It’s a glorious summer’s day in the Lincolnshire countryside. Sunday’s main stage openers, The Soul Revival, are kindly chatting to us before they wake Call of the Wild with their hotly anticipated set. So in true Goth Girl Writing style our irreverant interview revolves around festive singles, family... Luckily guitarist Andy, drummer Karl and amazing band manager Gypsy are far more professional and focus on the music…

Well someone’s gotta Show Me The Right Way??!!!! Geddit??? 😊

‘There’s going to be a lot of energy. We’ll be strutting across that stage,’ smiles Andy, looking ahead to the band’s performance. ‘We’ve got a good set planned. We’ve mixed things up for it.’

Karl continues, ‘We’re very aware there’s a lot of people here who have seen us before. It’s almost like a home from home – and that’s brilliant. So the set’s going to be the same songs but in a different order.

‘If we’re playing the same set it’s great, because it becomes more polished. But it’s nice to do something different – for us but also for the fans,’ he adds.

Bit of a longshot this boys, but what are the chances of  Christmas single ‘I Still Believe’ making it into your Call of the Wild set? The band’s catchy trademark hard rock take on the big day being different from how it used to be when we were kids. You know – before we all became adults and the most difficult job of December 25 was working out which bulb on the tree had stopped working, and had taken out the rest of the lights while it was at it. Both on the tree and in the whole of the downstairs…

Karl gently breaks the news they won’t be playing it today, ‘Although we’re still currently getting streams of it in America,’ he laughs.

Tell us more about the reasons why you channelled your inner Wham chaps. ‘It went down pretty well for a Christmas single,’ Andy obliges. ‘We recorded some of it at Hard Rock Hell in a chalet. We recorded the guitar and bass there late at night.’

Karl explains, ‘We were nervous about it because there are a whole range of Christmas songs that everyone knows. But then we thought, ‘Well we’re not expecting it to be Christmas number one!’ It was a bit of fun.

‘It delves into the sad side of Christmas. The adult side of it, where you’ve still got bills and life in general to pay for. But the magic returns when you have kids.’

Which three of the four Soul Revival boys do.

‘When I found out that me and my partner were having a child I said I was going to pack in music,’ says Karl. ‘But my partner said no! She said, ‘Ever since I’ve known you you’ve played music, so don’t give it up!’.’ And while Karl was super excited about what the Call of the Wild weekend had in store, he was looking forward to getting back to his daughter at the same time.

The boys are also buzzing to talk about the riffs they’ve been writing – including new song ‘Cooking With Grease’. ‘It’s got a solid Aerosmith 70’s vibe and kind of groove,’ says Andy. ‘It lit up the room at rehearsal and it’s completely ‘us’. You know that when you get to festivals it’s going to go down so well.

‘We’ve been writing a few bits and bobs. We’re getting into the writing process again.’

And if all goes according to plan by this time next year we’ll be listening to The Soul Revival’s debut LP…

‘We were going to release an album this year,’ says Karl, ‘but after a few chats we decided to hold off it. We backtracked and said we were being a bit selfish. At that point we’d been together two years, and we wanted to have an album to our name. We spoke, and said that the last two years had been good, but let’s wait until things get bigger. We’d started to build a loyal fanbase, and we decided we wanted to make that a little bit bigger before we release an album.

‘By this time next year we’d like to think we’ll have one done and good to go.’

Yay!!! Same boys. Same.