Virens
James New and Louisa Connolly-Burnham are Virens, whose first EP Couples Therapy is out this week. The duo tells us about how they met, launching their first record and getting their music out there as an independent act.
When did you both become interested in music?
James: For me, from when I was about 5, but the first time I properly wanted to start to play music I was probably 9 - I think I’d heard Oasis, I think it was Definitely Maybe, and that kind of made me want to pick up a practice guitar and start learning.
Louisa: I always loved musical theatre growing up, I was a bit of a theatre kid, so that was the kind of music I sang, but my actual taste in music has only really started developing in the past two years since meeting James, because it wasn’t very eclectic before, was it?
James: Oh, I don’t know about that…
Louisa: It was mainly just Busted! So I definitely think my music taste has become better since meeting James.
When - and how - did you meet?
Louisa: We met on a dating app, at the end of 2020!
James: So just as we were going into the second lockdown we met and sort of became each other’s bubble, very quickly. Obviously there wasn’t much to do, and I think I heard you (Louisa) singing in the kitchen and I was like “Oh, do you sing?” and you said “A little bit…”, so we just got a bottle of wine and tried writing a song, which it turned out we quite liked! It’s on the EP, it was Submitted To Sin - it was actually the first thing Lou had ever sung into a microphone. I have quite a long history, I’ve been around for quite a while - I was in a band years ago called Mirrors, an indie band in the noughties, and for the last ten years I’ve been a songwriter for other artists, but it’s been a long while since I’ve been involved in an artist project where we’ve had to shape the whole thing together, so it’s been really fun and refreshing.
Louisa, you’re also an actress - do you still act much or has this taken precedence?
I was filming a TV show last year called Vampire Academy, which was an NBC Universal show, and I was living in Spain for the first half of last year filming that, so while I was there we sort of put a pause on Virens stuff. Then when I came back last summer we really dove in to focusing on the music. It’s been quite a slow year this year, with acting - there’s a lot of writer’s strikes happening at the moment, both in America and in the UK and europe, so everything’s moving very slowly which ios a shame, but it also means that I’ve been able to put a lot of energy into Virens, which is nice. I definitely consider myself equal parts an actress and a singer, and will continue to put my energy into both.
When did you both begin to think about putting music out together?
Louisa: We did our first song, Submitted To Sin, and were pleasantly surprised when we woke up the next day and thought it was quite good, so we sent it to a couple of James’ friends in the industry who said “This is good, you guys should make a couple more”. So we made Salut! and Stitch Me Back Up, and then I booked Vampire Academy, so I moved to Spain and we kind of put a pause on it. Afterwards we came back to it and revisited these songs, and a friend of ours hooked us up with our manager - her name’s Jenny, she’s amazing - and it’s really been down to her that we’ve started focusing and working out what the plan of action is. So really just in the past year we’ve been putting out the songs we’ve been sitting on for a while.
James: Initially I think we were thinking this may be more of a passion project, just make the tracks and not think too much about further producing them, or how the live show might look like, or press and whatever, but Jenny’s really pulled everything together, and it it feels like it’s a real project.
Do you have designated roles, ie does one of you write more than the other?
James: Definitely, I am absolutely useless when it comes to social media-
Louisa: And any admin! Admin, social media, emails, that is my bag. James is definitely more musical than I am - we both write the lyrics together, but James does the production and I do the admin and everything else.
James: I feel like I’ve got a really good deal there.
Louisa: James cooks, and I do the laundry - we have roles in all the areas of our lives, there are things each of us are better at!
Your EP, Couples Therapy is out on June 21st - how many tracks are on it?
James: Five - the three singles we’ve already put out and then a cover and one last sort of non-single that we liked, that was a demo we just wanted to put out - a really raw little demo that’s just me and Lou in our little spare room.
Are you playing live much for the release?
James: We haven’t done any live shows yet. Our feeling was that we wanted to make sure there was enough music out there people knew, so I think the plan is probably to put another EP out and be doing our first live shows around October, November this year.
Have you started work on the second EP yet?
James: It’ll probably be about four or five tracks again, but to be honest we aren’t putting any definite number on it yet. If we have eight great songs we’ll put them out, but for us it’s quality first. We’re pretty confident about at least three or four we have that we really like though.
As independent musicians, how have you managed to get your music out there and find an audience?
Louisa: It’s quite daunting starting from scratch, but luckily we have an existing platform with my TV and film careers, so we tried shifting people over to the music a bit and it seemed they really liked it, it happened very organically. We’ve also been using this other platform called SubmitHub, where you can send your music to indie blogs, playlists and curators and stuff like that, and it’s really affordable. And I’m finding that consistency is key, so as exhausting as it is I really am trying to post on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram every day, and saying hi to new people and making new music friends. It’s growing slowly, but it is growing, and as we don’t have a label yet I’m happy with the rate it’s moving at.
Words: Scott Bates