‘Time is Right - for a master plan’
ROB FIDDAMAN LOOKS AT HOW THE CITY BAND SHADER ARE NOW MORE THAN HOLDING THEIR OWN WITH THE BIG BOYS
To note:
‘Runaway’ released March of this year got to number 4 of the UK Vinyl Singles Chart. Both Time Is Right and a limited-edition singles vinyl (stock from Friday) of Runaway available from Music Mania, Piccadilly Arcade, Hanley.
Hometown gig at the Sugarmill, September 17. “There’s a big connection to Stoke for us. It’s where we learned to play our instruments, on that stage at the Sugarmill.” Check out the band’s brilliant Simple Minds cover of “Don’t You Forget About Me” done during lockdown. It was picked up on social media by Robert Carlyle and
Bret Easton Ellis who wrote American Psycho. It also ended up getting played by John Kennedy, Radio X. A 15-date UK tour starts September 10.
New single out towards the end of the year.
Album produced by Gavin Monaghan scheduled for early 2022. “It’s got to be up there with Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen, Definitely Maybe, Urban Hymns, Never Mind by Nirvana and The La’s first album.” Stu Whiston, Shader, June 2021 “I’VE got a story well worth telling you about”, still resonates with me from the conversation I had last week with Shader’s frontman Stu Whiston. And what he had to tell me needs to be retold.
Stu and Mike Lo Bosco were previously in another band together covering years of extensive UK touring with the likes of The Enemy, The Twang, two dates with the Courteeners and a five-date tour with the Happy Mondays.
The guys knew the mistakes not to make from the lessons they had learned out on the road, so when they formed Shader around a new song Stu had written called, ‘Broken Minds’, they had a master plan about how they were going to do things second time around. Broken Minds was recorded with Simon Jones, bass player for the Verve who showed them back at his home studio some of the equipment that had been used on Urban
Hymns.
“It was very surreal while recording vocals and guitars to be using all this gear from an album which is in my top five greatest albums of all time”, Stu tells me. Simon very kindly imparted some advice and coaching on live presence and song writing. He gave them inspiration to keep going. The guys put out some more singles, road testing the tracks through a few low-key gigs.
Then along came Gavin Monaghan (Editors, The Twang, The Sherlocks and The Blinders) of Magic Garden Studios in Wolverhampton. “Anyone he has worked with, the album has been phenomenal”, said Stu. Gavin really liked ‘Be My Saviour’ and wanted to work with them on it. “From that point on there was like a new level we’d hit. Tom joined the band on drums. We self-released the track on Spotify, and it just went insane on social media.”
Radio plays on BBC Introducing, XS Manchester and Amazing Radio followed and then a phone call came from 42’s Records label in Manchester. In the meantime, a demo version of the track ‘Time Is Right’ written by Stu, from Leek, some years back and unknown to him had ended up on a compilation album of unsigned artists. The album was sent to Clint Boon at XFM Manchester who at the time had Noel Gallagher in for an interview, so he asked him to choose a song from it. He chose Time Is Right.
“That was one of those pinchme moments. He was going absolutely insane about it being a ‘dancy’ track. He loved the vocals and that it reminded him of a band from Liverpool”. The guys sent Gavin a live recording of the track and he insisted they work on it next. So by the time they met up with the label, the track was done and upon hearing it 42’s Records responded with, ‘We want to sign you. This is phenomenal.’ Time Is Right went out on the label as a four track CD release with Be My Saviour as the B-side. Social media picked up on it as did all radio stations and it went straight into the Physical Singles Chart at number three going to number two the following week.
Liam Gallagher was back out at the time and all over national radio, so Shader was now up against the big boys and holding their own.
(vocals, guitar) (lead guitar) (bass) (drums)