Interview with The Voyd: ‘Our next single will be a tip of the hat to Holding On’

Sunderland-based band The Voyd brought out a fantastic, super catchy single, ‘Be There’, last week, with another one close to release.

The band comprises Calvin Doyle (frontman and rhythm guitar), James Summers (lead guitar), Josh Young (bass) and Ali Watson (drums).

‘Be There’ is a massive, high energy song that they’ve been sitting on for a while: ‘We’ve released five singles since I wrote ‘Be There’ around two and a half years ago,’ Doyle said. ‘We’ve played it live a few times and every time we did, it sounded like the loudest out of all of them. It felt like time to release it! It’s basically about a lad going out and having too many and about how a good looking girl going out can use that to her advantage. She might be a nightmare but he thinks she’s an angel because he fancies her.’

The lyrics really highlight that: ‘She gets inside your head now and you’re trying to cut loose, she’s a devil with a halo but that is no excuse.’

It is his favourite of their songs to date. ‘When we get a song back from the studio, I listen to it four-to-five times to see if there’s anything else we need to do. I just sat there for an hour with a big smile on my face. I’ve listened to it so many times since we got the recording back! I was with one of my mates from the band and we just sat there listening. We were buzzing from it!’

They released a music video to go with the song that was shot in and around Sunderland, including scenes in a striking, graffiti-ridden disused warehouse: ‘I hadn’t heard of it until a month or two before we filmed it, it’s a bit tucked away,’ he said. ‘According to our filmmaker who shot the video, it might have been an army barracks or for light aircraft. It’s apparently known as “The Army Barracks”, though.’

The band are all best friends from secondary school around 10 years ago, according to Doyle: ‘It turned out that we could all play an instrument and started playing together. We’ve been The Voyd for about three years but practicing as we are for about five years.’

Interestingly, they used to be called Rollin’: ‘It wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing,’ he laughed. ‘Then we called ourselves The Zone for a bit but it was a bit boy bandy and we found it a bit cringey when we had to say the name when we booked a studio. We were having a few drinks with some mates one night and one of them said we should call ourselves The Void but with a ‘y’. We liked that, so that’s who we’ve been since the end of 2016.’

‘Shameless’ is about people who will do anything to be famous

‘Shameless’, another high-octane track, which came out in April, is about people who will do anything to become famous: ‘Yeah, it’s based on someone I know. To be fair, there are an army of people who want to be famous. I wrote the lyrics and the lads picked up on the ‘royal highness’ part, so they know who it’s about. People try to do anything on social media to get more followers, don’t they? They’re trying to be someone they’re not. We put in a reference to “Stars In Their Eyes” (a reference to the former TV show where people would impersonate singers) to compare what it was like then to now and how fame has changed.’

As the song goes: ‘Don’t be fooled, my friend, her bank account’s in minus but she still wants to be addressed as your royal highness.’

Next up will be an as-of-yet untitled single that’s a natural follow on from ‘Holding On’, which came out in 2018. ‘It’s a tip of the hat to that song, which is about a boy talking to a girl. This song is like her reply to him, although it sounds a bit different. James made this riff up when I was happening to write a song that had the perfect chords for that riff. Neither of us knew, and I only had the chorus then! We started bouncing about, it was unreal. It really kicks in after the pre-chorus.’

Typically, Doyle writes songs on the acoustic guitar and takes them to the band for their input: ‘It would be wrong to say they’re my songs, they’re not, as everyone puts something in,’ he said. They have used lockdown to write more songs and to keep on working hard. He cautions against writing several songs at once, though: ‘If you do that, they can end up sounding the same [laughs], so we don’t do that.’

There are several bands in Newcastle and Sunderland that they like, including local band Social Room, who he describes as being ‘Kasabianish’, as well as indie rock bands Plastic Glass and The Jet Reds.

Locally, they are also getting a following. At their gigs, fans shout ‘Up The Voyd’, something they have also taken to doing from their cars if they see the band around town. There’s also a nightclub in Sunderland that plays their songs, which feels surreal if they happen to be there. ‘When you hear people singing your songs back to you, even if they don’t know who we are, it’s an unreal feeling. It makes you want to keep on going with it,’ he said.

He acknowledges how much his tastes have evolved over the years: ‘When I was 7-8 years old, I liked dance music. Where I grew up, you had to, really. My mam liked Guns ‘N’ Roses and my dad liked Britpop. I remember hearing Arctic Monkey’s first album and thinking this is the music I love. I’d love to sit down and have a conversation with Alex Turner and to even write a song with him. The White Stripes would be another one. Jack White can play so many instruments and some of his riffs are like nothing else I’ve heard.’

If he could tour with anyone, he would have loved to tour with Queen: ‘Just think how big their gigs were, people even travelled from different countries to get there,’ he said. ‘I would love to hear their stories, you know, the ones they haven’t said publicly. Just imagine sitting down with Freddie Mercury and the stories you could unleash if you asked the right questions!’

(Photo from left to right: Ali, Josh, Calvin and James)