Since bursting onto the British music scene back in the early 2010’s, The Overtones have become one of the countries most beloved, and sought after live acts!
Still riding high from the success of their sold out 2023 headline tour, the multi-platinum selling vocal harmony group have announced they are hit the road again this winter, bringing their Good Times Christmas Tour to theatres and concert halls up and down the country throughout November and December.
Scheduled to kick off in Llandudno, on November 6th, the band will play a further 23 dates across the UK before wrapping up proceedings with an extra festive show in Birmingham on December 14th. Tickets for The Good Times Christmas Tour are on sale NOW!
To coincide with the tour announcement, the boys release their latest single ‘Ladies Night’ – an epic remake of Kool & The Gang’s iconic 1979 hit!
Produced by longtime collaborators Julian Hinton (Marisha Wallace, Stormzy) and Simon Bloor (Il Divo), the single sees Mike, Darren, Mark and Jay put their own spin on the legendary party track, adding an array of electrifying synths, toe-tapping beats and layered harmonies to create an absolute SMASH that is sure to go down a storm with fans at the boys upcoming live shows.
To celebrate both the release of ‘Ladies Night’, as well as the announcement of The Good Times Christmas Tour, we caught up with Mike, Darren and Jay to get the lowdown on all things Overtones…
Hi lads! How’s 2024 treating you so far?
Mike: We’re really good thank you! I’d say we’re gently, easing ourselves into the New Year (laughs).
Jay: The end of 2023 was pretty full on for us as we were on tour right up until Christmas – which was phenomenal, and a lot of fun, but also really demanding, so it’s been nice to have a little bit of downtime, and recoup after such an epic run of shows.
Darren: I’d love to be able to agree, and say I’m enjoying some quiet, downtime, but there’s a lot going on in my house right now as we welcomed a new baby girl into our family four weeks ago! So we’re all very tired here at the minute, but also full of love, so it’s all good.
Congratulations – that’s such wonderful news!
Darren: Thank you so much! We’re over the moon and absolutely besotted with her. I’ll let you into a little secret though, Jay’s been getting a little bit jealous as he’s no longer the smallest member of The Overtones family! But I’ve reassured him that there’s no need to be upset, and that I’ll still give him cuddles, I’ll still pick him up when he falls down, and I’ll still take him to soft play!
Jay: I mean yeah… I can’t lie, I’m hurt that Darren doesn’t show me the same kind of attention anymore, but I’m gonna swerve this topic of conversation and revert the focus back to the band (laughs).
Yes! Back to the band, tell us how, how are you feeling as you now tentatively step back into work mode?
Jay: Personally, I’m feeling great! We played our first show about a week ago, which was fantastic! We all really enjoyed seeing the fans again. It still blows our mind how they are willing to travel, from far and wide, just to come see us perform at these smaller, more intimate gigs. We’re so grateful for their support, and we hope they’ll be happy to know we’ve got another big tour planned for later in the year.
That’s right, The ‘Good Times Christmas Tour’ is coming back in 2024 – tell us everything!
Darren: Touring has always been our favourite thing to do as a band, but this tour, and what it represents, is very important to us.
Mike: We feel like the concept and the idea of having a ‘good time’ is sort of becoming like our group mantra – it’s a feeling, and an experience we want to give to people. I know we’ve each said this in the past, so forgive me for repeating myself, but in this day and age, life is tough and there’s a lot of crap going on in the world that effects all of us. So our goal is to produce a show that exudes nothing but happiness and unity, that our fans can come along to and forget all of their troubles, even if just for an hour or two.
Darren: We want to put smiles on peoples faces, and make this Christmas as magical and fun as possible for everyone. You’re always going to get that from us, we’re the boys that bring the good times!
As a band you’re known for always listening to, and respecting the needs of your audience. When it comes to devising your live shows, how do you manage the balance between making sure your fans are happy, but also that you as artists are creatively satisfied?
Jay: Honestly I think the two go hand in hand. As Mike said, our goal is to create a happy place for people to escape away to, and have a good time. But as much as we’re creating that for others, we’re also creating it for ourselves as well, because we crave that feeling of escapism sometimes too. Over the years, the boys have intrinsically developed an understanding of what people want, because they’ve taken the time to engage with people, and listen to their feedback. We genuinely love the input we get from our fan base and supporters – we feel very connected and in-tune with them, which is lovely.
Mike: Having that understanding and communication with our fans helps us when devising a show or tour, because we know now that if something feels good to us, then it’ll probably feel good to them as well.
Darren: To add to that, I’d say as performers, and artists we always want to get better at what we do; we’re very ambitious lads! So anytime we get to perform or tour, we push ourselves to be better than before, and if we feel like we are (better), then we’re satisfied.
At what point do you start to plan for a new tour? And what do those early conversations look like? Are you all sat round a table together brainstorming ideas, or do you have someone come in and take charge of everything?
Darren: We actually manage ourselves, and we oversee everything across all aspects of our career, so anything to do with The Overtones comes directly from us. But I think the organisation for this years tour, actually started on last years tour (laughs). When you’re on the road, you can’t help but reflect and think about any changes you can make to your show to make it even better. So I’d say conversations for our 2024 tour have already begun, we have lots of ideas about staging and the setlist, so we’re all really excited… it is a bit crazy to be talking about Christmas in March though? It’s almost like we’re wishing the year away (laughs).
You have such a vast, and extensive range of songs in your catalogue now, so is curating the perfect setlist for an Overtones show a total nightmare, or a process you quite enjoy?
Mike: Listen, it’s a first world problem to have (laughs). We’ve got 7 albums worth of material to pull from now, plus all of our EP’s and one-off single releases, so it is a bit of a mammoth task putting together our setlist, but it’s a process we all actually really enjoy, and actually take really seriously, because the overall flow of our show is important to us. We have our staple songs that we know we have to perform (and want to perform), but we also like to through in the odd curveball here and there. So we spent quite a bit of time having a little dig around The Overtones archive, to revisit tracks we maybe haven’t done for a while.
Putting all of the sensible stuff to one side, for a minute, what’s the funnest part of touring?
Mike: I’d say other than getting to perform live onstage every night, it’s the moments offstage, when the four of us are together, just hanging out that I enjoy the most. The build up to a tour can be quite intense, because you’ve got press to do, meetings to attend, a set-list to figure out, rehearsals, costume fittings… there’s a lot going on! And so like Darren said, because we manage ourselves, our plates are very full in the run up to opening night. But once we’ve got that first show under our belts, and we get into the swing of things, we just have the best time together.
Jay: We’ve got to be careful that we don’t give our partners the idea, or impression, that we’re just off on a jolly holiday, because it certainly isn’t, it’s a lot of hard work… but also, a lot of fun (laughs).
Darren: We really do have a great time together! I like it when things go wrong during the show (laughs). The fans often tell us they love it when things go a little awry, and we go off script! Sometimes we maybe push things a bit too far in those moments, but I think they (the fans) like that cheeky side to our personalities, and it makes the show more memorable. I also enjoy performing new material, and songs on tour…
Speaking of new material, and adding songs to your repertoire, you’ve just released your version of Kool & The Gangs’ 1979 hit, ‘Ladies Night’. Who’s genius idea was it to remake such a classic track?
Darren: Erm… well, as a group we’re always playing around and looking at different songs to cover, but I think it was maybe my idea to do ‘Ladies Night’…
Jay: IT WAS NOT! IT WAS MY IDEA! (Laughs).
Darren: (Laughing) No I think I played it to you all… Mike?
Mike: I’m staying out of this one boys (laughs). I do remember a big debate happening one night when we’re about to go onstage with Alfie Boe, and ‘Ladies Night’ was mentioned by someone, but… yeah, I don’t know, I’m not getting involved (laughs).
Darren: Ok, well I guess it doesn’t matter (laughs). The truth is, sometimes we just come up with these ideas for songs, and we can’t believe we’ve never thought of performing them before because they just feel like they belong in our catalogue. We doing ‘Ladies Night’ live, there’s a bit of a sexy, vibey dance routine that goes with it, and we just have a blast anytime we sing it.
At this stage in your career, how do you approach covering another artists song?
Mike: That’s a really interesting question, because there are so many things to consider when covering somebody else’s song. We don’t ever want to just phone it in, or produce a carbon copy of an already established, and well known song – we’re not a covers band, that’s not what we do. Our intention is to always try to create a version that enriches the original. And if we can’t do that, then we won’t proceed any further. ‘Ladies Night’ is quite an interesting song to take on, because it has lots of different verses, and choruses, breakdowns and middle 8’s – it doesn’t follow the traditional song structure basically. So we’ve switched up the order, and moved a couple of parts around, just to give it that extra bit of edge. When it came to the production, we recorded it thinking about it was going to sound in our live set. We worked with Julian Hinton and Simon Bloor, who are two wonderful producers we’ve collaborated with a lot in the past, so they have a great understanding of who we are and what we’re trying to achieve.
Can we expect to hear any other new music from you in the coming months?
Jay: Yeah, hopefully! We’re feeling really excited about potentially getting back into the studio and writing some new songs. We’re just taking things one day at a time at the moment and seeing what happens.
What’s the rest of the year looking like for The Overtones?
Darren: Busy! Literally from next week, it’s kind of non-stop for us until the end of the year, which is lovely! Obviously we’ve got the odd few days off here and there, but on the whole, our schedule up to Christmas is quite relentless. We’ve got some one night only shows all around the country, and we’ll also be doing quite a lot of international promotion which is great, and then of course, we’ve got the big ‘Good Times Christmas Tour’ to look forward to!
Mike: We want this tour to be an annual thing, and to make it a part of brand. We can’t wait to get back out there, and celebrate with our fans, it’s going to be fantastic!
‘Ladies Night’ is available to download / stream here