Westside Cowboy: "Success for us is selling-out an 80-cap pub in Manchester"

I hold no truck with its football teams – it’s a shame that City and United can’t both lose when they play each other – but when it comes to music Manchester truly is God’s country.

From Herman’s Hermits, Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders, Freddie & The Dreamers, The Hollies and Elkie Brookes to Joy Division, The Smiths, Oasis, M People and Stone Roses, we’ve all danced and/or rocked to the Mancunian tune.

To that list can now be added Westside Cowboy who killed it recently in the Grand Social where, never mind cats, you’d have been hard-pressed to swing a vertically-challenged mouse.

“It was a great gig,” says singer, bassist and cellist Aoife Anson-O’Connell of their visit to Dublin. “We were very well looked after, the place was heaving and people seemed to know the words to songs that we haven’t released yet.”

That’s Irish audiences for you. While grandiose ‘the future of British rock ‘n’ roll’-style claims have been made on their behalf – they already have a Glastonbury Emerging Talent award to their name – Westside Cowboys’ feet have remained firmly on the ground.

“Success for us is selling-out an 80-cap pub in Manchester, the Castle Hotel, which we all really love to play,” Jimmy Bradbury, who also strums and sings, takes over. “Whenever something awesome like that happens we’re really grateful but we’re not like, ‘Right, that’s phase 1 of the masterplan completed!’”

Given Aoife and drummer Paddy Murphy’s names I’m thinking there must be Irish blood in the band.

“Yeah, there is on my Dad’s side,” Murphy confirms before Ms. Anson-O’Connell jumps in: “I’ve Irish grandparents on both my Mum and Dad’s side. We’re always very wary, though, to do the English thing and say, ‘We’re Irish.’ We really wish we were… but we’re not!”

That never stopped Tony Cascarino. Further quizzing reveals third guitarist and singer Reuben Haycocks and Jimmy to respectively be from Wem and Hook-a-Gate in Shropshire – “Greg Davies the comedian is also from Wem, but otherwise it’s a bit nothing-y,” Haycocks rues –  which leaves Paddy as the sole Lancastrian.

While Jimmy was out grafting, the others met during freshers’ week at the University of Manchester.

“Me and Reuben were on the pop music course and Aoife was on the classical chamber music one as a cellist,” Murphy explains. “Jimmy had done a similar course at another uni in Manchester, but graduated a couple of years before us. We met him at Johnny Roadhouse which is the guitar shop everyone goes to locally. He’d change your strings and pick-ups for you – or at least attempt to! Pre-Westside Cowboy, we were in a band together called Katz, which was sort of lo-fi surf punk. Yes, there are videos on YouTube but please don’t go looking for them!”

I did and can reveal that ‘1985’, ‘The Last American Virgin’ and ‘Monica From Friends’, all recorded in their friend Archie’s bedroom, are twangtastic enough to suggest that Katz could’ve been indie contenders in their own right.

Asked whether Johnny Roadhouse had a forbidden riff policy – the likes of ‘Stairway To Heaven’, ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Smoke On The Water’ and ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ are routinely banned in music shops – Jimmy says, “You can play whatever you want; except for ‘Supersonic’ through a full Marshall stack. That’s the only rule!”

Westside Cowboy on February 1st, 2026. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

Quick pop quiz; first gigs attended?

“My Dad took me to see Reef – he knew the drummer somehow – in the Bristol Academy when I was about ten,” Paddy recalls. “People were moshing like crazy to these Britpop songs and getting hauled over the barrier, which I thought was kind of cool.”

Reuben?

“Depending on what your thinking is, my first gig was when pregnant with me, my Mum went to a Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks gig,” he proffers. “It was so loud that she thought it was going to mess with my hearing from inside the womb. The first gig I remember wanting to go to was Green Day on the Revolution Radio tour when I was fourteen, which I later discovered Paddy and our housemate, Matt Deacon, were also at.”

Over to Jimmy…

“My first proper gig was in 2016/’17 when my guitar teacher took me and my best friend – shout out, Sam! –  to see Iron Maiden in Birmingham, which was awesome,” he enthuses.

“I didn’t know that, how cool!” Aoife enthuses before revealing that, “For her 12th or 13th birthday, me and my friend Rosie went to a gig put on by a West Midlands station called Free Radio. Loads of artists played mini-sets, so I got to see a bit of Jess Glynne, The Vamps, Fleur East and John Newman.”
Given that I’ve also seen/heard it expertly deployed recently by English Teacher, Man/Woman/Chainsaw and Dublin’s very own Child Of Prague, the cello seems to be enjoying something of a rock ‘n’ roll renaissance.

“In the classical world it’s never disappeared – there are loads and loads of people playing it but, yeah, you’re hearing it in a lot of new music now,” Aoife continues. “It’s not quite so new but I love Magnetic Fields and Belle & Sebastian and how they use strings.”

Hilary Summers, a Welsh contralto who’s worked with Michael Nyman and The Divine Comedy, told me that classical musicians are absolute filth hounds.

“Brass sections are famous for their debauchery; there’s an old boys’ club nature to it,” she laughs. “Although female brass players are just as bad!”

I’m delighted to hear it. After Katz called it a day, Reuben and Paddy formed DieKaiDie whose mission was, according to their Bandcamp page, “to blend the popular and the pretty with the abrasive and the underground.”

How did all of that eventually lead to Westside Cowboy?

“We were hanging out in the music shop and Jimmy just asked, ‘Do you want to start a band called Westside Cowboy?’ He had the name already picked out and we said, ‘Yeah!’ It was that easy. We’d been in other bands that were either petering out or getting caught up in, I dunno, being a bit too artsy musically. This was a way of having fun again with no pretences. We were just going to do covers – the first few weeks of the band was playing Hank Williams songs and other old country and skiffle like Lonnie Donegan. That’s all it was intended to be but then one original came and then another one and another one!”
Along with Hank and Lonnie, the likes of ‘Alright Alright Alright’, ‘This Better Be Something Great’ and ‘The Wahs’ also nod towards The Felice Brothers, Pavement, Pixies, The La’s, The Replacements and their favourite Beatle, John. With tongue planted somewhat in cheek, they describe this potent hotch-potch as ‘Britaintanica’.

It’s made them major players in a band scene that frankly pisses all over what’s currently going on in London – and that’s coming from a Croydon boy!

“The scene is healthy but quite divided,” Aoife notes. “Not by choice but because the city’s so big. You’ve all these subsections and different friend groups. Jim from Marshall Arts, who we share a practice room with, has recently made a mega group chat of people in gigging Manchester bands. I thought, ‘There’s probably going to be twenty in there’ but it’s already up around the sixty band mark.”

In addition to Marshall Arts, Westside Cowboy also have nice things to say about Shaking Hand, Yang, Holyhead, Pushbike, Hopalong Gretzky and Galway man living in Mancunian exile, Dove Ellis.

“He’s incredible,” Aoife enthuses. “Me, Paddy and Reuben went to uni with him and his saxophone player was on my classical course. Our housemate and best friend is his drummer and Paddy and Reuben used to play in his band. It’s very incestuous!”

Aoife is also one of the prime movers behind the No Band Is An Island cooperative.

“It was born out of fear of the music industry and making sure that you stay aligned to the things you believe in,” she explains. “We put on gigs and give the money to charity and have speakers from direct action groups like Youth Demand and Take Back Power. Invariably they stay on our floors and we have a party afterwards!”

How did Westside Cowboy complete their journey from jamming out Hank Williams covers to signing with Island who’ve previously brought us the likes of Bob Marley, Nick Drake, Grace Jones, U2 and The Cranberries?

“The Black Country, New Road drummer, Charlie Wayne, got in contact with us after we put a video of our second ever gig up online,” Reuben explains. “He said, ‘Do you have any demos?’ and being massive Black Country, New Road fans we lied and said, ‘Yeah, we do.’ That week we went into the studio and recorded an EP’s worth of material and sent it to him. Charlie’s interest and support is one of the reasons we are where we are.”

“And then, magically, we got booked for a gig in London because he’d said something to someone,” Jimmy expands. “Six months after that we had a management deal with Alex Edwards and Pete Heywood – the most hard working people you’ll ever meet to an insane degree – who also own Nice Swan Records. We did an EP with them, This Better Be Something Great, and then Island Records started showing interest, which was of immense excitement to Paddy’s Dad who’s the biggest U2 fan going.

“We were very flattered but also shocked because we never thought those types of people would be interested in us. We were blindsided by it at the time but eventually got our heads round it! Our publishing deal is with Domino, so we’ve lots of great people in our corner.”

Westside Cowboy are fresh back from upstate New York where they spent quality studio time with The Last Shadow Puppets and Florence & The Machine’s touring drummer, Loren Humphrey, who’s also a production wiz.

“We played a few gigs and did some demos for potentially new music coming soon,” Paddy concludes. “We’re really big fans of the Cameron Winter album he did, Heavy Metal, so when his name came up we were all like, ‘Oh man, yeah!’ He’s taught us so much about recording as a separate entity to playing live. He really captured our essence and generally made us feel positive about what comes next.”

• So Much Country 'Till We Get There is out now on Island’s Adventure Recordings imprint.