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Every Monday we will be bringing you interviews with unsigned UK or Ireland artists for Independent Music Monday. Recently we caught up with unsigned Crawley based band 26th Avenue to find out more…

Who is in the band, how did you meet, where are you from and how did you come up with the name?
26th Avenue are based in Crawley, just between London and Brighton. Lewis (on Guitar) and Alex (on bass) have been making music together for years. As school friends, we’ve been in and out of bands for as long as we can remember! We met our drummer, Joe, at a Battle of the Bands competition hosted by our school where his band beat us pretty handily. We took the obvious step and immediately stole him from his current band and formed a new band- after a few months together we met Demi on a band-finding website as she’d just moved down from Goole. Ever since, 26th Avenue have been unstoppable, the name comes from a bus stop just outside our old practice location called the Avenue (the 26th coming from the date we first all came together, the 26th May 2018).

Who were your musical influences when you were growing up and who are your influences now?
Luckily the four of us are huge fans of our indie rock predecessors. We have a particular love for Kings of Leon, along with our female-fronted contemporaries such as Paramore. We grew up on bands such as Arctic Monkeys, AM was the very first album that both Joe and Alex ever bought! As for the other two, Lewis had a huge Michael Jackson phase and Demi has been enamoured with the pop-punk scene for ages. We also love to play with the more experimental sounds that are contained within bands like the 1975, and love to defy ideas of genre where possible.

How would you describe your sound?
Our sound is very much a collection of each of our experiences as young people. We aim to deliver all the energy possible, and as young people living under current circumstances, we want people like us to listen to our tracks and relate to the messages within them. Our sound is largely a homage to those that helped us, full of power and energy whilst capturing the insane amount of fun we have hanging out, writing and recording these tracks.

What is your latest release called and what was the influence behind it?
Our latest release was Bleach, whilst being an incredibly personal story to the band, Bleach was shared to give people the opportunity to feel empowered within uneasy times in their lives. Bleach is an anthem of rebellion- a song that highlights the importance of calling out toxic patterns and behaviours in relationships. These themes are a symbol of us moving on emotionally from our previous EP, Fuel the Fire, where themes of a breakup were at the forefront. Our next EP is very special to us as it really allowed us to reflect on the headspace we’d all shared during lockdown, and we hope that it being entirely written during this increasingly uncertain period allows for the rawness and truthfulness within it to really shine through.

What’s your local music scene like?
We’re very lucky to be situated just between two of the largest scenes in the country! We love both London and Brighton so much and feel a real connection to both. In Crawley itself there’s not really a whole lot for us, before 2020 we’d been gigging the local pub circuit incredibly often, making loads of good friends in landlords and regulars. With everything being lifted and two EPs recorded now, we feel we’re a lot more ready to impress on soundstages and similar.

What do you have planned for the next 12 months?
We’re appearing twice this month in London, once on the 21st of June at the New Cross Inn where we’re supporting Ravenfangs, and again on the 24th at the Amersham Arms alongside a few local bands such as the amazing Healthy Junkies. We’re playing the Jam on the Farm festival on the BBC Introducing Stage- that festival is running 30/31st of July. We’ve also got so much more coming up that we’re so excited to announce. It’s so strange to suddenly have all these things coming up! We’re definitely going to make up for lost time this year.

Is there anyone you’d love to collaborate with?
I feel as though we’d all want to collaborate with different people! Lewis would absolutely love to play alongside Fleetwood Mac, Joe would want to have Demi and Ellie Roswell from Wolf Alice in a duet, Demi would love to play alongside Hayley Williams, and Alex would love to have a track produced by Damon Albarn! Even though we all have differing opinions on this, I’m sure we’d settle for just one of these! (haha).

Any funny stories surrounding your live performances?
The first one that comes to mind has to be when we were playing our favourite local pub venue, the Royal Oak. We tend to fill an hour and a half with our sets in pubs by doing a mix of originals and pub classics. Towards the end of our set (when our audience had clearly had a fair amount to drink) we began to play Don’t Look Back in Anger by Oasis. Once we got to the chorus we noticed a very tall man attempting to clear a large area in front of us for him to stand in. This man’s head was nearly touching the barely 6-foot-high ceiling of the Oak and shouts over the music that he’s about to do a backflip- he does. Once we get near the end of the chorus he takes off and lands his backflip. Once somehow landing cleanly on his feet he looks shocked and starts screaming “I’ve never done that before!” We haven’t seen him at a gig since and we really miss his energy!

What is the one thing that you want readers to know about you?
We really just want people to know how serious we all are about making it. Having each other as a support network, we continued to write and release through an impossible time for up-and-coming bands, we feel more inspired and energised than ever and we’re ready for the future.

UPDATE: 26th Avenue are no longer performing together, we wish them all well for the future.