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RD: I don’t know whether I’d class myself as that anymore because I haven't painted for a long
time, but I think music just took over, really and it is definitely something that takes up a lot of
your time as an independent artist. We have two days a week where me and Steve get together
and write and work on things and work on the set and all kinds of things, but consistently
you’re always on social media. You’re always trying to sell tickets. You’re always doing
promotion. So it’s something that really does get a lot of your time and it needs a lot of your
time. In fact, it never feels like there’s enough time, so it’s hard to do anything else really when
you’re an independent artist. It’s hard to concentrate on anything else because you’d love to,
but you just don’t get the time.

BiTS: Yes, I can understand that and not helped by the kind of hiatus that everybody’s been
through with COVID.

RD: No, absolutely not and I think
what’s evident clearly as well,
coming out of that, is that ticket
numbers are down for everyone
unless it’s a massive festival like
Glastonbury or The Rolling Stones.

Somebody of that level.
Across the board, festival ticket

sales are down. A lot of gig sales are
down. Also, the tickets are being
sold sometimes but then a quarter
of the audience is poorly or
something like that. So it’s still very
much not back on its feet without a
doubt, and obviously, I think there’s a money problem as well at the moment. So I think it will
at least be a couple of years before we see anything change back to really how it was pre-
COVID, I would say, which is just something we have to deal with.

BiTS: I tend to agree with you, I must say. I see the same thing myself. I tend to agree with
you. Do you have any separate independent management, or do you do it all yourselves?

RD: Colin Speller is my manager and he takes on the majority of that. We’ve got agents, various
agents and we work with sync agencies that try and sync our music to film and TV and
different things like that, but Colin, I don’t know what I’d do without him. He basically deals
with everything from looking after the guys in the band to dealing with all the gigs and all the
tech specs and putting together all the money things. Thank god here’s here [chuckling]
basically, else I really, really would be struggling, I think.

BiTS: You seem to have some sort of a link with at least one company in Los Angeles, Tri-Arts
Partnership, but I don’t think you’ve ever done a tour in the USA, have you?

RD: We haven't done a tour. Basically, they work on a different level. They’ve got a sync
agency out there that works very closely with Netflix and the film industry. So they’re kind of
working on a different path. I think to go over to the States and tour would be asking quite a
lot, especially after COVID. It would have to be a support door and the outlay monetary-wise
with visas would be huge. It would be fantastic to do it. I think in order to do something like
that we’d have to have a song placed in a really good film that gave a little spark to tip it off. It’s
not something you can kind of do lightly. It’s such a huge country. We’ve got lots of links with