Music
Ticketmaster meets… Hudson Taylor
Irish folk pop duo Hudson Taylor are made up of brothers Alfie and Harry. Ticketmaster sat down with them at Reading Festival to hear how their debut album is coming along and first festival experiences.
What was the first festival you went to?
Alfie: I have a very different experience to Harry I think!
Harry: The first festival I went to was Oxygen, in Dublin in 2009. It was the year Kings of Leon played and the Killers as well, and Alfie the same year..
Alfie: I cycled up. Cause we’re brothers, and only 18months apart, I was so jealous that Harry was going to Oxygen and I wasn’t allowed to because I was too young, so I spoke to a few of my friends and said ‘let’s go, we can do it’.
So I jumped on a bike, a little kid’s bmx bike, and cycled there. It’s about 100km from where we live in Dublin and we had no tickets or anything, but we cycled up and got to the gates, got to the car park.
We’d been cycling for about 8 hours so we were all very tired, but we started drinking some cans and err yeah, I fell asleep in the car park while one of my friends was jumping over the fence and my mum had to come and pick me up!
Harry: He woke up at 2 in the morning to a policeman shining a light in his eyes!
Alfie: And I had to go to the police station
Harry: It would have been fine and they just would have got kicked out, but one of his friends told them that they were only 16 so they were underage for that festival. So all our mums had to drive up at 4 in the morning to collect them!
Alfie: So I didn’t get to go, I just got to go to the car park and the police station
Harry: Well he did give you a walk around the mainstage
Alfie: Yeah there was a really nice policeman there and I got to know them all and he walked me around. Our mum is not a very good driver, she doesn’t even drive anymore, so she took so long to get there that he walked me around the mainstage when it wasn’t even open yet.
If Hudson Taylor had a festival, who would you book to play?
Alfie: I would do it in the order of how heavy they are, so that as you go on through the night you’re getting more decibels. You want to get louder and louder and then eventually turn into a crazy big party!
So I guess we’d probably start off having with loads of singer song-writers, loads of our friends..
Harry: Us
Alfie: We’d love to play, but we wouldn’t want to headline, we’d want to play early so we could then enjoy ourselves! Big names on the bill: Paul Simon – Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles and The Rolling Stones
Harry: Yeah that would be Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
There’s a few of our favourite singer songwriters just starting out, you know some of our friends who we play with, so we’d have them opening up the stage and then all of us get to go party and see some really great rock bands!
Do you have any festival advice?
Alfie: Only go if you have a ticket!
Harry: Yeah in Alfie’s case!
Alfie: Just have a load of fun and try to see as much music as possible.
Harry: Yeah spend the day and early part of the night seeing as much music as you can, and then just have a great crack in the middle of the night.
Is there anyone you’re excited to see this weekend?
Alfie: I really wanna see Vampire Weekend. I kind of half saw them at Glastonbury last year, but I want to see it properly and see the finale!
Harry: Saint Raymond and Hozier, but we’ve got to go to Leeds tomorrow so hopefully we can fit them in
What’s next for you after Reading?
Alfie: We’ve got a couple more festivals in Europe and then the next big thing for us is supporting Jake Bugg on his October UK tour, so that should be really cool.
Harry: We’ve pushed our album back to February, but that’s going really great.
Alfie: Yeah we just had sort of our last listen, you know gave a load of notes, so when it comes back we’ll have a totally finished album. We’re really excited to see how it goes and then hopefully we’ll be looking forward to doing our own tour and festivals again next year!
Hudson Taylor’s new single ‘Chasing Rubies’ is released on 6 October, and they join Jake Bugg on his UK tour this October – tickets available here.
