Singer Dave Hemingway: ‘It would have been easier to quit – but I’m glad I didn’t’

You may not instantly know the name, but you most certainly know the voice, as Dave Hemingway’s golden tones added an extra dimension to the era-defining music of both The Housemartins and The Beautiful South.

Now, the Yorkshire-born singer is back with his new band, Sunbirds, a melodic pop-rock (with a touch of Americana) six-piece consisting of Dave on vocals, Phil Barton on guitar, Laura Wilcockson on vocals and violin, Marc Parnell on drums, Chris Offen on guitar and keyboards and Phil Chapman on bass.

The idea to put the band together came after Dave had quit his previous outfit, The South, a collective formed after The Beautiful South had gone their separate ways in 2007 (due to “musical similarities”) and featuring members of said group, whose biggest hits include Song for Whoever, A Little Time, Rotterdam (Or Anywhere) and Perfect 10.

“In 2016 I left The South, which was doing all Beautiful South songs – I wanted to try new stuff but the rest of the band just wanted to keep doing the same stuff,” recalls Dave, 62, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from his home near Hull.

“So I called that a day and thought, ‘Well, shall I call it a day full-stop, or wait and see?’ I was sort of waiting for the right songs to come along and Phil Barton, the guitarist with The South and now with us, came to me with a set of songs.

“We did some demos and I thought they were really good so I thought, ‘These are worth persevering with’. We went on to get some more people involved and do the album and it went from there.”

Dave, who replaced his friend Hugh Whitaker on drums in The Housemartins in 1987, staying with the much-loved quartet until they broke up a year later, says being in Sunbirds has given him “a new lease of life”.

He explains: “It’s like being in a band again from the start, which it is really because it’s not a successful band – we’re playing very small gigs.

“It’s a new spark of life; at my age it would have been easier to quit and I’m glad that I didn’t.”

Sunbirds’ latest single Make Up Your Mind was released on September 1 and features Laura on vocals. Dave notes that a new album is on its way, the follow-up to 2020’s Cool to Be Kind – “an album with warmth to spare,” according to John Aizlewood of MOJO magazine.

A Life Worth Living, Sunbirds’ second long-playing release (though Dave reveals that that’s actually a working title which might get changed), is due out at the end of October.

“We’re just finishing up the recording and getting it all together,” says Dave, “we’ve got all the songs, etc, we’re just putting the finishing touches to them at the moment.

“We’re sort of drip-feeding songs out at the moment and until the album’s finished we might put another song out in a short while after this one’s run its course.”

Dave notes that the second album is different to the first, in more ways than one: “It’s a bit more of a band venture, rather than just me being the lead singer, etc and the band behind me...

“Everyone’s involved and the music’s evolving and it’s definitely a change of style from the first album.”

Although he enjoys making new music, the singer admits that people do like to hear songs they know.

To that end, fans in Cambridge will be pleased to learn that the band will be including a few tunes in their set from Dave’s previous groups when they perform at the city’s Six Six Bar next week.

“We haven’t been doing that but I think we’ve reflected on that and thought, ‘Well, it’s understandable people want to obviously hear a couple of songs they know’ so yeah we are going to be doing a few of the older ones.”

Happily, my favourite Housemartins song, Build, which featured Dave and Paul Heaton’s voices combining quite spectacularly when it was released back in 1987, is one of them.

“I’m going to go on drums for that one,” says Dave, “for the first time in 30-odd years! We’ll see how that goes.”

Sunbirds will be appearing at Cambridge’s Six Six Bar on Tuesday, October 24. Tickets, priced £16.80, are available at thesixsixbars.com. For more on Sunbirds, visit sunbirds.co.uk.