City Reign

Meeting 4 years ago at a Ryan Adams concert Chris Bull and Michael Grice, after years of writing and playing in bands going nowhere, started the band ‘City Reign’ joined by Michael Glaze and Sam Jones.

The band cite their name from Ryan Adam’s song ‘City Rain, City Streets’.

The band’s debut EP was recorded with Grammy nominated producer Dan Parry and they have recently established their own independent label ‘Car Boot Records’.

With all this happening, we managed to catch up with the band to allow them to introduce themselves to you!

If someone hadn’t heard of the band and you had 1 sentence to summarise the band in, what would it be?

I guess we are energetic, typically British Indie rock band, although that’s never a question a band really likes answering!

How does the band go about the writing process for songs?

Chris: Mike and I will come up with ideas on the guitar, maybe a riff or a few chords. We’ll play it to each other for a bit, see if it sounds good or not. We keep the good bits, get rid of the band stuff until there’s pretty much a song there.

Mike: Drums are important to us as often they can make or break a song, so we’ll spend just as long with Sam bouncing ideas about. Chris usually finishes lyrics after that as he likes to take his time rather than throw any rhyming couplet at it. It can be a slow process but worth it.

Who would you best describe the bands sound alike to?

Chris:We’ve been compared to new guitar bands like Yuck and The Vaccines, I kind of see what people mean. Mike: But we’ve been going for a bit longer than them so I wouldn’t say we’ve got our sound from them.
Chris:I’d say we sound more like older british bands like Idlewild and Doves. The other big one would be R.E.M.

For Chris and Michael, why do you find Ryan Adams such a large influence?

Chris: We both just love the music he writes. I think he’s the most prolifically brilliant writer of his generation, his back catalogue is huge and most of it is amazing.
Mike: There is the odd weak song, but what do you expect when you release something like 10 albums in 10 years.

How did you come about recording with producer Dan Parry?

Chris: Entirely through luck. My cousin worked at Metropolis studio until about a year ago where Dan was an up and coming producer who wanted to get some bands into the studio to do some practice sessions with. My cousin knew I was in a band so asked me if we’d like to go in and do a session with him one weekend, which we jumped at the chance to do. We ended up doing a couple of sessions over the course of a few months and ended up with the Daybreak EP. They were quite rushed sessions so it doesn’t sound as good as some of our later stuff but it was great to work with Dan, he’s just a really nice guy.

You’ve recently established your own record label, what do you feel you have learned as a band from doing this?

Chris: That it’s very hard work.
Mike: That it’ll skint you.

Who would be your dream collaboration?

Chris: Hmm, interesting question! There are so many people who each of us would love to work with. Personally I think it’d be great to work with a band like The National. I’d love to learn from them, the way they’ve kept developing with every album, always doing their own thing.

With your new single set for release on May 9th, this is now your chance to try and sell it to the readers of the site…

It’s our 3rd single, it’s called Daybreak and it’s a energetic upbeat kind of rock song. It’s got all you need, some pounding drums, great guitars and even some harmonies in the outro, I don’t really know what more you could ask for in a song!

You can find out more about City Reign by visiting their MySpace profile now!