Battle of the Songwriters

The island is packed full of amazingly talented people from musicians to poets and sports stars to actors and now Quids Inn is going to find our best songwriter.

Hosted by Andy Saunders and Chris Cole from Riffs, supported by Barbers Unit 5, the contest will run all through November.

Having long supported local music, from Battle of the Bands to Open Mic nights, as well as regularly hosting young talent and new bands, Quids has been a place for Manx musicians to showcase their talents to a live audience since Gef was just a young mongoose.

Owner Andy Saunders said: ‘We like to support our local musicians in particular, and all our performers, and we have obviously hosted the island’s Band Battle for about five years, along with riffs and we decided, because that doesn’t really play well into the realm of solo artists, we thought we want to promote local singer songwriters and what they’re producing in their original music.

‘So rather than a band battle, we thought we’d open up a competition to be run for those composers and get them to produce their own material and hopefully we’ll find a winner and they will be able to produce some of their music and hopefully them up the ladder.’

Chris added: ‘I think it’s important because you know a lot of these people spend a lot of time putting their hearts and souls into writing songs but there’s never really been this kind of platform, at least not one that I;ve seen, where the songwriters can just go out and do their on material.’

The competition is being held throughout November and has 12 songwriters taking part, with Andy saying they filled up the slots in less than an hour.

He said: ‘We have a range of people, different sorts of genres and we’re going to have a really interesting competition. We’ve got some very notable songwriters that everybody on the island will probably be aware of and we’ve got some very youthful talent.

Chris added: ‘That is the key thing for us, it’s not just experienced songwriters, it’s that different level of “beginners” all the way through to experienced songwriters.’

Each performer will do a 40 to 45 minute set with one cover song to allow the judges and the crowd to see their interpretation of other people’s music.

Andy also thanked Barber’s Unit 5 for their support in this and other events held at Quids, as ever to see what is going on at Quids Inn, click here.

Heats:

• November 3 Matt Kelly, Daniel Looney and Chris Flood
• November 10 Steph Chambers, Wez Clarke and Ell Hay
• November 17 Harry Roe, Heikki and Trevor Shimmin
• November 24 Callum Brew, Charlie Aaron and Six & Seven (Paul Sellors and Nell Kneale)