Interview: Rat Salad (Written)

Birmingham-based rock band Rat Salad have released their much-anticipated debut single, ‘Preggo’. A raw, narrative-driven track about a father spiralling into rage and confusion after discovering his teenage daughter’s unexpected pregnancy. We spoke to the band and get to know them a little better in this interview.

1. Hello! Thank you for taking the time to chat with us. First things first, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started.

Rat Salad was formed by lead singer and guitarist Willie Mac and bassist Jack “Stankleg” Beddoe in school in 2022. We experimented with different members before welcoming drummer Fin Morris and guitarist Beni Beyer when we all started College together in late 2023, and shortly after we started our journey together at our first gig on 20th January 2024 in Wolverhampton.

2. Someone comes to you and asks you to sum up what kind of music you play – what do you tell them?

We’d say our sound is a modern fusion of psychedelic funk, ’70s rock, and metal.

3. What’s currently going on in your camp? New releases? Tours? Etc.

We just released our Debut Single Preggo, which is a raw, narrative-driven track about a father spiralling into rage and confusion after discovering his teenage daughter’s unexpected pregnancy.

4. What has been the most positive experience of making music to date for you?

Our most positive experience would have to be the Preggo Release Show. We played to a sold out Muthers Studio in Birmingham, with our good friends The Skum and Bucket Brigade supporting us. The atmosphere was absolutely electric, and it’s a night we’ll never forget.

5. Likewise, what have been some of the more challenging aspects and how have you overcome them?

We’d say a challenging aspect would have to be the online side of being in a band, and having to promote using short form content such as Instagram Reels or TikToks. We overcome this by trying to be unapologetically ourselves in our content, acting a bit stupid and doing what we want rather than what we think people want.

6. How do you handle the modern expectations of being in a band? Always online, having to put out content constantly, your success measured in likes and follows?

You just have to play the game, we can’t help what social media has done to the music industry, we just have to try our best to stand out with our content and stay committed.

7. What’s something that really ‘grinds your gears’ about the industry/business these days and what would you propose is done to combat it?

You don’t make any money solely from music anymore.

Back in the days where physical forms of music were the only option, people would have no choice but to spend money upfront if they wanted to listen to an artist, whether that be buying an album, or buying a ticket to go see them live. If you wanted to hear the band without the interruption of radio hosts or adverts, you had to buy directly from the artist. Therefore even if you were a smaller artist, a thousand people buying a listening to your music in the form of a CD would make you at least £1000, even with massive cuts from management or your label.

However, now we are in the age of streaming, you don’t even make any money on your first 1000 listens on spotify, and after that you make less than a penny every time someone listens to your song.

To combat this we would propose more smaller, decentralised streaming services that are specific to areas or genres, so that there would be lots of smaller groups of artists that you could subscribe to, instead of one big oversaturated market like Spotify is. This would mean that people would value the music more, and more money would go to artists as the subscription money doesn’t have to be shared around billions of artists.

8. Speaking directly to listeners – what would you ask them to do to help support your music?

If you want to support us, come to our shows, buy some merch, stream our music, or even just tell your friends about us.

9. Outside of the music, what do you do to relax?

We play poker.

10. Where can people find you?

You can find all of our socials and everything you need to know about us at our website – www.ratsalad.uk.