RealSoundsOK: XOVA Q&A

Your name:

Wayne Lawrence.

Where are you from?

Birmingham.

Name of band:

XOVA. Pronounced cross over.

Who else is in your band?

Stuart 'Hassle' Hoff [Trombone / Bvs] - Mikey Nanton [Keys / bvs], James Renford [Sax / Bvs], Boot [Bass] and Skins [drums].

How would you describe yourselves?

Genre breaking - XOVA = Rock pop twisted with reggae, it is unique.

Who are your main influences musically?

We take a bit from the old and from the new from the obscure to the most popular from Marley to The Beatles from Paolo Nutini to Bruno Mars from Beethoven to ELO.

What do you hope to achieve in music?

To earn a living first and foremost as that would show us that people are liking our music and live show, then hopefully it become an international experience more often as we have already played in Finland, Holland, Poland and Belgium so would be good to take it all around the World, our feedback of likes and comments on various social media sites is really very international already which is a good sign.

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?

Staying alive this long.....as so of my guys are getting on haha, but they still work at it like a teenager. Oh, so many highlights, but winning a slot on last year's Isle of Wight Festival from over 3,700 new and emerging bands was great and of course a wicked experience, but the real highlight - and not to sound to cheesy - is seeing the reaction of people in the audience who have never heard of us, getting off to our songs....it's what it's all about really.

And what’s the moment you want to forget?

Personally its easy. I got laryngitis en route to Poland and my voice went totally before I went on stage. Luckily the rest of the band took over, especially Stuart the trombone player on lead vocals and if I recall we even got an encore! But as a band we had to deal with a really tragic event as whilst we were on stage in Holland we were informed our drummer's son had mistakenly been shot dead in a gang war in our home town, so dealing with that and helping Skins through that was pretty awful. But on a positive note, it helped us get closer and this band is like a family for sure, sometimes we want to divorce each other the next we want to party like crazy together.

If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?

9 LIVES, as it highlights musically the reggae and rock fusion with the brass licks that stands us out from the rest, plus its a pretty wicked track that Radio 2 picked up on and Tom Robinson of BBC 6 loved even saying: "This is one of the tightest bands he has heard in years" - which was really cool.

Where can we listen to it?

OFFICAL VIDEO OF 9 LIVES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Loa5cEGrXms
live video version of 9 LIVES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpMrO6Bn4Ic
Soundcloud 9 LIVES MP 3
https://soundcloud.com/xova-live/9-lives-radio-edit-1