21. March 2025
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Spotlight - Flyctory.com Interviews

Spotlight – Flyctory.com meets Gareth (March 2025)

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

The 2025 Country To Country in Berlin did not only give me four days full of great country music of all kinds. I also made extensive use of meeting artists and also had a couple of interviews. After I already shared my chat with Cory Marks with you, Gareth is the second artist I feature in that context. The Northern Irish artist was one of the few European acts at the recent country music festival. Of course, we are chatting about the festival as such, but also about his music career and plans for 2025. Enjoy my Spotlight interview, which as originally been held during the afternoon of the second festival day.

 

Flyctory.com meets Gareth

FLYC: You just completed the third of your four sets at the C2C 2025 in Berlin. What’s your impression of the festival?

Gareth: It’s nice. It’s my first time at C2C over here. I’ve been to the U.K. the year before, but never been to Germany. It’s different coming here as an artist. I was at C2C as a fan back home. It’s definitely a very cool experience being here as an artist. You getting around to all these different stages and meeting all the different artists. So it’s been fun so far.

FLYC: You are one of – I think – three European artists on the line-up. Is that something you recognize or which is special to you?

Gareth: It’s nice, yeah. It’s nice to be able to play these shows. Not many European artists are quite there yet. So we trying to do the Europe side of country music with pride. I mean, it’s harder for European artists to break the concrete than it is for North American artists. So, hopefully, that’s something which comes more regular in the years to come, having European artists at these festivals.

FLYC: You already said, you are meeting other artists here. Is it something which helps you to inspire, to look how other artists and to maybe improve your own?

Gareth: Yeah, it’s definitely fun seeing all these artists play these stages and pick up things that they do. And it definitely is encouraging to see all these different artists and seeing how they perform. It definitely helps me, I think, just to try to improve my life, my performances as well. But yeah, as I said, it’s been so fun so far.

Grandparents were Gareths First Contact To Country Music

FLYC: So, maybe going back to the beginning of your career. You are doing a mixture of country and country folk. So, what has inspired you to do this kind of music and how maybe also did it start?

Gareth: My grandparents, when I was a kid, we always grew up listening to Hank Williams, George Jones, all the older greats of country music. My grandmother had them on vinyls. And then whenever I got 13 or 14 I started going on Spotify and I spotted all these newer artists from this newer generation that come through and I just kept dabbling in it and I just kept loving it even more as I found each song. And then just from that I knew straight away that’s what I wanted to play was country music. So it all stemmed from my grandparents when I was a kid, I would say.

FLYC: I mean, at least here in Germany, when you would say I’m a teenager, I want to do country music, people would maybe think weird about it. How is it like in Northern Ireland? I think, the folk tradition is there definitely.

Gareth: Yeah, it is massive in Ireland. A country has always been massive in Ireland. Per se, it wouldn’t be the same sound as the American side of it, but our country has always been a thing back home with me. But I think now, as it goes on, the sound has evolved and I think now is the perfect time to start getting into country music. I think country is going global right now.

Gareth about his Modern Country Favorites

FLYC: You already mentioned a couple of artists which your grandparents listened to. Have there been any artists from that side which have been influential to you, from the US and in general?

Gareth: I mean, Luke Combs. I found Luke Combs when I was, let me see, probably 16, 17. So I did. And the first song I ever heard was probably When It Rains It Pours. And then I just fell in love with his voice and his songs and have been ever since. And I think he’s been one of my main inspirations growing up. No writing, no playing country music.

And the other artists would probably be Morgan Wallen. He is a different kind of sound to Luke Combs but those are the two main artists and they’re obviously probably the two biggest names in country music right now but those two were the ones that I fell in love with straight away when I heard their music. I’m also a big fan of Cody Johnson and I get to see him next Sunday in London and I saw him a few weeks ago in Nashville at the Bridgestone Arena. I’m a big fan of his music, all different styles of country.

I love all styles of country, so I do. But yeah, I mean, main one that comes, top three probably are Combs, Wallen and Cody Johnson.

FLYC: You had, at least from my perspective, a rather sudden breakthrough last year when you had the cover of Stick Season by Noah Kahan, which had 40 million streams and views in a rather short time. How was it like to you to see a child of you exploding in the music industry?

Gareth: Yeah, it was crazy. I had about 100k followers on my TikTok back then in January last year. It just wasn’t increasing much, it was just sort of stuck there and then I decided to record a cover of Stick Season in December just after Christmas and I went to a forest pretty close to where I lived and I shot the second verse and second chorus and we just kind of lip synced it.

And I didn’t really think nothing of it. I just posted it online. I posted it on Instagram and TikTok. Just overnight, there were millions of views. People wanted me to release the full cover. We teased it for about a week after. Just kept teasing the same kind of audio. And everybody, it just kept going more and more viral. And then we just dropped the cover then. I think it was 17th January 17th or something like that. It just blew up so good. And it streamed very well. I then got in contact with a manager who wanted to work with me in Nashville, who I still work with.

And then these other people just wanted me to write songs. So I started writing songs in March last year for the first time. And it’s just been key. As the days go on, there’s always new things happening, and more exciting stuff coming up, and a lot more songs coming. So it’s definitely been a very fast year, but it’s been amazing.

Nowadays a Nashville Resident

FLYC: Maybe, as you mentioned, in Nashville, you signed a contract with BMG, and now since January, you said that you’re living in Nashville. I mean, that’s a rapid year, isn’t it? So how is it like now for you to look back to that year? Do you sometimes need to pinch yourself?

Gareth: Yeah, sometimes you do. I think when you are so busy, you don’t get a lot of time to stop and reflect on those things. But I think now when I get some downtime, you really think about how cool it’s been this past year. Moving to Nashville was really one of the biggest moments of my life so far.

I was always over in Nashville last year a lot, just traveling back and forth for two weeks, three weeks at a time. But we were waiting for the right time to move, and I think January was the right time. So we made it happen. I took a while to get visas and stuff, but it’s finally came across. It’s happened. I know I moved in January, but we’re over here now in March. We’re over here in Europe, and we’re not back until probably near June, because we’re on tour and stuff coming up in Europe. But I’ve got my own car, my own place in Nashville, so it’s nice now that I can also have a home there as well.

FLYC: What’s maybe the biggest boost when you start working in Nashville? What’s the biggest difference you would say?

Gareth: I would say just how close everything is, you know, because I do a lot of songwriting here in London, of course I will be in a few weeks time, but in Nashville everything is so like tight knit, everything is so close.

It’s one big family. So it is, and a lot of writers that I have my own groups with that we write the best songs with. They’re just always so close to me. It’s a 15 minute drive and I can be there to write songs with them. I do all my records out there. I have my studio out there that I work in. I record all my songs there. Everything is just so close. My manager is there, my whole team – and I think that’s the biggest boost that I can explain to you. It’s amazing being there. Everything’s so close.

FLYC: Does Nashville already feel like home a bit to you?

Gareth: Yeah, it does. I think if I was going there as a solo artist, having no support, no team, it would be a lot different, honestly. But I think the fact that last year when I was over there, back and forth a lot, I kind of built a foundation, so I didn’t move. I already had things in place when I moved. So it wasn’t a big transition to make, as much as it would have been if I was going just straight, first time there, moving there, not knowing anyone. But it’s been good. It’s been a good few months.

Cover Releases during 2024

FLYC: So one product of this amazing year 2024 for you was the album Covers (From Across The Pont). How did you select these songs for the album?

Gareth: I think it was more a mixture of the songs that went crazy viral. We were just picking out songs that went big. I mean, the first one was obviously Stick Season, which we had dropped. This was before we even thought about doing that EP. And then a cover of Dylan Gossett’s Cold. Cold went mega viral on my Instagram in February. So then we dropped that as a cover. And then I said to my manager, it’d be pretty cool, because as I said before, we didn’t start writing songs until March.

So we didn’t have original songs ready to release. So we wanted to drop a few covers while we were working on those originals and I just sat and looked back at some covers of mine online that went viral. And we decided to go into the studio and record them and drop them. As a I think it was four songs we dropped but we dropped two backyard sessions as well from my backyard and life acoustic versions so we had six tracks on that cover EP.

And then, at the end of the year a lot of bands decided to release Christmas songs but we thought instead of releasing Christmas songs we’ll do a few more covers and we’ll do a full album, a complete version of the covers and I think we added four more covers which was Zombie, Fire Away, You Found Me and another one I forget about.

But we dropped four covers, so we did. And She’ll Be Loved as well, we had four covers and those were all other songs, too. All nine that went viral and people wanted full covers. We rented a studio in Nashville in November and recorded four more songs and we dropped it as a full complete collection of covers. I think this could be a thing we might do every year, we’ll see. But it’s always fun dropping those covers as well but the originals right now is the main focus for the foreseeable.

Gareth’s set at the C2C 2025

FLYC: So from the set of songs you have available, how did you pick the songs for the days today here in Berlin?

Gareth: Yeah, we wanted to showcase just all originals, obviously. Some of the songs we were playing are already released. We’re trying to keep it as upbeat as possible. There’s new audiences, so you want to play your real upbeat stuff to kind of attract them. I think we have two slow songs, which is one that’s quiet in this house, and one is an unreleased song called Answered Prayer.

Our songs are mostly upbeat and I would say I think about three songs on the set list is unreleased. As I say we’ve got a lot of songs coming this year so we do so it is hard picking only eight songs because I think we have a 30 minute set so we get about eight songs but we’re trying to pick our eight most that we think showcases me the best in a short space of time, so that’s kind of what factors our decision making for those songs.

FLYC: You mentioned Berlin is your first time, next week you’re in London. Is it some sort of highlight going back to the UK, showcasing your songs, maybe also seeing how you grew in your own country as well?

Gareth: I said I haven’t been back in three months, so I haven’t been to home. But London C2C is going to be fun. I’ve never played that before, being there as a fan, so it’s going to be cool. We’re playing a few big stages. So we are, once again, nice to meet different artists and just connect with different people, so we’re definitely looking forward to that as well. We’re also in Rotterdam tomorrow for the Rotterdam C2C, so I think it’s the same line-up as tonight. So it is a cold down the road to Rotterdam tomorrow, but it’s going to be fun the next few days.

Gareth on Tour in Europe

FLYC: You said you won’t be in Nashville for the next months even. One reason for that is your tour, which is coming up, the Beyond The Backyard Tour. What do you want the people to expect from that tour?

Gareth: This tour is going to be like, we had a very miniature tour last year. We did five shows last year, all acoustic, but we’re bringing a full band across this time. My band’s all in Nashville and they’re flying over for these dates. We’re playing Hamburg, so we’re here in Germany. We’re hoping this is going to sell out. We’re very close to selling it out. We actually upgraded from a venue before that did sell out. But yeah, a full band show where we play a lot of unreleased stuff, a lot of released stuff. And then we’re throwing a few covers that everyone’s seen online. So it’s a mixture of everything for everyone. I think it’s going to be a very fun show.

FLYC: Looking at 2025? What are the future plans for you?

Gareth: After my headline stuff is over We head back to Nashville for a week and then back over here because we’re supporting Kip Moore. So we are so I think we have three dates here in Germany. I think we’re playing Hamburg as well. We’re playing Stuttgart and Cologne. So we have three more dates here in Germany as well. So I’ll be back in forth a lot and here in Germany

But we’re also playing a lot of UK shows in different European cities. We’re playing at a few arenas with Kip. So we’re also bringing the band over for the UK side of the shows. So they’re going to be great fun shows. And it’s going to be a very busy for  a few months. So we head back to Nashville after Kip Moore. And then in August, we’re back for a few festivals. We’re playing a festival called The Long Road in Leicestershire. And then I think we have a festival in the Netherlands. It was quite recently announced. And I think we try to plan some more stuff around that. So, within the next few weeks, we will be able to release what is going on. So up until August, we are pretty stacked.

And the last half of this year, we started planning. I think we got a lot of stuff coming up.

Opry is on the Top of my List

FLYC: So, last but not least: Nashville is your new home, it is full of iconic venues. You already played at the Bluebird, there is the Ryman, the Listening Room, the Opry. There is also CMA Fest. Is there some place you would especially love to play?

Gareth: Well, I’ve done the Bluebird, I’ve done the Listening Room. I played a song at the Ryman. But I would love to play at the Opry. I hope that some day, it will gonna happen. That’s the biggest goal I have for this year, maybe next year. Playing the Opry, it’s on the top of my list. Well, we can only hope that I can step onto that circle some time.

 

Follow Gareth Online

            

 

Gareth – Beyond the Backyard Tour 2025

As mentioned in the intervi, Gareth is touring all over Europe in 2024 and 2025 with his Beyond The Backyard tour.

Th 24.04.2025 Cork (Ireland) – Cyprus Avenue
Fr 25.04.2025 Dublin – The Academy
Sa 26.04.2025 Belfast (United Kingdom) – Limelight
Mo 28.04.2025 Glasgow – Oran Mor
We 30.04.2025 Manchester – Deaf Institute
Th 01.05.2025 London – Garage
Fr 02.05.2025 Amsterdam (Netherlands) – Paradiso
Sa 03.05.2025 Hamburg (Germany) – Uebel & Gefährlich
Tu 06.05.2025 Stockholm (Sweden) – Nalen
We 07.05.2025 Oslo (Norway) – Postkontoret

 

Country Music Interviews on Flyctory.com

Here are all country music related postings in my Spotlight interview section:

 

Flyctory.com in Belfast

Here are all Flyctory.com postings about the Northern Irish Capital:

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