Interview with Nick Workman (Vega) at HRH AOR Festival 2013

Vega Interview – Interview with Nick Workman at HRH AOR Festival 2013

Interviewed By: Matt

Hi Nick, so you’re closing the festival, how does that feeL

“To be honest I don’t think it matters what time you play, crowds like these are always there for the long run, it also means I get to see Tesla, I’ve just not got to blow my voice out singing along!“ (Laughs)

First thing I have to ask is where did the name come from?

“That was Dan, coming up with Band names is so hard, we had a whole list and most were shit (laughs) and he just came up with Vega, it’s short, snappy and looks good and we we’re like lets go with it!”

And the second album’s just come out?

“Yeah it came out a few weeks ago before the FM tour, it’s going really well”

You’ve had a lot of great feedback from Joe Elliot (Def Leppard) too….

“I met him through a friend of a friend a few times and we gave him some Demo’s to listen to and he gave us his opinion, he’s a great guy and honest, he told us he could give us honest feedback or gloss it over and we were like “Go for it, tell us” and he just gave me some feedback on the Demo’s, I feel that he may think we’re using his name to drop but we keep being asked, in fact I sent him an email to say that, I didn’t think he was being disrespectful”

I’m sure Joe will have done that when he was starting out

“Joe’s definitely done it all and got the T shirt, Def Leppard are my no.1 band, and he’s like my hero, I emailed him today and he told me to say hello to Brian Wheat from Tesla (They toured together and are great friends, Tesla appear in Leppard’s  “ Pour Some Sugar on Me “ video)”

So what’s the plan’s for the next 12 months?

“We’ve got really good momentum at the minute so we really need to line up another gig, keep on touring”

No chances of Download?

“It get’s so full, it’s booked up so quickly, but when we do Download we want to do it at a good level? We are happy to wait a bit longer, they just need to offer it us! (laughs)”

If I’m completely honest a lot of newly started AOR bands struggle to be so melodic with the songs, How do you guys manage to pull everything so together?

“In terms of the song writing, we don’t have to write epics, the song runs as it runs and it very rarely changes much from when we demo it, we just seem to work with what we’ve got and we all like radio friendly rock, it just happens naturally”

Have you got a personal favourite from your own songs?

“You know what, I haven’t, there’s different reasons why you like different ones, you always hear the artist say they are like kids and it’s true, you spend time shaping each song how you want it, we go from  “Kiss Of Life” to “Not There For You” tonight without the Piano intro and it’s just like – Wham! And that feels cool but no I couldn’t pick a favourite song, and it’s also how they are live and how the fan’s react”

And do you think there’s a fan favourite live?

“If we had a live album out we’d call it whoa whoa,  hey hey, cause we get loads of whoa’s and loads of hey’s from the audience, we close the set with “Hands In The Air” and it goes down so well”

At this point Nick’s phone goes and his ringtone is the theme to Topgun! – AOR definitely runs through his blood!

“To be honest I just don’t see us as AOR, we just wanna be Rock, when I was younger I didn’t say this was AOR, this was that etc, it was Rock. You listen to a Shinedown album and it’s like one song’s metal and then there’s “Unity” and that’s what we want – just to be Rock”

So have you guys got more festivals lined up then?

“We have one at the end of the year and we’re looking into it, we’ll be doing more in December definitely and it will happen”

So you caught anyone else here performing

“We’ve drifted in and out, we caught Romeo’s Daughter and Danny Vaughn, we’ve seen FM eight times already (they supported them on their recent tour ) ”

Ok Nick many thanks for your time and good luck for tonight