Hairdye on the Pure Local Extra show

Hairdye are a newer punk band from Newport made up of Tom, Penny Dakota and Rhys, although today, we were only joined by Tom, Penny and Dakota. We discussed a little bit of everything, but focused on their recently released single “Sick”. They’ve visited Newport City Radio before, but for a written interview and much more has happened since then.

Firstly we discussed their newest single. It is their first release, they have recorded a few more songs and plan to release them over the next coming weeks to eventually put in an EP. Dakota wrote the lyrics for the song as she usually takes on that job. The others give input, but she takes charge. Tom added that he has tried to write lyrics but chose to just leave it to Dakota. She added that little things like things people say or things she overhear sometimes make their way into her lyrics.

We talked a little about their recently played gigs. They played in the music trail in Newport last week among the lots of other artists. Last week, they played in Cardiff at Tiny Rebel in support of another band. They have some gigs coming up, the one coming up the soonest is in Le Pub on April 18th. They’re also going to be playing a release show for their next single in April.

As the members of Hairdye are all school age and still in a form of education, we discussed if they thought learning about music in school was useful. Penny said that she thought she was learning more about music in the band rather than school. Tom said that college has been helping him with more live music and mixing in a studio through live projects.

Our next topic was instruments. Penny is the bassist but she also plays guitar, although not in the band, just for fun. Dakota is a singer, she tried to learn the guitar but only managed the basic chords. Tom is mostly guitar, he sometimes sings but chooses to stick to guitar.

We talked about musical influences and what they grew up listening to. Tom likes lots of punk and listened to bands like Ramones and Madness when he was younger. Penny had a wide variety of music when she was younger but it was mainly The Beatles, it becomes apparent after learning that she was named after a Beatles song. Dakota listened to the Stereophonics and also lots of Nickleback.

You can listen to the full show here