For the 10th calendar year, we started 2024 with our 10th New Horizons interview season, something that’s become a real tradition with Great Music Stories each January. Putting the hour specials aside for a few weeks, we put an open invite out to bands and this year 28 artists joined the series to share with listeners their hopes, plans and ambitions for the year ahead. Something positive for listeners to off-set what is usually a grey, dreary month.
Scarlet Rebels were one of five of our former Bands of the Year that returned to start 2024 with us. Wayne from the band spoke about work on the new studio album and we revisited the listener favourite ‘Practice Run’ – a song which we first played for New Horizons in 2018, when I did my first interview with Wayne. A lot has happened since then, including the band being voted Band of the Year in 2019 and bagging single of the year in 2021 for These Days. That song was shortlisted for the same award a year later in 2022, based on the relentless run of listener requests week-in, week-out. There’s something about this band and Wayne’s eye for crafting original, thoughtful songs, which we talk about during this interview. Recorded over Zoom in early January, for this interview I was isolating at home, recovering from Covid, which you’ll hear a bit in the audio.
