After Cork outfit Aces Wild topped Week One of the Buzz Chart in the Red Bull Bedroom Jam, lead singer Tony O’Donovan reflects on their journey so far.
With their track, Kids on Bikes and Flashing Lights (see below), Cork five-piece Aces Wild topped Week One of the Buzz Chart in the Red Bull Bedroom Jam and in the process moved them one step further to playing in front of an international crowd.
Obviously delighted with the development, lead singer Tony O‘Donovan took time out to talk about the history of the band, technology, their advice for up and coming bands and their success in the Red Bull Bedroom Jam to date.
Q: Why did you enter the Bedroom Jam in the first place?
Tony O’Donovan: My dad told me about it and my cousins and friends were talking about, texting to say it was a good opportunity. Basically everyone was talking about it.
Q: What gave you the upper hand to get through in the first week?
TOD: The support from Cobh definitely. We actually forgot that it had started and then came in from a night out and found out that we were second after the first day. The whole of Twitter had just gone mad and RedFM mentioned us which created more buzz so we phoned them up and they were sound and agreed to put us on the air.
Q: What do you hope to get out of the Bedroom Jam?
TOD: Well it’s brilliant publicity and the more people who hear the music the happier we are, and that’s already happened. We have no massive plans yet; we just want to keep writing good songs.
You can have plans to take over the world but you need good songs and to keep working on your performances. The publicity has been great so far, everyone is hearing about us: we’re getting write ups on blogs and people are looking to find out where our gigs are.
Q: Tell us a little about Aces Wild, what’s the history of the band?
TOD: We only started out about two years ago and this is all our first real band, before we just played in cover bands and jammed in garages playing Metallica or whatever before getting together. When we first started out we were playing cover songs and gigging around but then we started doing our own stuff and it’s just gone from there.
Q: What advice would you give to the rest of the bands in Bedroom Jam looking to get through?
TOD: Plan ahead for the next day! Keep people interested, we put out little acoustic videos of clips of our new songs for example. You have to have something planned for everyday, like after the first day we were thinking how we can keep this up so we got in touch with RedFM. You have to have something every day.
Q: As a band you seem to have a good grasp of online promotion is there a piece of technology that the band couldn’t live without?
TOD: Definitely, the iPhone. It keeps everyone updated with pictures or whatever else and we’re always using the Soundcloud app so if we have a new bit of a song or anything we can record it and it goes straight up there.
Q: Finally, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve got since starting out?
TOD: We had a professional musician who’s a friend in with us recently he said that no matter what the buzz is around you or whatever’s happening, there’s always room for improvement. No matter how good you think you are you can always be better.
Aces Wild’s Bedroom Jam session will be streamed next Monday April 22nd on The Red Bull Bedroom Jam website.
Keep watching/sharing/tweeting/commenting and hyping your favourite band to see if they will top the Buzz Chart this week and join Aces Wild on the Festival Chart.
The top 10 chart currently features a range of bands that showcase just how nationwide this competition is. Please show support to your local act and help propel them to the top of the chart.
Part Time Pilots (Tyrone)
Red Elephant (Kerry)
DNA App (Dublin)
Little Waits (Waterford)
Purple Electric (Clare)
Milk Baby (Limerick)
Corner Boy (Wexford)
Secrecy (Meath)
Jimmy Williams (Tipperary)
Touchwood (Wexford)
Keep your eyes peeled to the Red Bull Bedroom Jam website and our Twitter and Facebook pages for updates and photos, news and information as it happens.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ podcast – listen to the latest episode now!
