It’s time for round three!

Six video sessions. Six different acts. A one-day multi-venue inner-city festival. It’s time for the second in our series of Southsea Sound Icebreaker Showcases 2023.

We hope you enjoy watching some of the best talent the Icebreaker Festival has to offer. Did you miss the others? View them here!

THE PREMISE?

TURN UP, SET UP, TWO TAKES, AND YOU’RE DONE.

 

This time, it’s Beige from Brighton consisting of Leanna Mercer – Vocals, Tom Collyer – Guitar, Jack Basely – Bass and Conor Bradley – Drums. They brought us their own brand of Alt- Grunge Desert Rock and are the first of our full band sessions from the day. They recently played for ABH at the Edge of the Wedge and have been kind enough to answer some questions for us. Read on for all things Beige.

 

beige band

Wildblanket Photography

How did you get into music?

We all have quite different but similar paths; Jack and Leanna are from Gosport, and Tom from Brighton. We picked up instruments out of boredom/curiosity.
Jack tried to play the electric guitar, got told he was rubbish, picked up bass, bass was fun. Tom tried to play the saxophone, got told he was rubbish, picked up guitar, guitar was fun (because sax to guitar is a natural progression…). Leanna tried to do drama, wasn’t her bag, she picked up singing; singing was fun… bit of a theme here.

But for all of us when we got into music, we loved rock. Bands such as RATM, Nirvana and QOTSA…the classics…which has progressed into our love of grunge and the desert rock scene, ultimately leading to Beige.

 

 

What is a cause you feel passionate about?

Various members of the band have been exposed to and live with mental and physical health issues and so we feel passionate about making music more accessible to disabled musicians. Specifically things like access to events for music lovers and access to stages for disabled people – the SociAbility app is a great tool to help people find these spaces.

What inspired the track you sang for us on 4th Feb?

Jack came up with the verse riff and brought it to practice. We jammed and it grew as a bit of a beast from there. We wanted to keep it punching and pounding…something for people listening to really nod their head to. It then further progressed to having a big riffy outro…which took a fair bit of self control to not have it grow and grow with riff iteration after riff iteration. It’s a good set ender!

 

beige band

What are you up to next?

Gigs and getting into the studio in the not too near distant future, as we’ve got new material in the pipeline!
For the gigs, we’ve got shows in Brighton and London coming up. We’re very excited for them as we’re playing with some awesome bands in awesome venues (some featured in our ones to watch out for…).
We just played a show with ABH promotions at The Edge Of The Wedge which was a lot of fun, so would like to come back this way again and do more around Portsmouth.
We’ve also just completly chucked our new drummer Nathan into the swimming pool deep end, allowed him the luxury of 2 practices before his first shows with us, and he’s not only survived but smashed it out the park!
To scope out where we’re playing next we’ve got show listings and all Beigey news on our socials @beigetheband!

What artists should we be listening to?

Too many to name. The Brighton scene…and even South Coast scene has some amazing bands in it. There’s the big hitters such as Tigercub, Demob Happy, Keg & Kid Kapichi…and then there’s the ones knocking on the door of being huge; My-Hi, Belmondo, Wytch Pycknyck, Snayx, Arid Wave, Electric Milk, Honey Badger, Congratulations, Blue Stragglers, Paris Blue & Novas….just to name a few. We’re spoilt for choice…

 

Thanks Beige, see you next time!