Scarlett Parade—made up of Geoffrey Tinkler (vocals, piano and drums) and Adam Jones (lead guitar and bass) — take a page from the singer-songwriters such as Damien Rice and Sam Smith, with lyrical inspiration from fantasy writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin. 

In their recently released EP Wildwoods, the duo use alt-rock and folk songs to tell their own one-of-a-kind stories. As musicians who lived in the small British island, the Isle of Man, setting out to make a living [as musicians] outright always seemed a little fantastical. ... [But] we felt we had some good material and did actually have the means and drive with which to pursue it further, so we did. Music is definitely in both of us, and I feel that if there is something in the world that you love to do and something that you think you are good at, then you owe it to yourself to at least try to pursue it.”

Scarlett Parade are debuting the video for “Hold On” exclusively on Myspace. “[The song] started out as more of a passing idea that we didn’t really take much time over. It was meant to be a bit of a throwaway pop idea, in the vein of “The Sweetest Thing” by U2 but eventually we worked on it and built it to what it is now.”

Hometown: Port Erin, Isle of Man

Current Residence: Faversham, Kent (in the United Kingdom)

How did you two meet?

We both attended Castle Rushen High School back home on the Isle of Man and struck up our friendship there. Surprisingly for such a small island there’s a strong musical contingency and throughout our high school years we played in various bands together, mostly performing Hendrix and Zeppelin numbers.   

Did you both grow up in a musical household?

That is definitely true for both of us. Everyone is a singer in my household, and when I was younger mum and dad would often sing Irish folk songs in the evening. Later on I got into rock music and played in my brothers band (who is a singer/songwriter himself). Adam’s dad is a bassist who used to perform regularly around the Island, which is how Adam got into music. We grew up listening to a lot of the same music and played together in our first band when we were about 14.

What influenced your EP Wildwoods?

Wildwoods seemed like a fitting name that worked with the imagery and the sort of earthy/folky style of the music. We were both influenced by many things and it all took a few years to really come to fruition. Each song is quite different from the other and holds different inspiration.

For “White River” it was a fantasy folk element and even a bit of Mumford in there. We then tried to add quite epic style production to it to really give impetus to the story: A tale of a central hero character, now aged, recollecting how, long ago, he was once called upon to defend his city and it’s people and what it cost him. 

“Liar Liar” was one of those songs that just unfolded before me. It felt like more discovering it than writing it.

“Children of the Blind” is a fairly unique song that blends our folk style with our rocky edge. Essentially it's a fictional story of a mother's longing for her son to return home from war. Told in the first person there's the depth of despair throughout the first part of the song turning to anger directed towards the people responsible for sending her son to war in the second which I suppose you could call the anti-establishment element.

A common theme in all the songs is a message of hope and something uplifting even in moments of darkness.

Where did you get the name Scarlett Parade?

That is because that is where the dictionary opened that day. We basically had a brainstorming session and couldn’t come up with anything we really liked so just started picking random words out of the dictionary. We had a few names floating around; “the parade”, “Starlet” and Scarlett is the name of a place on the Isle of Man. Somehow all the ideas just merged together to be Scarlett Parade. We hated the name but have never been able to think of something objectively better, and now it’s too late.

What's it like being in a band with someone you've known since high school?

The surprising thing about that is that it has actually been really easy. We share an almost identical taste in music and maintain a rather degenerative sense of humour about everything. We’re so similar in fact Adam once almost successfully convinced me that he didn’t exist and was just in my head.  The only time the friendship is tested is when we play each other on FIFA.

What was the first song you ever wrote together like?

The first song we wrote together was a blues stomp if I remember rightly. It was actually a good song but I lost faith in it after Adam pointed out that I’d completely ripped off the chorus.

Does living in the Isle of Man influence your sound a lot?

The Isle of Man is very small but is quite a Celtic place with it’s own heritage of folk music, so perhaps it does influence us in that way. I would say that in general though it does not, we normally look outside the Isle of Man for inspiration.

Which musicians would you love to collaborate with?

Damien Rice is a huge inspiration for us so naturally he’d be great to do something with. Paul Epworth is pretty incredible and we’d love the chance to work with a producer of his caliber to see what he could bring out of the music that even we can’t imagine.

What do you do for fun?

At the minute we’re pretty boring and live fairly ascetic lifestyles. We’re both pretty big into sport though, particularly tennis and football and also heavily into all things fantasy. Half our conversations are about Game of Thrones these days.

How would you describe your music to someone who's never heard of you?

We don’t really know. We’ve been asked this question a few times before and never quite know what to say. There is a formula to it all though and a lot of our songs are about similar things. Generally we fall somewhere within the spectrum of folk/rock/celtic with the occasional bit of pop like “Hold On.” There does however seem to be a rather ambiguous term for labeling bands such as us which I believe is ‘Alt.'

Who are your biggest musical influences?

We are both highly influenced by lyrical songwriters such as Damien Rice, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. We love all folk music and classic rock (Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Hendrix) and frequently look there for inspiration. For this EP we also took inspiration from the big production techniques of Paul Epworth (Florence and the Machine, Adele) and Brian Eno (U2). We really wanted to blow people away on first listen, and I think we did a pretty good job. "Hold On" in particular has over 200 tracks!

What's the strangest thing that's happened to you as a band so far?

Has to be our half naked photoshoot that we did with a highly respected and acclaimed band photographer. Because he was essentially famous we couldn’t really say no, so we ended up half naked buried in sand on a cold beach in the Isle of Man whilst he took photos of us. He wanted it to look like the easter island statues… which it sort of did….

We didn’t really enjoy the experience and unsurprisingly hated the photo.