To be honest it is a little bit of a solitary process. All of us go away and write. Ally will go away and come up with a guitar part and we will come together to see if we can build on it. Charity goes away and works on some lyrics and says we need to use those. Everyone has their own moments and come together when there is an idea to work on. When I am writing I have people I feel comfortable with and could do anything with in my normal job and if you are not doing that all the time together, it can be like pulling teeth. It is better for us to bring in our own ideas already and work on those. Plus it takes less time that way. And we will then always hash out the lyrics together.

Is it just a case of when you come together, you build on the theme that the person with the idea was feeling at that time?

Yes, exactly. Walking Country Song was from my ex-boyfriend Pete and we were trying to work out who owned the LPs. It’s a really weird one when you are splitting up. You have songs that are your songs and you can no longer listen to them anymore. It’s really weird. That was just about that. So you just bring your ideas in and whoever is feeling it, is feeling it and we go for it.

The album charted in the Top 10 pre-orders on both Amazon and iTunes, what does that mean to you?

I think that means very little these days. The only way we will know if people are liking it is if they come to the shows and are singing along. Those statistics are great but I don’t know how to gauge that now. I don’t know what it means.

Red Sky July is still more about the passion than the mainstream success. Do you see a time when your other creative work will fade away?

I would love to be doing this and not writing for other people if that were possible. When we go on tour it feels like the best thing in the world. We want to be doing that all the time. Sometimes I do have to do a bit of writing for other people as we have to keep food in our mouths. And Ally will have to go off and do a bit of Texas. It is all fine and it is all music, but we’d like by the fifth and sixth album for that to be all we do.

Would you say that the success of Red Sky July is found in your close friendship?

I don’t even know it’s a friendship. We see each other every day. It is more like a family. We probably wouldn’t choose to go on holiday together, but the only person I would choose to sing with or go on tour with is Charity. I am probably closer to her than I am to anyone else, other than Ally, and we share so much in our lives, but it is about something different than just friendship.

Lastly which song are you most excited for people to hear?

They are all so personal. The one I actually love and when we wrote it I felt really emotional is Sway. Ally and I were in the garden and it was just the most beautiful summer night. Charity had been round and all my friends were over, then it got really dark around midnight and everyone went home. I just said to Ally let’s dance. I made him dance with me and said this is what we should be doing. I just remember it as the most perfect night. That’s what the song it about and when I told him, he was so embarrassed!