UK Country sensations First Time Flyers release their new single and their first for 2024 ‘Looking Back Now’ on April 12th. The song was born at C2C Festival in 2023 after the band had played their first ever live show. They had been working towards this moment for months and then suddenly it was over. At that point they realised that they would never experience their ‘first gig’ again thus sparking the idea for ‘Looking Back Now’.
“C2C was an incredibly overwhelming but positive experience for us” recalls Poppy from the band, “it was our first public performance, and the pressure was on for us to deliver the goods!”
As band member and producer Tim Protey-Jones says “thankfully we were surrounded by friends which made the whole experience a lot easier”
One of those friends was Nashville songwriter Jeff Cohen (Sugarland, The Shires) who took the band for dinner after their show. “Whilst we were waiting for our food, we started to tell him how emotional we were feeling about not being able to experience that buzz of a first show ever again” explained Vicki “and we saw that he was making notes and Poppy had started to write the last line of the chorus!”
The band knew that they were on to something so decided to get together with Jeff again the next day to finish the song, “the only problem was that we couldn’t find a studio” Jake laughs “thankfully Jeff knew of a music room in the basement of a restaurant, so we ended up there the next day writing the song in a room next to the kitchen!”
A few weeks later the band decamped to Norfolk to record vocals for the song. As Tim says, “we wanted to escape to somewhere where we could stop and be in the moment, very much like the song says.”
‘Looking Back Now’ has a sense of nostalgia from the very first line. Traditional Nashville storytelling with rich 4-part vocal harmonies that are fast becoming the band’s trademark sound. The band hopes that people are inspired by the song to ‘live in the moment’ but not be afraid to be ‘reflective’.
‘Looking Back Now’ is released on April 12th on Lookout Mountain Records.