Hi, How the devil are you today and what is the view from where you are standing?

Oh amazing, thank you! I’m currently sitting on a swing seat in the garden and enjoying these fresh blueberries. It’s pretty windy today but I’ve got two pairs of socks on. (and two hats). 
  
Where did the name of the band come from?

Our band name Chailo Sim is an old Romany phrase which means ‘I am replete’. 
 
We saw your performance at the Green Man Festival but for people who have not heard of the band before, how would you describe your music?

Spillers Records, Rough Trade Records and various digital outlets online sell our debut album ‘Replete’ within the ‘new folk’ or ‘alt folk’ genres which seem to represent lots of bands that we love listening to. I don’t place too much importance in genres but it is an honour to be on roughly the same page as bands such as Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Midlake etc.

In terms of the equipment we use, I’ve always loved traditional acoustic instruments and the pure sounds they can make, but I think they only represent the light and it’s important to represent the dark, too. When you start to introduce a bit of distortion, and play around with the natural relationship between chords from song to song, you can begin to create music that represents real life which can bring about meaningful emotional responses. 
 

 
How and when did the band form and where would you like to be in say, five years time?

Chailo Sim came together over a period of a few years on the west coast of Wales and there’s not too many musicians around the rocky shoreline of Pembrokeshire, so we were very lucky to be able to find each other and even luckier that we’re into the same ideas. Most musicians I know enjoy writing the type of music that they like listening to, and I guess we’re the same. There are currently six of us in the band who have quite different musical backgrounds with elements of convergence - so that may account for our coming together.

When you finally begin to achieve certain things with a band such as recordings and gigs, it is actually really nice to look back at the journey and laugh at the little accidents and moments that conspired to get you to where you are. If In five years time we’re still as happy and excited about writing and playing music as we are now, that would be amazing.

There seemed to be a whole host of instruments on the stage at Green Man with a heavy emphasis on strings. How did your sound emerge and did you enjoy the festival?

Growing up and watching live bands that were swapping around instruments between songs on stage was pretty inspirational...bands can actually get quite a diverse sound without needing too many members just by a few players turning their hand to different instruments. Everyone in the band apart from me plays a couple of instruments so I’m trying to catch up with my new octave mandola. I got quite a few chords figured out already!  Need to toughen up my fingertips, though. 

Oh Green Man. Green Man. I think we are all still in a bit of a dreamy haze since we played...after playing to such a phenomenal audience at the Far Out stage, meeting some of our favorite bands and camping, sharing and playing music with them - I was genuinely concerned at one point that we hadn’t actually survived the journey through the beautiful Brecon mountains to where it all took place...

It was a thorough honour and a long-time dream of all of ours to play, and the line-up, festival goers, organizers and weather made this year’s gathering very special indeed. And thank you for being there, too! 
 
One album released, are there any tour dates lined up in the near future?

What has worked well for us recently is to just play one show a month and try to make that show really count. We love playing live and previewing new material to friends and fans and right now we are working on a collection of songs that are likely to feature on our next release.  We’ve got a couple of shows coming up including an unplugged fire-pit session within an inspiring week of talks called the Do Lectures (www.dolectures.co.uk), and we’ll be playing the awesome Swn Festival in Cardiff curated by BBC DJ Huw Stephens and fellow curator John Rostron (www.swnfest.com).
 
Is the band 24/7 or is there downtime too or, are there day jobs as well?

Yes, to all of those!
 
The best piece of advice you can give to artists, just starting out is?

I would say there are two important things to do: 1) write original music you love, and; 2) learn how to use social networking effectively. It might be difficult for you in the long-run if you can’t achieve both of these. The second bit is easy...you just need to google it.
 
Do any of the band play in other outfits or, are there other bands/artists you would like to recommend?
 
Well I nearly said ‘we only play with ourselves’ but thankfully I had a quick re-think of the connotation! No, we’re really happy to have formed our band and we all love playing and writing music together and all that it entails. It’s a natural human need to be part of something and it is very satisfying and rewarding to be a part of Chailo Sim. For other bands/artists, you just need to check out anything by Bella Union, Domino, Sub Pop, 4AD and the like. You’ll never run out of amazing music with those kind of record labels about.

Finally what question would you most like to be asked about the band and what is the answer?


Woah, what a question! I think the only way I can actually answer this is to say that your final question is the question, and that my answer, is this. Can you ask the question again? x


 Band Links

Chailo Sim
/greenmanfestival
/soundcloud
/swnfestival
/facebook
/twitter
/last.fm

The album Replete is available online and from all good record stores