Wide Days 2019: Megan Airlie interview

There’s a buzz around Wide Days this year. Since its launch in 2010, the event has grown in depth and calibre year on year. As the first Scottish event to join the PRS Foundation's Keychange initiative, which aims for 50/50 gender balance by 2022, in 2014 Wide Days was named Best Networking Event at the Yearly Music Convention Awards. In the years since, it has continued to attract key figures in the music industry, with over 340 registered delegates in 2018, up from 250 the previous year.

For those who haven’t heard of Wide Days, it’s basically a big juicy music convention based in Edinburgh where industry professionals come together to chat music and showcase new initiatives. Their aim is to stand out from others of its kind by prioritising diversity and balancing the line-up so that it includes up-and-coming speakers and performers alongside industry stalwarts.

As well as a wide-ranging conference programme, including talks about music publishing, artist promotion and music tourism, the music programme this year is weightier than ever and now includes a new Festival Takeover on Saturday night, curated by three of Scotland’s summer festivals: Electric Fields, Kelburn Garden Party and Tenement Trail. What’s more, their traditional 'showcase' programme – which in the past has featured performances from Kathryn Joseph and C Duncan – on Friday night is set to be an absolute treat with performances from Chuchoter, Eyes of Others, Franky's Evil Party, Parliamo, Shears, VanIves and Megan Airlie, who applied on a bit of a whim and was pleasantly surprised when "for some reason they thought I was quite cool."

Airlie, who grew up in East Kilbride and is now settled in Glasgow, originally got into music as a teenager. "I got into a band playing the sax, and then just decided at some point that I would start writing my own stuff, and I haven’t really stopped for the past five or six years," she tells us, going on to explain how she got into singing: "I was always secretly singing, even when my family took the piss out of me for doing it. But I didn’t start properly pursuing it until I was about 17. And then I just kind of did it at college and haven’t really shut up since."

Although she started out playing in a band, nowadays Airlie plays solo 90% of the time. "I think on the whole I prefer it this way, but it does depend because there’s definitely a comfort in playing with other people. I suppose I like that I can just completely go off when I'm by myself. I'm also secretly an attention seeker, so I do also want to focus on me. And now I really am starting to enjoy playing by myself and getting to know performing a bit more with no one else to hide behind."

We start chatting about the music scene at the moment and what it’s like to be an up-and-coming musician in a constantly evolving environment. "It’s so saturated these days," Airlie says. "Everyone’s amazing and everyone’s got a million things they’re putting out. There’s singles out every day, and it’s a bit hard to get spotted in the crowd." Instead of pushing against the singles-oriented industry of today, Airlie has decided to embrace it. "People's attention spans are just so terrible these days. If you stick out an album, you’ll probably struggle to get people to listen to it all the way through. With Spotify and all that, you just click the next thing. So singles seem to be the way to go just now, with everyone."

Airlie will be in the recording studio in the weeks before Wide Days, and will be showcasing some of her new material on the Friday night. She explains that, although the industry might be brimming with talent at the moment, "everyone seems mostly genuine and friendly, and events like Wide Days give us an opportunity to help each other out. There’s just a really nice buzz about it. It’s great to jump in and start, what d’you call that, networking? It’s a more official environment than most of the events I go to. You can actually write down people’s emails, and even share a business card or two.

"Wide Days gives you a chance to rub shoulders with people that you would absolutely never rub shoulders with," she continues. "Most musicians, I find, just like to stay in their room the whole time, and only socialise when [they're] absolutely, well, steaming. So to have everyone in a room at an event like that, it just opens up a whole array of opportunity."

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Wide Days: Scotland's Music Convention takes place in Edinburgh, 11-13 Apr

Megan Airlie plays Wide Days' Showcase, Teviot Debating Hall, Edinburgh, 12 Apr – register for free tickets here

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