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BiTS: Well, I'm really not surprised that you learned how to sing opera because I hear a trained
voice when I hear your voice. Absolutely fabulous.

DS: That’s very kind [chuckles].

BiTS: When did you start singing rock music, for want of a better expression?

DS: Well, yeah, strangely, and then, to be perfectly honest, I can sort of remember the date. I
joined, again it might not sound particularly rock and roll, but I’d joined a choir in Ludlow as a
third soprano and I had a job at the time and I decided when I left the job, I had a lot of time on
my hands. What was I going to do? So I decided to audition for a band. That was the very first
time, so that was in March 2016. So that's actually how long ago it was.

BiTS: That's only a few weeks ago [laughs].
DS: Well, I mean, but to be honest, I haven't been doing it that long, if that makes sense, really.

It seems a while now. So basically, I joined a covers band. I'd never sung in a band before. I had
no experience of having sung in a band but actually
turned up for the rehearsal and they gave me a
couple of tunes to learn. Covers basically. I wasn't
writing my own stuff at this point. So they gave me
a couple of covers and I was so inexperienced, I tried
to sing without a microphone. Luckily, I could be
heard above the sound of the drums and the bass
and the guitar, but obviously, on the second
audition, I made sure I used a microphone, but such
was my naivety, I guess, at the time. So I joined that
band and then I was with them for about nine weeks
and then I auditioned for a blues band, and I got to
sing with them. So the guitarist I was working with
back then he would sort of say, well, I'm going to
give you some lyrics. I don't want you to listen to
the original song, just make something up. So I sort
of learned how to do that, if that makes sense, from

that point onwards.
BiTS: Yes.

DS: And then in about, can’t think when it was. It would have been just before lockdown I joined
a gothic rock band of all things. So with that sort of thing, the guitarist would give me the
background music, and then I'd make up the vocals and the melody over the top of it. So it all
went from there.

BiTS: When you listen to music, what do you listen to?

DS: Right across the board, to be perfectly honest. I mean, I'm not sort of pigeonholed into sort
of any one area. As I said, I love opera. So I love listening to Pavarotti. I also like Motown. I love
all the music theatre, all the old films with like Doris Day and all that sort of thing. I like to go to
the theatre as well. But on top of that, and particularly I think with Ritchie’s influences, I love
listening to Led Zeppelin. I'm also like a major fan of Aerosmith. I really like their music too, and
recently, I really like Greta Van Fleet. So really, I sort of listen right across the board to sort of
everything and I think that might be where Ritchie and I sort of work so well together, because
our backgrounds are so different.