“Growing up in the most northerly part of the UK meant we always had to travel massive distances to see amazing live, independent music. Worth every mile and since those times we’ve played in every corner of the UK and Ireland – but always swore we’d make the effort to take this kind of music to some areas of Scotland that are mostly overlooked in favour of the bigger stops.” Neon Waltz, Instagram April 2024

Neon Waltz have just completed a monster tour of the UK and Ireland, hit the US and Highland dates just ending with Inverness – but frontman Jordan is talking about the biggest dilemma the band has ever faced.

Soon, before the April sun and showers have gone, the Caithness band will close the last few dates of their big tour. They called these last dates The Highlands & Islands Tour 2024 – Kyle, Dunkeld, Inverness and Stornoway – and it means a lot to them.

There’s the chance to fulfill a promise they made to bring younger fans into their soundchecks – something they never had in the early years before they played “every corner of the UK and Ireland”.

It’s been quite a story – 10 years since they went live – and the world began to pay attention. Or as the NME put it: “… something very special is brewing in Britain’s most northerly town. Meet Scotland’s coolest gang …”

They had been working together since 2012, finally naming the band in late 2013. The buzz around them was enormous, after former Oasis manager Marcus Russell first got interested when he heard some of their demos. A guitar pedal and a song Sundial changed everything – the first song, a video made.

Along the way, it has been exciting to have the chance to witness some of their story – double-takes on the photographs now where the boys have become men. The fans on the social media posts sound like friends, not fickle strangers.

I’ve met them at a Highland festival on a soaking field in Aviemore being deluged by rain before they played, before they left to get straight back on the road down south for dates and recording down south at the legendary Rockfield Studios, though no releases came from it, frontman Jordan Shearer informs you. But with the many UK dates, supports and travelling, it was a regular way of life at the start.

You remember before that, seeing them wowing an Inverness bar venue with the light shining on Jordan’s upturned face as the crowd mentally rolodexed through musical categories to capture this newly-heard sound.

And it felt emotional two years ago watching them emerge again, returning to Belladrum live after the hiatus of Covid – and all we and they had lived through – and they sounded epic. They weren’t gone, they were back.

Now, in the upcoming Inverness set, alongside favourite existing songs, the band will be sharing the live version of tracks from their new and delayed second album Honey Now.

Yet first, Jordan is talking about their return from America after Texan music convention South By South West in Austin, and jet lag:

“That’s the farthest away I’ve ever been and I’ve never been jetlagged before.

“We flew back from Austin to Dallas, then we had a two-hour delay or something. I had the worst night’s sleep ever from Dallas to London. The flight over to America had felt really nice and it was in the middle of the day as well. So we had a few beers and just watched films – it was good!

“But my God, the way back. We got here at half two in the morning, but then we had to drive it. All the way up, though it wasn’t so bad for me, I was getting off at Edinburgh.”

The band have travelled the roads of the UK from Caithness for years, and Jordan is remembering that Aviemore festival and getting soaked.

“I was so drunk after that – I spewed in the van and Darren was in his pants for some reason and was helping me out of the back. There’s a picture of that somewhere …”

There are great pictures of the band in America, all six of them arm in arm in front of huge skylines. Being invited to play at South By South West is a big deal – but the band had to raise their own funds to go, including a raffle back in Caithness, hosted by Jordan. They even had a pair of cowboy boots you’ll see on their socials.

“I mean, we could have done it years ago. Our management had advised us against it, saying ‘There’s better ways you can spend your money’. But we just thought ‘We’re f****** doing it this time!’ Because, I mean, we’ve been around for 10 years now.

“So we were just like, ‘Let’s go for it!’. But it was completely self-funded as well, you know?”

It was a chance to get the original six band members together – more recently Neon Waltz has toured with Jordan, drummer Darren Coghill and the Swanson brothers, guitarists Keven and Jamie. But keyboard-player Liam Whittles did the whole tour beforehand, original bassist Calvin Wilson joined for the sell-out London show – and both went to America.

“If they are free they will kind of do it. And the London gig, it just felt like it’s been a while since we’ve done a proper gig in London. Mostly gigs we do in London are sellouts or are pretty close to selling out, but that one just felt special. Because it had been a while and it was that line-up that started the band, where the kind of dream started.

“And we had some really close people we took down from home, they were at the gig as well, you know? Like Jack, our bass player now. He came. He did the rest of the tour before it. But he just came down anyway to watch, stuff like that means a lot as well.”

But once in Austin, set to play the Scottish showcase gigs with Wide Days, who run music events in Edinburgh, the band had a huge dilemma. Mad is it sounds going all that way, they had to decide whether they could play those showcase gigs – or not.

Jordan explained: “We had the two special South By South West showcases – and one unofficial gig. But that obviously changed.

“We were still definitely buzzing from the tour. We had three of our oldest and best mates over as crew, as far as the American government are concerned, they were crew. The first day we had our first gig. And we did it – the British Embassy gig.”

But word had begun to filter out that some bands were deciding not to play official SXSW gigs coming up as the event was super sponsored by an arms company supplying weapons to Israel.

“We hadn’t even really heard of what the hell was going on until we were over there.

“We did that first gig, but I remember the next day, just feeling weird about it, you know? Should we have done that gig? We went to see another band – we had a day off and then we were supposed to be playing the day after.

“But on that day off, we started talking about it. And I was like, ‘F***, I don’t think we should be doing this!’.

“It was so messed up and it felt such a fast decision, but we were just talking about it for hours, like, ‘What are we gonna do?’

“We were kind of caught between doing it and not doing it. And, if we did it, what could we do that would mean something.

“I was saying at one point, ‘Well, we should definitely do it’. And my idea was that I’d just get on stage and f***ing sit in silence for half an hour and put a Palestinian flag on me – which at the time when you’ve had five or six beers is a great idea.

“But then I woke up – after the second worst night’s sleep I think I’ve ever had! – and I thought ‘That’s a really bad idea!’, specially in a place where it’s legal for people to carry guns, you know? I think I could have really pissed someone off. So that was that and going back to ‘Do we do it or don’t we do it?, we eventually came to a decision that we couldn’t do it.

“It took us six hours to come to that decision and it’s something you have to debate amongst yourselves.

“It was a tough day, like.”

But they still had one non-SXSW gig to do.

“It had nothing to do with it, so we thought we would still do that.

“It’s just like an American blog called Music For Listeners that has been a fan of ours for years – and it was great.

“It was really out of our comfort zone. at the side at a brewery, people all on benches, at two in the afternoon as well. But we had an absolute blast.

“We played and the guy there was like, ‘Oh, can you play tomorrow as well?’ So we did two.”

The band had informed the organisers of the Scottish contingent, but hadn’t made any public announcement at that point.

“We obviously didn’t go to any official South By South West stuff, so we missed all that, but we just kind of did our own thing.”

The band made friends with Glasgow bands Humour and Do Nothing – and Jordan doesn’t have a bad word to say about the many Americans they met.

“Even the morning [their non-gig] after, I felt a hell of a lot better. But we were getting slagged on Twitter for playing the gig, even though we hadn’t! It was just because they saw our name on the poster for the gig, but we hadn’t played, so we decided to announce we hadn’t done it.

“Our first plan was to send it when we went home, but then we were getting heat, for anyone who wasn’t there, so that’s when we put like a statement.”

“There were horrible rumours of people getting deported. There was a helicopter above our apartment and our mate Gary, was poking his head out on the balcony and he’s like, ‘We’re here, we’re here!’.

“At the festival, and the people who worked for the festival and just everyone who I met in Austin were so sound.

“I’d never been to America before ever in my life – I didn’t really know what to expect from Americans. But they were so sound and I don’t want it to come across that we had a bad time over here. I had a great week. It was just a bit mad, a mad day that put a cloud over the day and the week, obviously. But we still had a great time.”

If I didn’t believe in the band, would I quit…

Jordan Shearer

 Does it feel like 10 years – and how much does Jordan think the band changed?

“I don’t think we’ve really changed as people at all,” Jordan said. “You know, if you, if you placed us back 10 years ago, we would still be talking the same shite that we do. We’re never at the point usually because of the way music is that a band can just be a band. We all have our own side thing to put food on the table. It’s basically been that way since, well, like the Atlantic money kind of ran out even when we were still on Atlantic. So from that point, yeah, we’ve had to do other things.”

“We all have our own side thing to put food on the table,” Jordan says referring back to the time band was signed to the Atlantic label. “It’s basically been that way since, well, like the Atlantic money kind of ran out.”

Band ups and downs included the break with Atlantic. Now the band is with legendary label Fierce Panda for Honey Now and Jordan looks back to a life without the band.

“If I didn’t have a band I probably would be doing something that was maybe a bit more secure because I’m just self-employed and it’s very inconsistent,” said Jordan who has a four-year-old son. Maybe some months I make good money, yes. But especially like right now, you can be absolutely skint, like after I had trouble with my eye,” Jordan says, revealing his troublesome eye of the recent past is better.

Real jobs still need to leave room for the band: “We couldn’t really do it Monday to Friday, nine to five, I wouldn’t have enough holidays and stuff,” Jordan says of time for the band.

“It’s the one thing that I very rarely see any money from and you put a lot of your effort into, for little financial reward,” he says.

But something else has been fed, maybe?

Jordan answers: “Yeah. It’s whether, you know, if I didn’t believe in the band, would I quit today? But I’ve always known that we’ve got something pretty special. It’s just whether there are enough people ever to latch on to it or not.”

But the band means more, is what Jordan maybe leaves unsaid. So  you’re not surprised when he adds: “I don’t really care, to be honest.”

And the passion in that clear, high voice rang out over Scotland’s airwaves last week, possibly stopping people in everyday moments when he and the band performed on Michelle McManus’s afternoon show.

And anyway, read the remarks from the band’s obviously long-time fans on social media and it’s obvious. Neon Waltz has already got people to listen. 

Neon Waltz – supported by The Dazed Digital Age ­– play at Upstairs, Inverness, on Thursday, April 25. Honey Now is available. Thanks to Rhona Murphy for the recent live pictures. More at Instagram: @rhona_murphy