Cardinal Black Weekend – Part One. I always like to start my interviews by finding out where my interviewees are. It turns out that Tom Hollister is about three miles down the road from me, while Chris Buck is in Bristol. Given that I’m moving to Tom’s hometown of Risca mere weeks after the interview, we embark on a little local knowledge chat. “It’s the most Welsh conversation ever, naming valleys and places in Wales,” laughs Chris as Tom and I are brought to task.
For those who do not yet know, and I say yet, for they are on the verge of greatness in my opinion, Chris and Tom are two-thirds of South Wales Blues Soul Rock outfit Cardinal Black. They are completed by drummer Adam Roberts.
About to release their second album, Midnight At The Valencia, as well as embark on a full headline tour of the US, the band are surely one of the hardest working sets of musicians in the UK today. They have street cred, too. And the miles under the belt, as Tom will explain a bit later.
Formed way back in the noughties, the trio performed as the Tom Hollister Trio for several years before going their separate ways. Tom departed the UK, whilst Chris was part of local outfit Buck & Evans, as well as forging a huge following on YouTube with his guitar playing.
Fast forward to 2020, and they guys decide to reunite. Born in lockdown, they released January Came Close in 2022, describing it as a collection of songs written, some over the best part of a decade. They have supported Steve Hackett at the Royal Albert Hall, played with Joe Bonamassa on one of the cruises bearing his name, and put in the leg work with club gigs across the country and beyond.
But I begin back with those early days as the Tom Hollister Trio when my wife and I stumbled across them by accident in a small club in Cardiff around 2010. It seems like yesterday but also a lifetime ago. What do they remember about that time?
“Very little,” says Chris, “drugs. A drug-filled haze, paracetamol mainly.” He delivers deadpan. Something I suspect but confirm during the interview is that Chris Buck has a dryer-than-sand sense of humour.
“They were good days,” Tom says. “I enjoyed that mainly because I was able to rock out on the bass as well. I’ll never do that anymore. But the new record [Midnight At The Valencia] is all about the 10,000 hours spent doing those kinds of gigs together. That’s where those 10,000 hours, accumulatively for us at least, started.
“We were all knocking around in bands before that, but that was the time when it began for us. So, I think it’s definitely a moment for me, at least, that will remain in my memory. For sure.”
Chris explained that Cardinal Black were looking to do a surprise warm-up show for the US tour. “Somewhere like the Troubadour in London in Earls Court, which is obviously like a tiny little bar. It’s like 100 capacity. But it was the kind of place that we played quite frequently back in the day. It sent me down a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole the other day, looking back at videos of the trio at The Troubadour back in 2009/2010. It seems like yesterday and an eternity ago simultaneously.”
Chris laughs. “I don’t recognise any of the people in those videos… given I’m still in a band with them! Like Tom said it, this album is the culmination of those 10,000 hours playing all those kinds of clubs and pubs and dive bars and social clubs and stuff in the valley. So yeah, it kind of feels full circle.”
Reflections on the journey they have been on was part of my subject matter, and we embark on a discussion about this. With Chris utilising YouTube to become a well-known guitarist in the blues rock scene and the various changes of direction that they have all taken, one wonders what would have happened if they had been around in an age where things may not have been so rapidly developing in terms of technology-although that is subjective I know.
Cardinal Black is a band who fit the older analogue style production, as they have proved on Midnight At The Valencia, where they used analogue equipment at their studio.
Chris is pragmatic about their approach. “I think a testament to the generation that we are that we have a foot in both camps in every respect. The bulk of the record was done at Powerplay in Zurich, which is about as analogue as a studio could get. It’s an incredible place for gear, just a lovely one generally and one of the reasons that we chose that as a studio. But yeah, a very analogue mindset.
“But the vocals were done more digitally, as it were, in a studio in Newport. For budget reasons as much as anything else and practical reasons. That ethos is then applied to the way that we run the band, you know. It’s kind of analogue music, I guess, in the sense that it’s quite rooted in stuff of years gone by.
“But obviously, social media and everything that comes with it plays an integral role in publicising your band. You have to, maybe not necessarily, embrace that, but you must play that game to an extent. Otherwise, you’re just trying to hold the tide back.
“YouTube was obviously a big part of my career to date. You could kind of shake a fist at the sky and go, ‘If this was 30 years ago, this would all be so much easier”‘. There would be more money in music. But the flip side of that, I guess conversely, is that the great leveller is all those gatekeepers that ordinarily would have had to give the ultimate yay or nay as to whether you were going to be a success. They don’t necessarily exist to the extent that they did before because you can do it yourself.
“You can reach an audience. You can find an audience and you can build an audience yourself just by putting out music or putting out content or whatever that is. Whether you’re building a beauty vlogging brand or building a band, it doesn’t matter. You can find an audience, and that’s where that is massively beneficial to us.”
It’s refreshing to hear musicians being honest about aspects which we do not necessarily hear that often.
Tom, as he admits, likes to talk, and it’s easy to sit back and listen to his words. “The beauty of what Chris has done is he’s struggled,” he says. “We always used to laugh if someone said, oh, you’re the YouTube guitarist, and of course, that is how he is known to a lot of people. But as you know, for us, it’s always been band first, and YouTube is a way of satisfying a little bit of time that he had, especially doing COVID stuff.
“So, we kind of take that with a pinch of salt, I guess. But I think to your point there, Chris, if we were trying or if you were trying to do this 20 years ago, you become more reliant on the band, right?
“Because that’s the thing. All the famous guitarists in the world from the ’70s and ’80s were part of a band. It’s Slash and Guns N’ Roses. Even Stevie Ray Vaughan had a band of his own.
“You need the vehicle, right? So, I think Chris has done well to understand that. The YouTube world will get you incredibly far, but can it be a complete career? To his credit, he’s never just wanted that. He’s always wanted to be a guitarist in a band and have it about songwriting and the whole process.
“I think an analogue product in a digital world is the way I would put it at times. You’ve got to get on board with that to a certain extent. But without perhaps giving away the whole mystique, you can go too far and you can put your dirty laundry out for everybody to see all the time. I think that spoils it a little bit.
“We talk about this a lot. The fact that those players we grew up with were legends because it was completely unobtainable for a mere mortal to get up and be Slash. There was a definite decision to keep that mystique. Obviously, they didn’t have the option like we do. It was a magazine rather than Instagram, so it wasn’t so instant.
“Treading the line is sensible because I think at one point further down, not trying to predict the future, but things will go full circle. We saw that with vinyl. With the way people digest and ingest music, I think you can go too far either way. You must play the game a little bit.”
It is a topic that comes around time and time again, and we discuss the variation in the modern consumption of music. For a band who are modern in many ways and yet with respect, also have a foot in the past, Cardinal Black always appear to be a band with values.
They are ferociously independent and want to have some element of control over all their work. Whether they like it or not, Cardinal Black are becoming a bigger band, so can they hold on to those values?
Tom and Chris take time to explain some of the issues.
“I think it’s something that we always kind of struggle with,” Tom explains. “It’s a constant decision all the time. We’re reticent to completely talk about the business side of it all the time because as much as it takes up the bulk of the existence of a band, we’re not at the point where we could give all of that up to another exterior team.
“I suppose your point is that Chris and I, particularly, are two types of people that probably will never give that up to everybody, right?
“We like to have a handle on things, and we like to understand it for no other reason than we get enjoyment out of the process of learning new things.
“So, the first time I’ve tour managed a tour, that’s what I do. Or the first time we must get visa documentation ready for going into America. It shows progression to us in a way that, I guess, gigging and playing sometimes can’t show. That immediacy of progression, we enjoy that part of it.
“But you’re right, we have chosen, for example, in the UK run of dates that are coming up now to largely do those shows completely DIY rather than seeing the way that things might have been done.
“My analogy would always be that if you look at the music industry as two different parts, you’ve got the recording part of the industry, which is vastly changed since the digital era and everything going on. Spotify and record labels have had no idea what they were doing.
“Then you’ve got the live side of the industry. The moment you try and go well, how about we readdress how the live industry works because of social media and the fact that Chris, independently, will have a bigger reach than some national promoters.
“You look at a different way of approaching that, and everybody will go, Oh. No, no, no, you can’t do that. We’re at this little niche level. We’re not super big, so we’re not having to rely on the Live Nations of this world to just get through the door in bigger venues.
“We’re big enough that we can put 500 people plus every night in the show, which, at that point, you’re starting to make a decent profit out of a gig. So, the risk element, the biggest factor for that, is whether your cash flow in the band can sustain you.
“Paying deposits on venues for sometimes 12 months down the line. If you can get that right, then you’re your own bank at that point. Why would you need to rely on anybody else? So, we’ll see whether it works out because it’s the first time that we’ve bitten that amount of that cherry off.”
Tom and Chris are at pains to point out that this is a boring topic, but it’s essential to explore these things further. How Cardinal Black approach their entire business is the difference between survival and elimination. So whilst it may not be sexy, it is the vital lifeblood that allows Cardinal Black and every other band like them to exist.
Tom is happy to continue. “To your point, they are the things that are non-movable with us so that we have a sense of controlling that destiny and where the band is going to move forward,” he says. “Because it is enjoyable to us and it is fundamentally our lives, our business.
“Chris will come up with this line in a minute, but nobody is going to like your band or work as hard for your band as you are ever going to do. Nobody is going to care as much as you can care. We have people in the wider team, but those people come on board essentially when they can justify worth and support and help.
“You don’t just take people on board because you’re told that’s the thing that everybody does. It’s so I’ll be able to keep the lights on for six months. Now we got kids, and we got mortgages, and we got families, and that has to come first, unfortunately, as non-sexy as it is.”
Chris is keen to make it clear that it’s not called the music business for no reason. “Like it or lump it, as unsexy as that is, and I know people baulk at the idea of bands talking about the business side of things, but it is the music business,” he says. “The more of that business you can understand, the better, and that applies to any business in the world.
“Whether you’re running a concrete company or whatever… insert company here kind of bloody hedge fund manager… The more you understand about that business, the less likely you are to be taken for a mug or slip through the cracks… Mistakes to happen and money to be taken or whatever. It’s particularly unsexy. But it’s an integral part of running the band today. If you want to do it successfully, at the level that we’re at.”
Perhaps the reality is that Cardinal Black is a band who are still doing their own load-in and setting up. This is demonstrated in the video for Holding My Breath shot at the Tramshed in Cardiff ahead of their show in January 2025.
“I would very quickly delegate that task,” laughs Chris. I ponder whether there are some who think that the band just walk on stage with everything set up for them. Is that a naive view of the way it works?
“I don’t think it’s incredibly naive, right,” says Tom. “We did our London show on that tour at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. We have supported other bands there where that is the case. They will not lift a finger. I don’t judge that as they have busy lives and they are doing press commitments.
“But they’re at the point where they’re able to financially justify five crew guys who are going to come in. Chris doesn’t have a guitar tech. I don’t have anybody that’s going to set my mic up. Robbie doesn’t have a drum tech. But are we at the point where we could get that? Yeah, we probably could now.”
Tom is honest about the video, too. “I didn’t really like the inclusion of that so much in the video because I thought that it might come across as disingenuous, and people might think, oh, they want to just show off the fact that they still get down in the nitty gritty.
“It’s just genuinely how it happens all the time. Your crew party is basically the band, plus maybe one or two other guys. It’s a front-of-house guy and a driver/merch.
“I see the end-of-tour posts that bands put up, the photo that they put up, and I go, Jesus! I’m counting the people on the tour. I’m like, wow, because then it’s those same bands that we will have internal chats with.
“They’re like, it’s such a struggle. What are we gonna do? How are we going to fund the next six months or whatever?
“I’m like, well. Put the shiny bus away…”
“Trim the fat,” Chris adds.
“And trim the fat a little bit,” Tom says. “Obviously metaphorically, not physically.”
Cardinal Black will release their new album, Midnight At Valencia, on 23 May via Thirty Tigers. There are a number of in-store dates in May, a headline North America tour in August, returning to the UK in October and Europe in November and December.
Cardinal Black Tour Tickets are available from https://www.thecardinalblack.com/tourdates.
Midnight At The Valencia will be available in neon pink and neon orange vinyl formats, alongside standard CD and digital editions, and can be pre-ordered from https://orcd.co/midnightatthevalencia-eu.
Cardinal Black – In-Stores:
May
24th – CARDIFF, HMV
25th – BRISTOL, Rough Trade
26th – LONDON, Lower Third w/ Rough Trade
27th – BURY, Wax n Beans
28th – NEWCASTLE, Cluny 2 w/ Reflex
29th – GLASGOW, Strip Joint
North American Headline Tour
August
6th – NEW YORK, Mercury Lounge (SOLD OUT)
8th – TORONTO, CA – The Drake Hotel Underground (SOLD OUT)
9th – ONTARIO, CA, Kitchener Blues Festival
12th – CHICAGO, Schuba’s
14th – MINNEAPOLIS, 7th Street Entry
16th – OMAHA, Playing with Fire
18th – NASHVILLE, Basement East
19th – ATLANTA, Vinyl at Center Stage
21st – AUSTIN, Antone’s
23rd – PHOENIX, Rebel Lounge
26th – LOS ANGELES, Troubadour
29th – SAN FRANCISCO, The Independent
30th – CAMINO, Concert Series @ Delfino Farms
European Tour
November
20th – AMSTERDAM, Bitterzoet
23rd – COLOGNE, Stollwerck
24th – HAMBURG, Bahnhof Pauli
25th – BERLIN, Privatclub
27th – MUNICH, Backstage Club
28th – VIENNA, Flex
December
1st – ZÜRICH, Papiersaal
2nd – FRANKFURT, Brotfabrik
6th – PARIS, Supersonic Club
