We sit down with the band ahead of the release of debut EP 'This Better Be Something Great'.
Photos: Joe Moss | Words: Donovan Livesey
Four uni mates messing about in a grimy Manchester bedroom playing covers to kill time. That's how Westside Cowboy started - no plans, no pressure, just hanging out and playing music, maybe ordering a takeaway. But sometimes the best things happen when you're not trying too hard. The Manchester quartet – Reuben Haycocks, Paddy Murphy, Aoife Anson O'Connoll, and Jimmy Bradbury – are now one of the city's most exciting musical propositions.
Westside Cowboy have gone from casual jam sessions to co-signing with taste-maker indie labels Nice Swan Records and Heist or Hit as well as beating thousands of entrants to win Glastonbury's 2025 Emerging Talent Competition and land a slot at the festival itself – all before their debut EP 'This Better Be Something Great' drops on 8th August. We caught the band backstage before a support gig at the iconic 100 Club to chat about everything from the importance of grassroots venues to their idea for a Westside Cowboy theme park.
Your debut EP is out in a few weeks, how are you feeling now that it's finally about to be released?
Reuben: "We're all feeling really good about it. These songs, in the Westside Cowboy world, are actually really old, so it's nice for people to finally be able to hear them. It's a bit surreal, but we're mostly just really excited."
Paddy: "Yeah, it's nice as well because they're the first songs we ever wrote together as a band, which makes it even more special. It feels like the right place to start, like we're introducing ourselves properly and setting people off on the right foot."
Aoife: "These tracks were our demos at the beginning – apart from 'Drunk Surfer', which came a bit later. But the rest were really what got us here. We uploaded them to SoundCloud, and that link just kind of made its way around. It reached the people we're now working with, so it's cool to think of it as a full-circle moment."
The EP is called 'This Better Be Something Great', which sounds like you're holding yourselves at some sort of creative gunpoint. Does the title reflect your own attitude towards music or any internal pressures?
R: [laughs] "We try not to put that kind of pressure on ourselves, to be honest, we're not really into the idea of holding ourselves to any sort of standard like that. The title just came from a lyric in 'Shells', and as soon as it landed we were just like, 'that's the EP name.'"
P: "Yeah, I remember you saying it and I was like, "No way," but it's one of those things like as soon as that was mentioned, it stuck."
A: "We recorded the EP about six months ago, and I think, in a weird way, the title's taken on more meaning since then. It all got a bit mental after we finished recording, and we've been so lucky that the response has made the title kind of true. It's like, God, people are actually expecting to hear something and it's not just going out into a void, which is cool, but scary."
Westside Cowboy formed in 2023 – what advice would you give to yourselves starting out or what would you have done differently?
R: "Absolutely nothing. We couldn't have been luckier and we couldn't have had a better time. We'd all come out of bands that had been a bit more of a struggle, where the fun had kind of worn off. Westside Cowboy felt like the antidote to that – it felt positive from the outset, mostly because we didn't overthink it and we didn't really care, we just wanted to play music and didn't put pressure on it.
"If anything, I think I'd rather be in a universe where we could speak to our past selves and they could speak back. I feel like I'd be the one needing advice from the version of me who started Westside Cowboy."
A: "I love the idea of that, like there's a scenario where it's like, 'Oh my God, it's me from the future! What knowledge do you have to give me?' and you're like 'Actually, I've got all the questions.'"
R: "It was just so carefree and everything back then. I'd want my past self to slap me and be like, 'Keep doing that. Don't overthink it now.'"
You're supporting Divorce tonight, you've supported English Teacher in the past and are supporting Black Country New Road this year as well. Do you approach support gigs any differently to your headline shows?
Jimmy: "We try to keep support sets short, but to be honest, we always try to keep a set short. A headline is 40 minutes, a support might be 35."[laughs]
R: "I think we've often said that we prefer supports because you're like the underdog ready to prove something to the audience rather than having to live up to something that people are expecting. If people haven't bought tickets for you then you're on a totally clean state - like if they hate it means nothing, you know? But if they like it, you've actively stolen a fan. I enjoy that a lot."
P: "Yeah, we like stealing. We've only done maybe three or four headline shows though, everything else has been supports, so that's just what we're used to."
You're all going onstage soon, do you have any pre-show rituals?
J: "Loads of heroin."
A: "Yeah. We take off clothes, do a big circle of armpit tickling."
R: "We do sing the final song before we go on, always. Whether that's a ritual or just a last-ditch attempt to keep us sounding alright though I don't know."
A: "Oh we do have a pre-show ritual and it's James going for a wee when we're about to go onstage. The walkout music starts and James goes, oh wait, I need a wee. And if that doesn't happen, it usually actually does end up being quite a bad gig. Or it's just like that gig felt weird, because Jimmy went to the toilet at the right time."
Most of your gigs have been at independent grassroots venues. How important are those to bands like yourselves?
P: "We kind of owe everything to them. That feels a bit schmaltzy to say, but it's how we got started, it's how every band in Manchester gets to start and I'd imagine it's the same down here too. It's sad to see these venues constantly being squeezed, but it's for that reason that they just have to keep being used and we have to keep making the effort to go to gigs and to be in the bands that play them."
R: "It's not all doom and gloom, though. Manchester's still full of great venues, and there are loads of great new bands using them in exciting ways. So even though there's a lot of anxiety around it, in Manchester at least, the scene feels really active and healthy."
J: "And I think people forget about the social space element of those places. We've met so many lovely people at music venues and it's usually where we hang out with friends too. Manchester's lovely, you turn up to a local gig and you'll almost definitely see five or six people you know from other bands on the circuit and everyone seems really supportive."
R: "Yeah, they are literally the entirety of what we do and like. It's like if you were a golfer and there were no golf clubs. Or like... no crazy golf, and you were a professional crazy golf player it would probably impact your career. We're very lucky to live in a country that still has so many of these places, and we shouldn't take that for granted."
You've achieved a lot since you formed two years ago. In two years in the future, where do you see Westside Cowboy? What do you want to have achieved?
A: "I'd like to do a theme park. We could do Dollywood, but for Westside Cowboy."
P: "Seriously, if we can still be doing this in two years, that's success for us. That's it, that's our aspiration – to be able to carry on the way we're doing it."
J: "We'd love to keep doing what we're doing now, but also to keep it communal. We play with so many great bands here in Manchester and around the world, and we want to keep it like that and all grow together. Not in a virtuous way, but just because we've got loads of genuinely nice people. You don't want to be in a world by yourself, it's no fun."
