Cardinal Black (Credit: Mark Hilton)
They cut their teeth in pub bands, broke the charts with a debut single, and have just released their new album Midnight at the Valencia. Cardinal Black frontman Tom Hollister isn’t selling you a rock ‘n’ roll fantasy, he’s offering something more honest: songs about time lost, friends returned, and the pleasure of doing it their own way.
Your journey from bars to sharing stages with Peter Frampton and cracking the charts feels like a testament to the thousands of hours you’ve committed. What do you think it is that led to this breakthrough moment?
It’s pretty humbling rubbing shoulders with guys like Peter Frampton! That they have taken a punt on a small band from South Wales to open shows for them is a huge responsibility as well as an opportunity and I never take it lightly!
I’m really proud of the album. Lyrically, it’s a raw, personal record and perhaps some of the reason it’s gone down well is its ability to resonate with people.
What specific experiences or emotions influenced ‘Need More Time?’
I guess all relationships have their low points. ‘Need More Time’ is likely a reflection of those moments – albeit with a bit of poetic license!! I’m a sucker for songs about regret or redemption, I guess this my attempt at one of those.
There’s a smoothness to the production that never tips into gloss. How did you make a polished record that still sounds emotionally raw?
I think it’s a mixture of a great studio and a clear-headed producer. Cyrill was able to rein us in at those moments when you want to get carried away with the amount of toys around you! I think our type of songwriting has a fairly timeless feel and as such helps create that sense of warmth that analogue gear only enhances. We always knew we wanted to add as little as possible in terms of instrumentation and effects in order to best tell the story of the song, that’s probably where that rawness comes from.
You’ve all had different musical paths. How did those individual journeys shape Cardinal Black?
We have had different musical paths over the past 15 years. but they’ve always periodically led back to the three of us. Chris and Adam are all I’ve ever really known in terms of original music and even outside of that we played in a pub covers band for 10 years together. They’re my best mates, so even when they weren’t playing with me, it was amazing to see them both grow into other projects – but, I’ll admit it feels good to have them by my side on stage again!! We saw an opportunity when the world went through the Covid pause to relight the flame under some older material and see if we had any new ideas!
You blend blues, rock, and soul. Which artists or movements most influence you, and how do you balance honouring tradition with finding your own voice?
I think that’s a natural consequence of the three of us building songs together in the rehearsal room. Ad’s a big Northern Soul guy and loves groove, Chris probably has the better rock/blues sensibilities and I love American Songbook writing and the stories in those songs. What you hear in our music is just a natural combination of all three. We’ve honestly never sat down and thought ‘we need to sound this way or that’. I suppose having been mates over such an influential part of our lives, age wise, that we’ve naturally shaped each other’s musical tastes. It makes finding a good playlist for the tour bus pretty easy!
From Steve Winwood’s early interest to Alan Niven’s offer, you’ve navigated industry attention and still chosen a largely DIY path. Is this hands-on approach not just about control, but about a deeper satisfaction in understanding every facet of your “music business,” ensuring no one cares more about Cardinal Black than Cardinal Black?
No one is going to care as much as you, it would be strange if they did, but we never set out with that mindset… Honestly, other than our current manager who jumped on board almost immediately, we’ve always largely stayed out of the radar of the ‘industry’. The recent partnership of WME and Thirty Tigers in North America is likely a consequence of us having a sound that suits that part of the world more. In the UK we’ve always been pretty hard to pigeon hole and as a result festival bookers have tended to give us a wide berth. When you’re faced with that, you have to ‘fuck this, we’ll do it ourselves!’.
The upside of that mindset is that you don’t have to wait for anyone else to make decisions for you. The music business is pretty elusive and full of self-proclaimed gatekeepers who tell you that the only way to do something – build a fanbase, book shows, promote those shows – is to do it the tried and tested way. We always ask ourselves ‘why is THAT the way it’s done?”. We have nothing against any part of the industry, but we’re not going to wait around and let other people tell us we’re not good enough, that’s what the YouTube comment section is for!!
As you step onto bigger stages, how do you plan to maintain that ‘mystique’ you admire in your heroes, in an era of constant digital access?
I think those days are gone, at least for now, unfortunately. We came to an agreement when the band started that we would utilise social media to our benefit as and when we chose to, but to not engage with it at all, as a new band trying to promote yourselves is probably career suicide. It helps to think of Instagram as a billboard in a town centre, use it to promote your music, but don’t create music for it. We write and record music to play at live venues, that’s our job, the rest is just noise. We do have the benefit of not taking ourselves too seriously though, so any social media content is tongue-in-cheek; the instagram equivalent of miming on breakfast tv without your instruments plugged in!
Midnight At The Valencia is presented as a “rich tapestry of love, loss, grief, and hope.” In a world often chasing fleeting singles, what’s the enduring power of a full album experience for Cardinal Black, and what specific emotional journey do you hope listeners take with this record?
I guess this is another consequence of being fairly DIY with our approach. We all grew up with the full album experience, so didn’t even contemplate not releasing in that format, I just think it suits our style as a band. The songs on Midnight at The Valencia might be able to stand up on their own, but they’re designed to be listened to as a whole record; in your favourite chair, headphones on, whiskey in-hand. I think music should be given time to breathe and shouldn’t just be a throw away, passive experience.
In terms of what listeners take away from the record, I’m a big believer that once music is released it takes on the life of the listener. People tend to find very different meanings in the songs to the ones I had when I wrote them! We’ve had lots of people tell us that their first dance song at their wedding was a song off our first album called Tied Up In Blue. I don’t have the heart to tell them that it’s a song about a breakup!
