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Despite their less than savory start at the hands of a “Dreamseller” manager turned conman; Leicestershire band the Mercians have bounced back and are ready to make their mark on the Midlands.
In less than a year altogether, the Mercian boys are already producing electric atmospheres at the Leicester O2 Academy, reaching more than 10,000 Spotify streams on their hits and selling out their concert merchandise. But how have they achieved all this so quickly?
Today we take a look at what the Mercians are all about and how they will finally give the Midlands its voice in the North/South music debate.
The true birthplace of the Mercians first came with singer Matt and drummer Charlie’s former band - Idle Suns, who came out with the single “Distant” and were under the management of what was to become the inspiration for the hit “Dreamseller”. To put a long story short, after sinking in £8,000 into the band and selling out venues, the boys split with their former manager after he ultimately stunted the Idle Suns development, only for him to run off with their money.
Despite this loss, especially just being regular working-class lads who played music as a hobby, the boys persisted on with their music dream.
After several months of testing members, they finally landed on the dream team when the trio of guitarists Owen, Harry and Joe “smashed their auditions out the park” and joined the duo to make up what we now know as “The Mercians”.
Since they were formed, the band has gone from strength to strength; however, this isn’t without careful planning.
Since their official launch on 12th March, the boys have steadily posted every day on the Mercians Instagram page to build up their fans, and alongside with posting a range of covers and original songs on their YouTube channel – the boys are building up an authentic brand that is rich with originality, personality and high-quality content. In the words of lead singer Matt, the band’s strategy is “to build up momentum with more singles and surrounding content whilst at the same time showing our audience, we are normal working lads from Leicester who play music together”.
This authenticity really shines through in the music as they speak openly about their working-class roots in songs like “Scum like Us”, proudly putting the finger up to the cost-of-living crisis, the wealth inequality growing throughout the UK and fat cats like Boris Johnson by proclaiming “This track is a nod to all us hard workers out there who are struggling right now! That's right mate... You continue to put our prices up... We see you! We are scum!”.
Combine this fiery sentiment with the local appeal of referencing the one and only Jamie Vardy’s golden boot in their Instagram bio, it’s not hard to see how the boys have blown up so fast, but what do they make of it? I interviewed both lead singer Matt and drummer Charlie to find out...
As a testament to how popular the Mercians are growing to be, before they even went on stage at the O2 Academy two weeks ago, the merchandise had already been sold out and was being worn by a huge number of the crowd (rather regrettably for me because I missed out!).
I asked the boys how they felt about this, and both Matt and Charlie separately echoed each other (almost to verbatim) saying how “it's random people wearing your t-shirt and it takes you back and you’re like fuck that’s amazing. When we ordered the stock, we thought we would have enough t-shirts for at least a few gigs!”.
However, when you just look at the merchandise (as pictured above), you can see how cool the brand is and how well the months of thought and preparation are already beginning to pay off!
Speaking of the band’s strategy beginning to pay off, I asked the boys what their future plans for the band are, and Charlie said “we want to first grow it in the midlands, and make sure that we get to the point where you can walk up to someone in Derby, Notts or Cov and ask them who the Mercians are and they’ll know”, however he also stressed that even though everything is “going a million miles an hour at the moment, we just gotta stay grounded”.
Matt added to that sentiment saying that “we want to give the Midlands a voice, and we will always be a Leicester band first and foremost. So, we really want to grow within the Midlands to the point where the likes of London, Liverpool and Manchester look at us from the outside and want a piece of what the Midlands is all about. That being said, we’re also looking to play a bit more in any way we can coming into the next year, so are looking to potentially support a bigger band/artist on tour too”.
Finally, to end our discussion, I asked Matt about what some of his dreams for the band are and here’s what he had to say:
Q: What would be your dream concert to play?
A: “We would love to play at the KP [King Power Stadium] like Kasabian did, being from Leicester ourselves and being able to play to a crowd there would be amazing”.
Q: What would be your dream Festival to play?
A: “Glastonbury, like just being able to say I’ve played it would be the dream, shove us anywhere or on any stage and I would do it”.
Q: Do you have any collabs in the works and if you could choose absolutely anyone to collab with who would it be?”
A: “So we have some ideas for collabs in the pipeline already, especially artists of a similar size like Chloe Ann who supported us at the O2. But in terms of dream collabs, it would have to be having someone like Serge from Kasabian come produce a track with us, that would be mental.”
And with that, this brings us to an end on today’s piece on the Mercians. We just wanted to say a special thanks to the band for taking time out their day and allowing us to interview them and also to wish the boys all the best for the future.
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