CREDIT: PROVIDED BY TEXAS KING
Fanshawe grads, Texas King return to London after taking the music industry by storm. They play in London on Dec. 1.

Hometown heroes Texas King return to the Forest City for what may be their biggest London show yet on Saturday, Dec. 1.

Since graduating from Fanshawe College in 2014, this group of Music Industry Arts (MIA) alumni are excited to be back home.

Lead guitarist Colin Gray met with Interrobang to share some stories of the group’s formation and the crazy journey they’ve been on over the past few years.

“Since school we’ve just been dedicated to writing music, recording music and touring music,” Gray said. “It has taken us across the country several times, it’s taken us to America for a bunch of tour runs. We’ve got to see a lot of empty bars along the way, in new cities, and also some of the biggest stages we’ve ever played, opening for really cool acts.”

The massive success of Texas King was not an overnight success, however. It came after years of hard work from the band members who, being independent of a record label, must wear a number of hats in order to keep themselves on a constant rise.

“One thing we’ve always done I would like to think to its maximum potential, is touring, we’re constantly busy on the road. There’s few times where we have true downtime for a couple months and usually when we [do] we’re writing and recording for the next wave,” Gray said.

He went on to share that when not performing the band members take care of everything from booking shows, applying for grants and updating social media, which Gray looks at as a major key to their success. “You don’t just gain fans at the show, you can gain fans all around the show. You can gain fans hyping up the show, creating a little buzz about a show and getting friends to talk to friends,” he said.

Amidst all this, the band somehow manages to find time to write, with songs such as “Flowers” on their debut album Circles, dating back as far back as three years before its release.

“That song was [written] around 2014 and we didn’t release it until 2017. That’s how long we wrote and hustled. But then to go with that... four of the main songs, especially the single “Boomerang”, came right at the end of the writing process, [before] we were about to go into the studio,” Gray said.

The release of Circles in October 2017 was just the push the band needed to land them in the spotlight of Canadian music scene.

“It was then that we caught a little wave of attention and “Boomerang” went to the radio. We did a cross-Canada tour [and] it was around that time that we started building our team and started working with our booking agent and manager,” Gray said.

Since then, the band has kept busy touring, playing shows across Ontario and the Midwest United States, as well as writing and prepping a new batch of songs to be recorded and released in the near future.

“We are picking three songs that we think could kind of impact our future. We’re going to record those with a producer in the studio and use those to be released in 2019,” Gray said. “We’re using these three to kind of toss out there, see how people react and then we’re going to put together the whole full length album to follow. I’m not going to put a date on it, but that should definitely be in 2019”.

The group is excited to return for their first headlining London Music Hall show since Circles’ release last year.

In anticipation of the event, the band released a brand new video for their song “Only One” and have been hard at work rehearsing and prepping to make sure London gets a show like no other.

“We’re doing a lot of special things in this show. Some theatrics I guess you could say, some tempo changes, some new arrangements, we’re playing a brand new song [and] we’re doing a brand new cover,” Gray said.

To find out more about the show and Texas King head to TexasKing.ca or follow them on Instagram and Twitter @texaskingband and Facebook @TexasKingOfficial. Their debut album Circles can be heard on all major streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music and their latest video for “Only One” can be seen on YouTube.