South frontman Joel Cadbury kicks back in a friend’s film studio in the London borough of Hackney, catching up on emails. He and his cohorts, guitarist Jamie McDonald and drummer Brett Shaw, took a creative leap when they released With The Tides in October 2003. Unfortunately, just as the UK-based band was about to embark on an extensive American tour in support of the album, McDonald broke his wrist in a soccer game. After three months of being unable to play guitar, the cast came off in late November and he began slowly rehabilitating his injury. “Jamie’s back on the mend; he’s like 99 percent now,” says Cadbury. “We’re back in the studio, rehearsing and recording B-sides and demos for our next album. It’s quite free. We’re not restraining ourselves at this point; we’re just jamming out ideas. There’s always room for tangents on albums, but on the last one, we were strict with ourselves. It was more focused as opposed to the broad brush strokes of the first record (From Here On In). The next record will be different. We want to keep going in new directions.”
South’s American tour has been rescheduled for January and February. Cadbury says it was strange to be at home in the UK while the band was getting so much positive feedback about Tides from America.
“We were here and we were supposed to be touring there,” he says. “It’ll be liberating to actually get out and do it.”