The Tameside Radio presenter remembers the Indie band Viola Beach six years on from their tragic passing.

It was a Sunday morning six years ago and social media was full of rumours that Viola Beach, one of the best new bands around, has been involved in a freak accident in Sweden.

As the day went on, all sorts of rumours were circulating, all sounded  too far fetched to be true. 

At the time I was doing a Sunday afternoon indie show at a previous radio station I worked at, and I purposely didn’t even mention what I’d seen and heard that day, even though they were a band I had already been regularly playing on my show. But what I was reading and hearing just didn’t seem believable. 

When I got home that night, I switched on the news on the television to discover that the rumours had been true. The band Viola Beach had been killed in the most tragic and unbelievable circumstances. It was February 13, 2016, when Kris Leonard, River Reeves, Tomas Lowe, Jack Dakin, and manager Craig Tarry, were taken from us. It was one of the saddest days in the history of popular music. 

The band were formed in Warrington in 2013, and were already making indie records that would become timeless anthems. 

They were a self-financed band, who had formed their own record label, named ‘Fuller Beans’. By September 2015 they had been added to the BBC Radio One playlist, had the full backing of BBC Introducing, and in the same year were already playing the likes of Reading and Leeds festivals. 

In November 2015, they had recorded a full live session for the BBC, a recording that was to become as important as it was historic. But just three months later, we had lost them. 

The band had been playing at the ‘Where’s The Music?’ festival near Stockholm in Sweden, when not far into the journey home they were involved in an unexplained incident involving a lift bridge, whilst heading back from playing at the gig. 

It’s a tragedy and a mystery what happened that night, and is something that we may never actually know. 

But what we do know is that we lost a band who were destined to become one of the country’s next big indie bands. That’s something that can be said perhaps too easily when something bad happens, but Viola Beach really were ready for the next level. 

It was only a short time before the crash that they had played in Greater Manchester, when they had performed at Middleton’s legendary Carson’s Bar. 

Less than four months after the band had died, a self-titled debut album was released, featuring tracks from the BBC session. It went straight to number one, and in my opinion, is one of the best albums of a generation. 

If you haven’t heard it in full, I highly recommend it. It’s a masterpiece. Songs like ‘Boys That Sing’, ‘Swings and Waterslides’, and ‘Go Outside’ have become indie classics, with ‘Swings and Waterslides’ getting released again last year on the band’s fifth anniversary, by Warrington Music, a collection of the best current bands and artists from Viola Beach’s hometown of Warrington, where there is also now a memorial to the band near the legendary Parr Hall venue. 

At Glastonbury 2016, headliners Coldplay did the most amazing and perfect tribute to Viola Beach during their set on the main stage. That is a clip you really must see. 

This Sunday, 13 February, six years on from that fateful day, I’ll be listening to Viola Beach, and remembering the band that should, and would, have been the next indie rock and roll heroes. I’ll also be remembering them, playing several tracks off the album, on my Monday night show on Tameside Radio, Live from 7pm. We will never forget Viola Beach.

You can listen to Dave on Tameside Radio 103.6FM on Monday evenings from 7pm to 9pm. Click here to subscribe and catch up on previous shows.

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