Hiya RIVIA thanks for joining us in the virtual RGM lounge today. Grab a brew and take a seat.
What was life like for you before you got into music?
Pretty much a standard childhood for someone growing up in the 2000s, all of us started music at a young age with the exception of Matt, he started playing at 15 and he’s the only one with music as a full time job! Between music lessons and music education in school. We realised how much value music actually adds to our lives. Matt ofcourse is a full time musician and has literally just bought his first house by playing music in the local scene, but the others are all working and without music we don’t think we would be nearly as happy.
What’s the live music scene like in Liverpool right now? Anyone we should be looking out for?
The Liverpool scene is good but it’s suffering the same issues as many places in the UK. Medium sized grassroots venues are few and far between, so for anyone starting out in Liverpool its great because there are so many sub 100 venues that you can get started in. Once you start to grow and you are looking for that medium sized 200 – 600 cap venue, they are few and far between. It’s not until you start looking at upwards of 1k cap venues do you start to see a similar scope of availability and options as you do in the small venues.
So, the gap between the lowest end of the scene and the higher up end of the scene is bigger than ever, making the industry in Liverpool much more competitive in terms of artists having to work harder to get to those higher levels. Which really goes against the nature of the Liverpool scene because everyone gets on so well, it’s a very tight community with everyone knowing everyone. We as a band think we are all artists working to make this our life and our dream jobs and we don’t see how competing with other artists is beneficial to anyone, we can all help each other and climb the industry together.
In terms of artists from Liverpool, we share a room with The Kairos and they are doing so well right now, we love those guys and they are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. The Gondolas, Toy Car, Detroit run…we could go on forever there are so many amazing acts in Liverpool right now, any show you see is bound to be great.
It seems like being a social media curator has become added to the many jobs of a musician, how do you feel about this?
We’re not over the moon that it’s a part of the package that comes with being an artist now but that’s just how things are, and you just have to move with the times. We are getting better as a band with social media, and it has been a big focus of ours for this year. Our newest member, Rosh, who joined us in May this year has really helped us with that, she is just full of content ideas and knows how to execute them really well. A lot of our most recent content we have enjoyed making because we think it’s funny or cool, which makes us want to do it, and people can see we enjoy doing it so it helps. Basically, we have reframed the idea of social media content from being a task that has to be done as an artist, to this thing we have fun doing as an extra on top of being in a kickass pop punk band.
How do you manage engagement on your socials?
We try to reply to any comment/message personally, we absolutely love people engaging with our posts and becoming apart of the RIVIA family. We’ve had some really cool fan made content, that we’ve ended up using ourselves for official content because we thought it was awesome! (we asked their permission first)
What’s your view on the Music industry today?
In many ways it is the same as it always has been but social media and now AI has definitely changed the way to get your music out there. It is more corporate than it has ever been, as we seen with the ticketmaster scandal/dynamic pricing…ticket pricing across the board jumping through the roof. It’s hard for developing artists to earn a living from grassroots music, especially with the costs associated with touring and so many venues shutting down. There needs to be a way where the top 1% of the industry gives back to the bottom, as without the bottom there’s no top!
Where do you feel you currently sit within the music industry?
We are in that middle ground of a band that can sell out a small venue confidently, but we can’t sell out a large venue, yet. We are in that gap between grassroots and mainstream and we are trying to get from one side of that massive jump to the other. This year has been a very good year for us and we are seeing a momentum build so we are going to keep going and we know we will make it. We very much believe each of us that this band is going to be a staple name of Liverpool like Red Rum Club, The Wombats etc.
What’s the biggest thing you have learned recently as you progress with your music?
Probably what we mentioned earlier about social media and applying that to everything. We want to be authentic, we love doing this, we all want to do it as our careers and as a lifestyle. So, we work hard we put in so much to chase that dream and we are seeing that when we show people that we love what we do and this is a passion project, then people really resonate with that.
What was your best experience on stage?
Think it’s a universal one for every artist, when people are singing your songs back at you. That’s a serious moment as a musician and as a song writer that people enjoy what you create. We really experienced that at Isle of Wight festival this year and Ynot festival last year. That, along with people dancing to our tunes, especially Snake Hips, makes all the hard work and travelling worth it.
What was your worst experience on stage?
No one has fell off stage, yet. We haven’t had any uniquely bad experiences, our most recent show in Sheffield, we go to play our brand new upcoming single, second time ever played to an audience, and our singer Matt, snapped one of his strings on the first chord. So, the rest of the band had to blag that it was some 2 minute instrumental intro to the new tune, improv jamming the whole time, whilst Matt ran back stage to get the spare guitar “El Sparo” and come back on stage to do the tune. Thankfully, most people didn’t realise it was a complete off the cuff blag so it wasn’t too bad. But we as musicians who know what the set is are all like “OH NO, OH GOD, THIS CAN’t BE HAPPENING, THIS IS THE WORST SHOW EVER, EVERYONE IS GOING TO HATE US NOW, OH GOD”.
Tell us something about each member that you think people would be surprised about.
Matt is a street fighter and trained paddy the baddy. Warren works for MI5 but it’s a secret so don’t tell anyone. Rosh isn’t Irish, she’s Australian, but she does the accent because people in the UK don’t speak Australian. And Chris is a Paddy the Baddy/Lewis Capaldi impersonator…but in all seriousness, Rosh made it to the final 16 on the voice, Matt is a avid bonsai tree collector, Woz is undefeated at rock paper scissors and Chris can tell you everything you ever need to know about Warhammer 40k.
I hear you have new music. What can you tell us about it?
Piece of You is our latest single, we wrote it about betrayal and that feeling of revenge and not being able to escape it. How that can hold you back but the need to break out of that cycle and move on is more important. It is a bit darker than some of our last singles but this is what we are about, pushing us out of our comfort zones and trying something new.
What was the recording process like?
We recorded with Sugar House in St. Helens, we did our last two singles with them too and we are certainly going to continue because we absolutely love the process there. The guys Ady and Lee, they tell you how it is, and we love that. We always want criticism and we welcome feedback. In this song especially, the producers have contributed creatively and have inputted more than on any of the other tracks, it takes a lot of trust to put your faith into someone else when its your art, but we think the proof is in the pud.
What was the biggest learning curve in writing the new tunes?
That we are RIVIA and RIVIA is what ever we want it to be. We want to do Pop-punk, but if that means we write a tune that is more to the punk side of that scale, than that’s cool. If we write a tune that is more to the pop side, we can do that too. We all have such a diverse array of experience and influences to put into the writing process and our approach is to try everything and be fearless to try anything. “That’s not pop-punk” or “that’s not our sound” isn’t something we think about. Our sound is what ever we want it to be and it took us a long time to reach that point and stop boxing ourselves into weird rules and laws for the band.
Would you change anything now it’s finished?
No, we actually intended to release this back in May/June but we pushed it back because it wasn’t ready. Its another mistake we have made in the past about strictly following a release schedule and we decided we don’t like putting songs out that aren’t 100% our best product just because we need to or it fits in with a schedule.
It’s done when it’s done. What you hear on Piece of You is our refined song that went through A LOT of revisions and changes to try make our original vision come to life.
Is there anything else you would like to share with the world?
We have a lot of live shows coming up towards the end of summer and into Spring so please check out our social media, we are on everything except LinkedIn, you can find us @rivia.band. Instagram is our main place where we are most active, but we post most of our behind the scenes and blooper stuff on tiktok. You will find our show schedule anywhere. Give us a follow to stay up to date and drop us a hello in the comments, we love to get to know people and we have made a lot of new friends just from travelling up and down the country playing all these shows.
Lastly, we do have merch, its all made to order online. Very high quality and very environmentally friendly too. So please if you like what we do, like what we are about and want to support us any extra way then heading over to our online shop and ordering yourself a t shirt, hoodie, cap what ever it is, it helps us do what we do and we love and appreciate every single person who does feel so inclined to support us that way.
FOLLOW RIVIA HERE
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