Ways To Go

It’s not every fledgling outfit that gets to play before 20,000 people on one of their first ever gigs. But that’s exactly what happened to Sligo outfit The Conways whose catchy debut single, ‘What Do You Do’ recently occupied the upper reaches of the Irish singles charts. The family group consisting of Sharon, Sinéad, Marie and Laura Conway appeared as special guests of Westlife when the boy band stars played a hometown gig recently.

“It was a fantastic opportunity for us,” says Sharon Conway. “To get to play our songs for that many people was amazing. We got a huge reaction from radio which led to the success of the single. We’re not related to any of them or anything like that. It was just the fact that we were from Sligo that we were asked to play at the show.”
The sisters decided a year ago to form their own group. “We knew we all wanted to do something in music but we were all going our own separate ways,” she explains. “We sat down one night and thought it would be a lot better if we got together to write and perform. We spent six months writing songs and now have the bulk of an album ready to record.”
Given the family factor and musical approach, The Conways have, not surprisingly, been compared to The Corrs.
“It’s a compliment really,” says Sharon “We have an Irish sound I suppose and the fact is we’re sisters too but our music is different – it’s a mixture of pop, rock, a bit of jazz, a bit of r ‘n’ b, a bit of everything really.
“One thing we’ve noticed is that foreigners love the single. When we’re doing signings around the country most of the people coming up to us are Italians, Spanish, Americans. There were two Japanese girls literally crying at the fact that that they were able to see us in the flesh and touch us and one Philippino girl bought ten copies to send home to her family.”
For now The Conways are content to go it alone and have set up their own record label – AOR Records.
“We’re concentrating on getting the first two singles out, but we’ve had two companies interested and we’d certainly like a distribution deal for the album when it comes out. Simon Hill who worked on Fame Academy produced the single and he got a great sound for us.
“We’d really like to do some more support shows for bigger acts,” she adds. “We played the Sligo Rocks festival on the gig-rig with Hothouse Flowers during the summer and that was great. We love gigging, we love performing and we have a good set put together.”