A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with David Littleton from Myriad—a pop-rock band out of Southampton—who trained professionally in music and is now so in bed with the scene there, they might as well be the scene. With a sound similar to Catfish and the Bottleman, Myriad is a four-piece consisting of OJ (lead guitar), Jared (bass), David (vocals), and August (drummer)—who, yes, was born in August (I had to ask).
We caught up about all things Myriad–where they are at, what they are working on, how they met, and David’s side-hustle.
“The campaign we are working on is all about supporting our music scene, giving awareness to what everyone is doing in the music industry in the UK and in the south of UK. Most of the people are from Southampton … where we have taken a bunch of photos from really influential guys in the music industry and [are] building bridges with everyone and getting everybody in touch with everyone, [to] benefit everyone in the city.”
Instantly you can tell that David is far beyond his (presumed) years, and either he has a baby face or he has been paying attention to the right people in the industry, and taking everything in—both good and bad—and deciding where he fits in all of it.
“In conjunction with our single that we released, we had music industry people hold up a letter of the alphabet and it spells out the title of the song we released, “Castle of sand,” and we relate that to the notion of bringing everyone together.”
He explained how the lyrics to the track go: This castle of sand wasn’t built to last, you said let’s make a new start and describes how the music industry wasn’t built to last, so there is a message of bringing everyone together and making a community—which Myriad strongly stands behind.
The universe was seemingly at play when the guys met in school: they were all in a Jazz and pop module and were put in a sample group together as part of their course. After second year, they started playing outside of the classroom, although they still had room to go/grow.
“We have been in other bands before, but this is our main musical project. We are all musicians and we all went to the University of Southampton and we feel like we owe it a lot. We graduated pretty much this same time last year and this year has really taken off for us. Within the space of three months, we managed to tick off quite a few festivals off our bucket list, including Victorious Fest.”
When a band is started through a course and literally graded on their sound and style, I couldn’t help but ask how they were graded? Did it even matter what the lecturer’s thought? To Myriad, it did.
“One of the guys who we included in our campaign was a part-time lecturer and we were scheduled to play in a workshop so he could see our project and he ripped us apart. We didn’t really realize where we were going wrong but after a year we had done really hard work in first year and second year and by the third year, he thought we were one of his favorite bands from uni.”
To that end, almost fresh out of Uni, this band has played at places and fests that many bands would die to play. I then asked David what would their idea of success be–fame, fortune, doing Jack Black’s cocaine?
“I think two main things: obviously the first is for us as a band to achieve the goals that we’ve set for ourselves. My personal goal at the moment is this festival that I really want to play – the Isle of Wight festival. That’s where I was born, on the Isle of Wight, and if I was to play at that festival it would be a massive thing ticked off my bucket list. We would love to work with other artists, record an album. Obviously, we want to play all kinds of places like the O2 arena but we have to take it in baby steps. The other thing is to spread the message of positivity and uniting people and bringing people together and making sure everyone has a fair chance in music, and life really.”
As we finished up the call, I was beyond impressed at how someone so young seemed to have so much already figured out. You just get the sense that Myriad is going to go places.
“Honestly [the dream place to play] would definitely be different for each of us as band members but personally … there are so many places just in the UK that I would love to play. I’ll narrow it down to three and then I’ll pick one: definitely, Glastonbury festival, Coachella, and I would say probably Wembley stadium. If I had to pick one honestly it would have to be Wembley, it’s the top.”