McCrei was formed in 2012 when two young sisters, Leanne and Shannon, began sharing their experiences through their song writing and started gigging on the Camden acoustic circuit. Fast forward two years and the sisters have performed at over 250 shows including the O2 Academy, The Hope, Distillers, Rochester Castle and various other venues throughout England. They have recently been invited to perform in Munich and will be playing their first shows outside of the UK in 2015. Inspired by an introduction into traditional RNB and Motown, the music takes some direction while staying true to their signature style. I spoke to the girls about their influences, their songs, big fanbase, touring and music plans for 2015.
Piotr Balkus: Listening to your songs it’s hard to believe that you are 17 and 18 years of age. I mean your music sounds very retro – in a good way…
McCrei: Although we’re aged 16 and 17 we were brought up listening mainly to old school music which our parents tended to play which, although was a bit of a mixture, it was mainly made up of soul and motown artists. We spent many nights while we were growing up listening to artists such as Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Dinah Carroll and in more recent times Joss Stone and Amy Winehouse. I think this shaped the direction that we chose to go down with our own writing. We started off writing a lot of piano based ballads and our sound has evolved as we have gone on.
Does the fact that you are sisters help in any way during recording or live shows?
It definitely helps, especially when we play acoustic sets as we tend to bounce off each other and can anticipate any live improvisation that the other one is going to do. As we live together it makes writing much easier as we’re both usually around to work on ideas and can bounce off of each other. We always try to seize a creative moment when it arrives and we’ll qu ite often be sitting together eating midnight pizza and working on ideas well into the night. I think for us though the bond and connection goes deeper than just performing. We’ve grown together as people, sisters and musicians and we support each other through the ups and downs that life can bring.
In your music we can hear influences from 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. What do you find so attractive in music from this period?
We like and appreciate many different genres of music but for us the 70s, 80s and 90s brought so many timeless classics and will always be a big influence on us. Our parents musical tastes definitely influenced us and helped shape us into who we are today. Soul music is a passion of ours and it’s a great feeling that we are having people from around the world who share the same love of soul music getting in contact with us. On the writing side of things we pour a lot of ourselves into the lyrics and our lyrics tend to suit the production style of our recent songs, it helps to capture the message and emotion of the song.
My favourite song of yours is Rain Man. It’s more kinda pop song than one of motown or soul tune you have in your repertoir. It’s a great song filled with emotions…
Rain Man is a song that for us carries quite a strong visual image in the lyrics and one that I really connect with when I sing. We’ve known people who have been in abusive relationships and despite the emotional pain they stay in the relationship as they are afraid of moving on. For us the message is about standing up for yourself, being strong and being able to move on.
https://soundcloud.com/mccrei/rain-man
You’ve got quite big fanbase. For what reason do you think people like your songs?
It’s great for us that we have a growing fanbase and we are so grateful to everyone that follows us and supports us. I think from some of the messages that we receive it’s possibly down to our songwriting as we tend to write from the heart about whatever we are experiencing and I think the emotions in some of our writing connects with people about what they may be experiencing in their life at that time. We have always stayed true to who we are as an artist and I think that helps too.
You are based in Kent, but you started your music career in London…
Our dad used to be a bass player and so, for Shannon’s 11th birthday, he bought her a bass and taught her the basics. Shannon then went on to teach herself guitar and piano and started singing acoustically at school concerts. I happened to sing a Mariah Carey song at one of the school concerts that Shannon was performing at and our dad, who was in the audience, heard me sing for the first time. Prior to this I was learning piano and only sung when I was on my own when I was sure that no one could hear me! When we got home he suggested to us that we should possibly team up together and learn some cover songs. We did this over the next few months and when we were aged 13 and 14 we started playing around Camden on the acoustic circuit. It was a great experience and helped us get used to performing in front of an audience. We started writing songs shortly afterwards and began introducing them into set. It went from there really and we started to get invited to play further afield. We have recently been asked to perform in Germany which will be our first shows outside of the UK. We’ve lost count now of the number of gigs that we have performed at but it’s over 300 over the last 3 years.
You both look very similar. What are the main differences between Leanne and Shannon?
There are a lot of differences between us, especially in our personalities. Shannon’s the louder one out of the two of us and a lot more adventurous than I am. She’s counting down the days until she’s 18 so she can do a bungee jump, abseil a ridiculously high building and also do a skydive. Then there’s me on the other hand who doesn’t like heights much, jumping out of a plane isn’t my idea of fun! Other differences between us – Shannon likes her tattoos and her ear piercings and she’s a few inches taller than me.
You are touring a lot around the UK. Have you ever thought about conquering America? I’m sure they
would love your music out there.
We are fortunate to have a growing fanbase in America so we would love to play out there and meet
some of the people that follow us. As an unsigned artist we do have financial constraints but hopefully
we will get to go out and play some shows there in 2016. It would be great to do well in America and we will certainly look at getting our planned releases heard more out there. We have quite a large following in Brazil so our ambition for next year is to play some shows in America and then play some shows in Brazil.
You’ve got many beautiful songs released online. Can we expect full lenght album from you soon?
Ah, thank you. We have been writing a lot over the last year and we are currently recording an album. We are still undecided though whether the songs will be released as an album or as 3 separate EPs. We can confirm though that the first single ‘Show Me’ will be released in May.
And one more question if you don’t mind – why your video cover of Bob Dylan’s Knocking On Heaven’s Door on youtube is private?! (smile)
I think that video is one of our earlier acoustic covers. We haven’t really put much onto youtube in recent times but over the next few months we will be posting live performances and a couple of music videos which are more reflective of who we are now as artists rather than our earlier covers.
Thank you so much for your time and good luck!
Thank you!
For more visit www.mccrei.com
Follow on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Mccrei
