At Ramblin’ Man Fair we met up with the hard-working 4-piece hard rock band from Walsall — Stone Broken — who have just been announced they will act as support for rock legends Living Colour this autumn. They’ve already been on tour, this Spring, with Glenn Hughes and it seems the breakthrough UK hard rock act is going from strength-to-strength at an incredible velocity. This year they were ‘promoted’ to the main stage at Ramblin’Man.
We had a chat with them about their experiences thus far —
RAMzine: So you did Steelhouse Festival yesterday, how was it?
“It was epic, it was awesome. There’s a great vibe at Steelhouse and the rain and the mud didn’t deter anybody! They’ve got some brave spirits over in South Wales. We had one part of the set where we told everyone to jump and then we were worried they would get stuck in the mud! We got pictures from the stage… it was amazing.”
RAMzine: Tell us about ‘moving up the ranks’ what’s it like to be back at Ramblin’ Man?
“Well, as you know we did it last year and we were on the Rising Stage and we loved every minute of it. We had a great crowd and when we got the invitation to come back, we though “ah, brilliant” and got excited all over again and then, no way, Main Stage was announced. And, wow! “That’s interesting…” we thought, “It must be an error in the print…” seriously, we thought someone had got their wires crossed! But we did it, as you know, up there on the main stage.”
“We gave it our all and, you know what? We think we felt pretty comfortable up there! We had a great time. And at Ramblin’ Man it’s a great vibe. There are families here and we did a signing after the show and we were there for a whole hour signing! It was seriously brilliant. And, truly, we’d come back every year and do this if we could…”
RAMzine: Tell us about your year leading to this…
“We’ve done a lot. A lot has happened. We don’t want to miss things out so we’d rather give the highlights… We got to Europe for the first time. With Glenn Hughes. That was our first major tour, at the start of the year, so that’s quite an important thing to happen to us … we played some bigger venues here in the UK and Glenn took us over to Europe. And he gave us the tools that we needed — you know, the tricks of the trade — stagecraft etc. And an introduction into Europe.”
“And we’ve recorded a new album — we got some mixes back last week. And we’re super-happy. It was produced by Romesh Dodangoda. That’s the same guy who did All In Time.
“We went back because he knows exactly what happened and what went into All in Time so he wanted to “outdo” himself. It was great to get him on board. And, like we say, we’ve got it recorded, it’s in the bag, and we’ve just got mastering and a few more things to do and so we’re looking at an early 2018 release.”
“Maybe there’ll be a single or some other teaser before the year is out.”
RAMzine: Tell us about the Broken Army?
“That’s our fan-base. They’ve got their own Facebook page and everything. They’re like a family to us. We know, for definite, that they got our backs!”
RAMzine: Congratulations on everything. On getting to the main stage in record time and recording a new album, we wish you lots more success.
“Thank you.”
STONE BROKEN were talking to Neil Mach at Ramblin’ Man Fair 2017.
