Green Wire: Four underachievers who just started overachieving!
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- July 29, 2022
Feels impossible to walk across the streets of Manchester without a local soundtrack running through your mind. If this city could speak it would do it to the beat of many of the greatest bands in the UK. The funny thing about it is that that same soundtrack keeps growing every day and bands such as Green Wire makes one stop and listen, hoping that this new sound will move you, and let me tell you: Green Wire is well connected to the echoes and roots of their city.
“A fair few of our tunes have been written around our life in Manchester. This city is so beautiful, and we can’t imagine growing ourselves anywhere else. It’s such a beautiful place” opens Simon Stirzaker, the singer and songwriter for Green Wire, this great band from the rainy city. The rest of the band, formed in the spring of 2021, comprises of Charlie Morris on drums, Jack Massey on lead guitar, and Ethan Henry on bass.
Green Wire gives out that perfect mixture of indie rock and dream pop, and a little bit of garage rock revival. Seems like a stretch but it works perfectly. Throughout their singles, you start out with pieces like ‘Looking Back’ and ‘T-Shirts & Jeans’, and you’re immediately in for the ride.
It feels fresh, a young love with an old spirit. But before you realize it, you’re rocking out (and kinda dancing a bit) with ‘Cigarettes in the Dance Floor’ and ‘Mrs Artois’, and you leave on a high with their greatly produced last single ‘Silver Tongued Devil’, filled with guitar riffs and just raw power.
We had the fortune to have a chat with the guys about their songwriting process, the history of the band, their singles and their upcoming show in Gullivers (Manchester) on August 27th, as well as what’s next for the band.
My advice? Go to any of Green Wire’s channels, press “play” on one of their singles (my favourite is ‘Cigarettes on the Dancefloor’ if you’re a stranger to their sound), relax, maybe crack open a cold one and enjoy a small glimpse to a great group of lads that decided it was time to create something much needed nowadays: honest and just great music.
Hi guys, first of all, thank you for letting us pick your brain a little bit allowing us to get to know Green Wire. In your Spotify bio, you guys describe the band as four underachievers who just started overachieving. Can you tell us what you mean by that, and share with us more about how you guys found each other and what drew you to start Green Wire?
So, we’re four lads from very normal backgrounds who probably don’t deserve to be doing as well as we are but we’re doing it still! We all got together to work on some stuff for myself, but it was an instant thing of we didn’t want it to just be a front man –in this case, Simon-, and the rest of the band. We wanted it to be a collective group thing.
There’s always a history behind a band’s name. For example, I started my first band in high school and for our name, we decided to open a biology book on a random page and pick the first word that we saw. I don’t recommend it; it was an awful name! So, Simon, what’s the history behind the name “Green Wire”?
I came up with the name. It was basically a story of my Nan always said to me to “stay grounded” and remember where I came from. We were toying with ideas like ‘red wire’ and ‘live wire’ but eventually we came to ‘Green Wire’ as a green wire in an electrical circuit is what keeps the circuit grounded.
In the past, Green Wire’s style has been compared to some of the greatest indie rock bands, such as Arctic Monkeys and Circa Waves, which can be a great compliment, as well as a challenge to feel like you deserve those comparisons. Can you tell us what does being compared to those bands mean to you, and what other bands would you guys say influenced you in the past, or maybe keeps affecting you today?
It’s always nice to be compared to these great bands which we look up to. Those bands have shaped our sound. At the end of the day, we are what we are though, and we’d like to think we’re our own unique sort of sound.
In terms of other bands, The 1975 has been huge for us, as well as Two Door Cinema Club. Bands such as The Vaccines, or even Michael Jackson, have also influenced our sound a little bit. At the end of it all though we like to have our own sound and be ourselves. We want our own identity, and we want to be something different to what has been before.
You guys have had the great honour of being featured in several playlists, mainly on Spotify, as well as receiving excellent reviews in the past. How do you feel every time you get this type of news, and how important for the band is to keep getting these accolades?
It’s honestly what keeps us going, as well as the people who follow us. It’s so motivating to see all the love. Being regarded by certain people as one of the brightest young talents in the country, as we have been, is unreal. We’ve had a lot of people say they have so much time for us and honestly, we don’t know how it’s happening.
It’s always great to feel the love, keeps you motivated and driven to achieve that next big thing. On that note, we are getting close to your show at the iconic Gullivers in your hometown, on August 27th. Talk to us about how you guys are preparing for that show, is it somehow special for the band to play at this venue? And what can the fans expect from it?
Expect the best show you can see this year. That’s somewhat arrogant but if you don’t believe in yourself being the next best thing, then you’re doing something wrong. It’s an honour to be playing at such an iconic venue. We definitely want to take a step up to bigger venues as soon as we can though. We’d love to support at The Ritz.
One of your 2022 singles, ‘Cigarettes on the Dancefloor’, paints a great picture of what a night of excess feels like, with a perfect mix of good times as well as regrets. What inspired this song, and where do you guys usually draw inspiration when it comes to writing new songs?
That song is just very honest and written in a perspective of someone who goes out and goes way too far and does something they regret, but also makes great memories at the same time. It’s how all our songs are written. It’s basically just a feeling of if we feel a certain way, we write something that reflects it. Again, we’re very normal people who just love what we do and write about our life experiences.
Your latest single ‘Silver Tongued Devil’ ups the ante a couple of decibels compared to your previous releases, with a very powerful guitar riff blasting from the get-go, and with a more mature and professional sound. How do you guys feel like the band has evolved since you recorded your first single ‘Looking Back’, compared to nowadays?
Our first single was self-produced, self-recorded, anything you can imagine. We did it ourselves. We’ve definitely evolved in sound, but it’s come through exploring which producers work best with us and for us. The songwriting has definitely improved as we’ve all learned what style we work best in too.
Every band has different approaches and techniques when it comes to recording music, and more than often those methods become an integral part of the band’s attitude inside the studio. Could you talk more about how Green Wire approaches the recording processes? Do you guys have a signature studio where you do all your recordings? If so, what does this place means for the band?
We’ve been recording out of Big City Jacks in Bury recently. We don’t have a signature studio that gives us our sound though it’s more how we interact as musicians. We were very lucky that we are all just a group of mates making music together, so it makes interacting musically so much easier.
For this last question and doing our best imitation of ‘Hot Ones’ (but without the hot wings) we want to roll out the red carpet and give you the chance to plug any upcoming show, new releases in the future, social media accounts or any other information that you wish to share with our readers.
We have a weekend of headlines in August. We’re doing Blackpool on the 26th, then back for our hometown show in Manchester at Gullivers on the 27th. It’d be mint to see anyone who likes our music. On our last headline we had screaming fans asking us signed set lists, and we spent two hours chatting to people who came to see us outside the venue. Unreal.
Clearly, things are just heating up for Green Wire, and I’m sure we will hear a lot more out of these four underachievers. Something tells me they will keep overachieving for quite a while.
If you’re in the area, don’t miss out the chance to be in any of these shows, and experience Green Wire live. We want to thank the band for their time and opening to us here at IAMUR. You can find out more about Green Wire’s music on Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus, you can find out more about their show in Gullivers here.
