Tuesday morning, the lingering smell of coffee, Coldplay playing faintly over the shops' speaker and office workers rushing to head back to work. I found myself in Costa Coffee on Wishaw Main Street, sitting with two members of Wishaw indie rock group, Luna The Professor.
The band has had a quiet year, but by no means small. Having sold out their headline show in King Tuts Wah Wah Hut in June and played numerous festivals across Scotland, including Tenement Trail, they have really been nailing their live performances.
Johnny Irwin, the bands' frontman, went on to say:
“We haven’t gigged as much as we might have hoped this year, to be honest. I would say this year we have mainly been writing an recording. I mean, we have played some great sold out shows and they have been great. Come 2019 though, that is where we want to take it somewhere.”
The band has more gigs lined up to close the year also, with a big gig in the Motherwell concert hall supporting fellow local band The LaFontaines. Dave McNally, the groups' bassist, went on to explain how the opportunity for that gig was all down to the bands' loyal fanbase.
“The LaFontaines basically put up a post on all their social media asking who people wanted to see support them. So we basically got all our fans to tag our name in the posts and they all (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) all exploded with our name. It was an overnight thing, we got a message asking if we could play. It's been a long time coming I think, we need that kind of show in terms of bringing new fans in and playing the bigger stages. It’ll be great!”
Despite the band having no music available to stream online, Johnny believes what they are doing right now is the right way to go. Playing gigs and building an audience that enjoys what they do is key for them just now.
“Everyone brings out tunes these days, there's just so much of it. Everyone is looking for streams on Spotify, it is just like an absolute rat race. We don't want to be like that, we don't want to bring out tunes to some random guy down south listening to a Spotify playlist. We want people to be singing those lyrics back to us live before they are even out. To capture someone's attention towards this band, they need to see us live.”
Being from a small town like Wishaw, the four guys in the band all knew each other before they started playing music. Dave explained how even though they all knew of each other before Luna The Professor started, they didn’t all necessarily get on with one another.
“Me and Johnny used to not actually get on at all, despite being great pals now. We were both in different bands and were dead competitive with each other. at the time we were in seperate bands and Johnnys band ended up needing a new bass player. I spoke to Johnny about that and when we met up we just instantly clicked.”
As this year comes to a close, the band are more than ready to take 2019 on. With a whole load of freshly recorded songs ready to go, Johnny thinks that it is time the fans get music they can listen to.
“We have the singles ready for next year. We are just waiting to get them out there to everyone. We have been doing a lot of recording in Rocket Science in Glasgow with our pal Ross Hamilton who was introduced to us through our management. All year we have been demoing tracks and picking the best from them to record properly. That’s what’s been going on all year really.”
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