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Young musicians invited to Hit The Road as touring initiative celebrates 10 years.

Scotland’s esteemed youth music touring project Hit The Road launches its 10th year of shaping young musical talent later today.

Since its inception in 2013, Hit The Road has been instrumental in aiding the journeys of 300 aspiring young musicians across the country, offering a platform for growth, networking and artistic expression.

The project has been a catalyst for countless success stories in the Scottish music scene including Scottish sensation Lewis Capaldi and celebrated singer-songwriter Be Charlotte. Organisers are once again calling for budding artists aged 14-19 to get involved in the initiative’s upcoming touring season.

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Transcript
00:00 My name is Michael Cassidy and I'm the project lead for Hit The Road.
00:14 What is Hit The Road?
00:15 We take young musicians on their first tours of Scotland.
00:17 How long has it been going for?
00:18 We have been going for over 10 years.
00:21 This will be our 10th edition of the tour because of the pandemic and Covid.
00:24 We lost a couple.
00:25 So we invite applications from young musicians aged 14-19 that have not been bred to Scotland
00:30 and we take them on their first professional tour of Scotland.
00:33 We also do professional workshops with the young musicians where they work on their set
00:37 and work on their technical capacity and then we take them on tour.
00:43 We'll tee them up with other bands from different parts of Scotland so they can play to new
00:47 audiences and also play their own home town show.
00:50 And what sort of musicians are involved?
00:51 We take applications from all genres so we've been lucky to have rock tours, singer-songwriter
00:57 tours, we've had some traditional tours and we're hoping this year to do some more hip
01:02 hop and R&B stuff as well.
01:03 So you mentioned tours, what does that involve?
01:05 So basically we take three bands or three acts and so we could have an act from Aberdeen,
01:10 one from Edinburgh and one from Dumfries and all three of them will headline their own
01:15 night but then they'll also play support on their other acts night so they get to basically
01:21 play their own home town show but also go and play to a new audience and meet new tour
01:25 managers, meet new venues, new bookers, so basically expand their professional network.
01:33 So there's loads of acts who have done some amazing numbers and things like that so we've
01:37 obviously got Lewis Capaldi come on which is amazing but I take more, there's other
01:43 acts who are still just professional musicians now ten years later which for me is just as
01:48 important because it means that we've maybe helped in that process to understand that
01:53 it's not just about selling these massive big venues and concert spaces, it's also about
01:58 seeing it as a viable career opportunity and helping people find that network and that's
02:04 what I say keeps more solace in probably.
02:06 So sometimes people want to become a musician or an artist but then they find that that's
02:12 not the career for them and they find themselves in other pockets of the industry so they end
02:17 up becoming tour managers or they end up becoming sound engineers and they find a lot of them
02:22 have ended up working back on the project years later and we've got countless examples
02:25 of that so that's another great thing for us.
02:29 Our website's hittheroad.org.uk, you can apply, anyone can apply as long as you're over the
02:33 age of 14 and under the age of 20 and yeah we take applications from any genre and we
02:38 just kind of want you, and even if you want to just send an email and you want to come
02:41 over and maybe shadow a tour manager we do a lot of trainee roles as well within it where
02:46 you can come over and just see how the industry and how the live music events run which is
02:51 actually a massive thing, we always encourage young people to come along and even if you
02:55 want to just come to a show we'll put you on the guest list, we'll get you along and
02:58 you can come and see the show, that'd be great.
03:01 I'm Zoe Bastel, I'm a singer-songwriter from Dumfries and Galloway.
03:05 So what's your involvement in the project?
03:09 Ten years ago I did apparently one of the first Hit the Roads, I didn't know that it
03:13 was that early on but yeah in September of 2014 I did a first Hit the Road project.
03:19 And what's your name you've been on since then?
03:22 Well I've been a professional musician ever since and I do feel like the whole project
03:26 has helped me get the confidence and also meet people to carry on and know that I could
03:34 make it as a musician if I wanted to, which I did.
03:36 So you've came back on the 10th anniversary, why was that?
03:40 Because I was asked to, and it's nice to come back and support it because I think it's a
03:45 great project, it's a great opportunity for young musicians to experience what it's like
03:51 to perform live and meet other people of a similar age that want to have a career the
03:55 same way that they do.
03:57 Playing live specifically, getting the experience of performing live is so fundamental for being
04:03 a musician in the future.
04:04 You know there's so many things can go wrong if you get as much experience in playing live,
04:09 especially with new pals you've just made, make it a bit easier, then it's so good.
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