Artist Interveiw: CVC

By Resonate | December 7, 2022

Words by Finch Evans

Hailing from the sleepy hamlet of Church Village, Pontypridd from which they take their name (CVC stands for Church Village Collective) CVC have been dousing the Welsh capital and surrounding areas with their flamboyant and celebratory take on 70’s inspired pop-rock for several years now. However, as the COVID pandemic dragged the curtain down on their exuberant live shows, CVC put their heads together and, as well as finding new management, recorded heaps of new songs. 

When the country reopened, CVC burst straight from the gates into two years of relentless touring and festival appearances, as well as the release of their Reel to Reel EP.I caught up with Franchesco Orsi (vocals), David Bassey (vocals and guitar), and Elliot Bradfield (vocals and guitar) as they take a well-earned break between their triumphant homecoming gig at Sŵn festival in Cardiff and the writing of their debut album Get Real set for release in January.

So it’s been a massive couple of years for CVC. How’ve you found it?

Franchesco: It’s been great! I think we’ve been in a bit of a bubble to be honest. 

David: We haven’t really had time to think. Before the management, we were booking all the gigs and booking all the interviews and doing all that shit ourselves. But now we’ve got to a point where we have people who can do that for us, so we can just concentrate on drinking beer and writing songs – things like that. The main thing that’s changed for me is my attention is not split between music and promotion. My focus is mainly on music now, which is a great help. 

Despite the step up in professionalism and getting new management, the music you’ve been releasing was self-recorded in a bedroom studio, right?

D: Yeah, we did that in Elliot’s house during lockdown while the rest of his flatmates went home and we kind of had the house to ourselves. It started as just us doing demos, but then we thought, “they sound alright; they sound good enough to release.” So that’s how that happened.

Elliot: I mean, they do sound a bit sloppy and rough around the edges due to how we recorded them. We didn’t really know what the fuck we were doing or why we were doing it. It just kind of happened there and then. Somehow we managed to get it done after a few months of sitting in the park drinking beers. If you remember, in lockdown it was absolutely bangin’ weather. For a few days, we wanted to do nothing other than sit in the park in the warm and play footy with the boys and girls and everyone in between! It was a good time with fond memories.

During lockdown, a lot of the band’s old material disappeared from the internet. What was the thinking behind that?

D: We just wanted a fresh start; that’s the bottom line.

F: We had band members leave, members join, and a different view of songwriting, so we were like, let’s start afresh. Out with the old, in with the new. 

D: And it was after lockdown, so it was a perfect time to start again.

F: I dunno, there might be a use for those old tracks like Mortgage Anthem.. We still play that one live a lot, but right now, we’re just focusing on new stuff.

So how familiar will the album sound to people who’ve seen your live shows?

D: I dunno maybe two or three songs they won’t have heard will be on the album. If you’ve been to see us play once, you’ve probably heard half the album. There’s other stuff, we don’t play every song, but it’s just as good, if not better!

E: I think the way we play the songs live is quite different to how they were crafted when we made the album. So it’ll be a nice little treat for everyone whose seen them live to hear them all on the album. When we were making the album, we were just trying to make the coolest thing we could, so we haven’t been able to pull some of them off live.

That seems to have led to one of my favourite things about your recent output. The singles from Reel to Reel were released along with live versions on YouTube, where you could hear the difference between the record and how they’d be played live.

F: It’s like two different songs!

D: Many bands sound the same live as in the studio, but that doesn’t really work for us. We’d need a 30-piece band! Some of these tracks had like 80 layers, so it was a good challenge for us musically to try and choose the six parts between us to replicate. But as Elliot said, it’s good to hear it in a real way and a Get Real way!

Since lockdown, you seem to have been super busy with tours and festival dates… 

D: Yeah, it kind of exploded after the album got announced. The management came on board and told us we needed to build our profile and bashed us on a load of gigs in the summer. They also helped us get our music mixed and mastered and get the music videos made, and here we are.

F: From playing Cardiff like 60 times a year to playing all around the country has been a massive achievement and a massive adjustment for us a lot. We love it, it’s class!

E: Also, a big learning curve doing things like spending all day on the road to Glasgow and back for the sake of a show. We’re still getting used to it, and I think we’ll always be getting used to it. We don’t want it to end. We’re just getting started!

You recently had a huge homecoming show at Sŵn Fest. How was that?

F: It was nerve-racking at the start with the power going out. We postedw a BTS video, and Elliot’s face was like a rabbit in the headlights. But Sŵn Festival was class!

E: Best gig we’ve done this year?

F: I think it might be the best we’ve ever done. I loved it.

E: Yeah, I mean Truck Fest has a special place in my heart because I wasn’t expecting anyone to be there. We were playing after Yard Act, and everyone was just going nuts. It was like a moment of unexpected bliss. But Sŵn Fest was up there as well.

D: I feel like Sŵn is one of the events Cardiff takes seriously. It’s more prestigious than other festivals in the city, and the one everyone wants to play. This year they had a lot of acts from outside Wales which is great because I think Sŵn used to be very Cardiff-centric. That’s what a festival should be about, all kinds of people from all walks of life blasting their tunes for everybody else.

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