Express & Star

Sounds of summer at historic hall takeover: Scouting For Girls talk ahead of SummerFest show

The Black Country’s biggest ever music festival will take place at picturesque Himley Hall on Sunday.

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Scouting For Girls

Summerfest will see English indie group Scouting For Girls line up alongside Bewdley-born pop star Becky Hill, former Pussycat Doll Kimberly Wyatt and 2018 X Factor winner Dalton Harris.

The show will raise money for the Mary Stevens Hospice and there will be food stalls, bars from Sadler’s Brewhouse, a large fairground and performers all around the festival site, while thousands of people are expected to attend.

Laura Millard, from the Mary Stevens Hospice Group, said the show would be the biggest music event that the Black Country had ever seen, with thousands of people expected to attend.

Signal 107 Breakfast show presenter Dicky Dodd will host the pop spectacular.

Scouting For Girls enjoyed a meteoric rise after forming in 2005 and signing to Epic Records in 2007.

They released their self-titled debut album that September and it topped the UK Albums Chart, selling more than one million copies in the UK. Their second album, Everybody Wants to Be on TV, featured the number one hit single This Ain’t a Love Song, as the band racked up a further one million album sales and secured nominations for four Brit Awards and one Ivor Novello.

Frontman Roy Stride is thrilled that the band have enjoyed a long career.

“I don’t think we ever thought we’d even get a record deal,” he said. “When we were young we did – when we were at school there were loads of Britpop bands who I loved, like Blur and Oasis. I also loved R.E.M and the Stone Roses.

“I don’t think we ever particularly looked up to them in a career way, we honestly just wanted to be in a band. We just wanted to play shows and travel the world, that was the plan. We never expected this. It’s absolutely crazy.”

The band sold out huge venues and had great fun as they became one of the hottest properties in music.

Stride adds: “Oh, we absolutely loved it. I’m not going to lie, it was a lot of fun. We were in our mid-twenties, we’d all been to university and had proper jobs for about four or five years. Trying to make it as a musician, working part time and scrimping and saving to put anything towards the band – we did think that it was never going to happen.

“But then it did happen. It was literally like all of our dreams had come true and I think we just did our best to enjoy it as much as possible. We really appreciated it and I think we still do. It was amazing.”

Stride’s life has changed enormously since those heady days. He’s managed to keep his band afloat and two years ago celebrated the 10th anniversary of securing a record deal by playing a show at London’s Bush Hall. The band held a ticket ballot beforehand and received over 20,000 applications for just 300 tickets.

“When a record is so big it does impact other people’s lives,” he added. “So people can remember where they were and because it’s been around for so long now, it still pops up now and again. People have shared important landmarks with our music and so it’s amazing to have that connection with people.”

Since then, they’ve announced plans for a new record – The Trouble with Boys.

“People feel connected to the music, it’s pretty special for me, an escaped, second hand and desperate musician. Now I’ve got a family and a house, and I take the kids to school, that’s my life now.

“There was no massive thought process behind writing the songs,” Stride said. “They were just songs that made people happy, we’d play our local pub and everybody had a great time. There was no thought process at all about selling records. We just wrote the music we loved.” It was a bit cheeky and a bit silly and it entertained our mates every Saturday night of the month. That was as far as it went.

“Then we went and recorded it, the main thing I wanted was to keep it very stripped back and very indie - so it was just piano and all about the vocals and harmonies. Lyrically it was a little bit silly, it was nostalgic in that it looked back at childhood, quite light-hearted really.”