Born in the sleepy town of St.Ives, Cambridgeshire, but moving to London to pursue music, 24-year-old James Page struggled to adapt to the capital. He worked as an administrator for a bailiff company, played a crash-course of depressing open mic nights, and then took up a permanent fixture in a call centre in Waterloo – the latter of which strengthened his work ethic, and the songwriting process itself.
At the end of 2013, after delaying the process for as long as humanly possible, Sivu finally handed in his notice at the call centre, signed a record deal with Atlantic Records and finished up his debut album, Something On High which was released in October 2014. This year he is embarking on his first ever headline tour and we are lucky enough to be one of the venues that he is playing at! We spoke to him about returning to Nottingham…
Last time you were in Nottingham you played at Dot to Dot Festival. How did you like the Nottingham crowd?
I love playing in Nottingham. I’ve been lucky enough to play there a few times and always had amazing audiences, so very much looking forward to playing my first headline show at The Bodega.
A couple of us managed to catch you when you supported Bombay Bicycle Club recently (good job by the way). Did you have fun on that tour? What was your highlight?
Thank you for watching firstly. That tour was really a dream come true it’s not often you can say I got to play along side one of my favourite bands. Me and my band were treated so well too, I don’t think I will ever forget it.
The upcoming tour is your first headline tour. What can we expect?
I’m going to be playing songs from my album ‘Something on high’ as well as some new songs that I’m yet to play live which I’m really excited about. As the venues are quite intimate I wanted to pull in the set slightly taking the songs to a more stripped back setting. It’s been quite a challenge but I think it shows the songs in an honest light; taking them almost back to how they were written.
We have always been big fans of your press shots (yes that’s a thing when you work in a venue!) Who came up with the idea?
Thank you! Imagery is always something I wanted to ensure we had right from the start, so i teamed up with an amazing artist/photographer named Vita Hewison and she is brilliant, she only works on film and we spent a lot of time working on double exposure shots which helped us to create what become the theme of the album.
Can we expect to hear some new songs when you play at The Bodega?
I will be playing a handful of new songs which I’m so excited about. No one has heard these songs yet not even my close friends so it will just be nice to test the waters to different audiences every night.
Tickets are available for Sivu’s gig on 14th March here.