November is here, and that means that the vintage-tinged soulful rockers These Wicked Rivers are heading out on the Rock ‘N’ Roll Odyssey Tour. With a new album in the pipeline, MetalTalk found out all about the magic of live performance, the evolution of their sound, and the unbreakable bond with their fans.
The headlining show at the NWOCR Festival at KK’s Steel Mill wraps up a heady summer festival season of love for Derby’s fine quintet, These Wicked Rivers. To be strictly accurate, it’s been “peace, love and lampshades” to quote the band’s motto, beautifully realised in their distinctive “Nanna’s living room” stage set. 
I’m chatting to These Wicked Rivers frontman, John Hartwell, guitarist Arran Day and keyboard player Rich Wilson over a shared plate of coconut ring biscuits backstage before their set, and their enthusiasm is infectious. Their authenticity, good humour and chilled vibe extend off stage as well as on.
Reflecting on the summer’s highlights, the affection for the festival circuit is clear, especially Maid Of Stone, which saw These Wicked Rivers finally take to the stage after previous cancellations beyond their control.
“We’ve been booked for it several times before, and it just hasn’t happened, so it was a bit emotional when we finally got on the stage”, John says.
“It had been chucking it down all morning, and it just cleared a bit before we went on. You could feel the anticipation before we went on between ourselves and the crowd as well. We were all in it together,” adds Arran.
Arran is the high-kicking animated guitarist who is no stranger to surrendering to the flow, even among the perils of festival stages, so much so that his guitar tech, Neil, had to have a word about reining things in at a very wet Steelhouse festival earlier this summer.
“He gave me a pep talk before I went on – ‘don’t go straight down the runway.’ It was definitely wet down the runway, but it’s one of those things, you’ve just got to trust that the rock and roll gods are watching over you.”
These deities need to be here tonight too, as Arran is already eyeing up the potential for a bit of mayhem, having seen that on the headliner’s stage set-up here at the venue, the drum riser is set abnormally high.
“There are steps going up for Dan, our drummer, and I’ve asked Neil to move them to the front as soon as Dan’s up,” says Arran. “I can use them to get on the drums.”
“Please don’t try and jump off it,” implores John.
In the end, Arran made the jump not once, but twice – one of those wearing a double-necked guitar (albeit with a slight pause to suitably weigh up the distance), so all was well and everyone finished the show intact.
After the festival season is wrapped tonight, the band hit the studio in October for the follow-up to the chart-breaking Force Of Nature. In preparation, These Wicked Rivers have been experimenting with their setlists, using live shows as a testing ground for fresh material, as Rich explains.
“We wrote a batch of songs, demoed them, and then played a couple of the songs, because it’s always good to play them live if you can – dip your toe in and see what the audience reaction is like. There are a couple that have already changed quite significantly just from the crowd interaction, which is always a good thing. It’s interesting going back and listening to the original demo and comparing it to how we play it now, just from that interaction.”
This audience reaction is a massive thing for the band. One of the things that sets them apart from the pack is the deep connection they forge with their audience. You only have to take one glance around the room during their shows to see this connection with fans who are there for more than solely the music.
This energy was evident from the start, with Arran remarking, “I always think about when we did the hometown shows in the early days. They always felt really special because fans that had seen us around the country would then start to come to the hometown shows because they wanted to get that feeling.
“We’d start to build a heartbeat in those areas. We’ve always felt that in the West Midlands too. We now play some awesome shows up north and a bit more down south now, so you’re just building these little heartbeats of fans that have been drawn in from different areas.”
None of this is taken for granted, with all three lighting up with gratitude when they talk about experiences in the live arena, including realising that people can show their appreciation in different ways.
“There was a really old couple at one gig,” remembers Arran. “They were right at the front, and the lady was having the time of her life, dancing away, loving it, and the old boy had his fingers in his ears the whole time.
“You could tell that’s love right there! I don’t think he wasn’t enjoying himself, it was just too loud for him right at the front.”
The new material is going to add to their catalogue, which is going to bring the usual challenge of putting together a setlist for the autumn tour, trying to keep all sides happy but dealing with the inevitability of dropping some fan favourites along the way.
Some things are set in stone, however. “I think we’d get in trouble if we ever dropped Don’t Pray For Me,” John says emphatically. “We’ve finished every single show since the band started with that song.”
“From my perspective as a rocker,” adds Arran, “I always like to know what’s coming to a certain extent and be taken on that story. It’s like rewatching a film you’ve watched many times, knowing that you’re building up to this crescendo, and I think Pray provides that role really well because all the fans know that’s going to be our final song.”
“We’ve never been fans of the encore thing,” John continues. “We don’t think it’s us as a band. We don’t do that. People know that when we’re finished with Pray, we’re finishing. Also, we do fit a whole extra song in that space where other bands have gone off stage.”
Rich muses that even with this certainty, things can still occasionally take an unexpected turn. “We played an awesome festival in France about a month ago. They were going mad at the end, wanting us to play one more song, and we didn’t have any more songs.
“We obviously did, but we had planned the set to have that impact. We would never go on after Pray, and they were going on for a while. I thought there was going to be a riot.”
There is a lot of optimism and excitement for the new record, and there’s been a bit of an evolution, but still the authenticity and heart and soul of their sound is intact. 
“I’m glad to see that John’s written some nice songs for this album,” Rich says. “He’s a very good, very emotional songwriter, but he almost has to wait for inspiration to hit him rather than going away and churning out songs. So it’s been nice that over this period of two years, perhaps that we’ve been working on the material that he has come up with, probably going to be four really good songs that will be on the album.”
“We all write songs in the band,” adds Arran. “You don’t want to see one person with all the songs on the album, and that can happen if that person happens to write the best songs out of the bunch. But ideally, you want the richness of having the different writers on there.
“I think from a guitar perspective, I’ve been very much influenced by The Allman Brothers and that twin guitar harmonies. There’s a lot more of that on the record, a bit more of that southern rock sound, but more of a line to the hippie late ’60s sound. It’s come together really well because it still sounds like Rivers.”
“I’ve been listening to a lot of country music as well, and that fits in quite well with that sort of Allman Brothers sound,” muses John.
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Odyssey tour will be the first chance to hear some of the new songs prior to the album release. One thing is for sure. This is one quest where the rock ‘n’ roll gods will certainly find favour.
These Wicked Rivers begin their Rock ‘N’ Roll Odyssey Tour on 14 November 2025 in Newport. For tickets, visit TheseWickedRivers.com/shows. Special guests are The Virginmarys.
