Roving Crows promise to provoke at Southdowns Music Festival

Roving Crows head for the Southdowns Music Festival off the back of a storming set at Wickham Festival in early August.

Paul O’Neill (guitar & lead vocals), Caitlin Barrett (fiddle & vocals), Laurence Aldridge (drums & vocals) and Jim Smith (bass & vocals) will be picking up where they left off when they play Bognor Regis on September 12.

“Wickham was just great,” Paul says. “We love Wickham. It was fabulous. The festival was right up there. The audience loved us and we loved them.”

The band itself goes back to around 2009.

“Before that we started as a duo, myself and Caitlin. We performed as a duo and toured around and then we thought we wanted bass and we wanted other instruments and we just turned it into a band. We weren't the Roving Crows before that.”

As for the name, Paul admits some people have assumed that they are a Rolling Stones tribute band. They are absolutely not. We are talking about an Irish folk rock band who deliver the goods with unbounded amounts of riotous energy and banter.

“Crows are very strong in Celtic mythology. I was with a friend who was a computer wizard and he said he was going make a card for our band. We were going to call ourselves Roaming Crows but with my Irish accent and his English accent the card that he actually made was Roving Crows – which I thought sounded much better!

“The music is all based on traditional Irish folk really and tradition. That was how we began, and the more we got into it, the more rocky we became and brought in different instruments. It is based on Celtic and it's based on Irish folk and when we first started we did some covers but then we started doing more and more of our own stuff.”

And they like to be provocative: “We want a revolution because I am bored with the ennui and the status quo that exists where every Prime Minister looks like the last guy. We want things to change. We want a revolution. We need a revolution, a social revolution. We need to get rid of capitalism.”

And Paul is hopeful: “We are in an age where one person can stand up and social media can really help and connect people. There are people out there that are doing things and saying things and we have always supported that.

“Years ago, before even Roving Crows, we did a fundraiser for the Green Party and we ended up talking to this guy who had a green mohawk and was just talking, talking, talking about the Green Party and was really enthusiastic. Last year we realised that that guy was Zack Polanski!”

The band has done five albums so far, with the most recent one, called Unite, coming out last October. “It is doing really well. We do pretty much every song at every gig and the level of the response has just risen and risen throughout the course of the tour.

“But we are always thinking about the next album. I am continuously writing lyrics and Caitlin is continuously writing tunes and then we start blending them and then it happens. We know it will happen. We don't take three months out to sit in a studio. We can't afford it and we don't have the time but we know it will happen.”

The main events at this year’s Southdowns Music Festival will be live at Venue 24, The Pier, Bognor Regis, with Friday, September 11 offering Phil Beer and Megson; Saturday, September 12 offering Roving Crows and Sorrel Nation; and Sunday, September 13 offering 3 Daft Monkeys and Ed Goodale. Tickets are one night £20, three nights £45 available online at www.southdownsfolkfest.co.uk