"We had one gig in Dublin before Nikki joined which was pretty much a disaster," admits Becky. "But SxSW was our first time abroad and since then you’ve not been able to stop us. Amsterdam then Italy. We've started off a chain of travels. SxSW was good. It was stressful. We had an initial disaster getting there. It took 31 hours. Obviously it wasn’t meant to take that long," she finishes laughing.

"But once we were there it was really, really good," smiles Becky. "While we were there we were being filmed by the Culture Show. Though that was like adding stress to the whole dilemma anyway."

"They were really long days," adds Nikki. "We’d get up crack of dawn, do a gig, do loads of filming, go back get some food then go out again."

During the six days they were out there, as could be expected the filming required recording things more than once and free time was limited.

"We had one night where we got to see a few bands," begins Melissa. "Even then we were being filmed and were having to say who we were watching. If we had to go again, without the camera crew, we'd probably do a lot more and enjoy it a lot more. As a first time experience it was just like stressed."

"Having said that, it was excellent well worth doing," adds Nikki.

Filming or SxSW or both? Both actually as details of a few more anecdotes are revealed. The band fared well in sales after the show was broadcast and their myspace account racked up extra thousands of hits as well. With an album expected in 2007, hopefully the band will be able to burn up the charts.

Interview by Andrew Mclean 2006.
Photography © Andrew McLean 2006 & We Start Fires 2007