Stunning brewing up a storm

Date Published: 19-Dec-2008

THE Stunning make a sort of homecoming when they come to Galway for a show in the Black Box on Saturday, December 27. Lead singer Steve Wall is happy to be hitting the road once more with his old band.

“It’s great,” he enthuses. “The fact that it’s only every couple of years when we do get together, we’ve a great laugh. All the songs, they’re there, so we’re not struggling with new songs and trying to re-arrange things. It’s stuff that’s worked so you’re just picking up where you left off. It’s good fun cos there’s not an awful lot of pressure.”

The Stunning made a welcome return to the live scene this year with a rapturously received set at Electric Picnic.

“That was fantastic, we were blown away by that,” Steve recalls. “In the back of our minds we kind of thought ‘maybe we’re not the right band for the Electric Picnic, it might be a bit on the eclectic side’. I’ve been going every year and I love it but I thought ‘I don’t know if The Stunning would fit in here’.”

Any pre-show nerves were soon dispelled as the band tore through their hits and were joined by thousands of festival goers on backing vocals.

“Our gig was amazing,” says their front man. “There was about 7,500 people in that tent. We certainly didn’t expect that, and you had Christy Moore on at the exact same time as us. There would have been a fair old crossover of audience there. It went fine in the end.”

Such a reception at a high profile event, and the band’s current nationwide tour, shows that…