Shed Seven talk ahead of their Birmingham gig

And this year is no exception as Rick Witter and co are back on the road, with a sell-out tonight at Birmingham’s O2 Academy.

Witter is delighted that the Sheds have created their own festive tradition. And he’s looking forward to a night of big hits, as well as one or two songs from their new album Instant Pleasures.

Instant Pleasures was released in November and was the band’s first album since the 2001 near-miss Truth Be Told. It went straight into the chart at number eight – giving the band their joint highest-ever chart placing.

Rick is thrilled that the band remain so popular: “It’s weirdly our tenth anniversary of doing these Xmas shows. We’ve been back together since 2007. So now we’ve been a band who’ve been reformed for as long as we were a band in the 1990s.

“We had the new album out this year and that was quite good fun. It was an awful long time coming. I remember the five-year gap between first and second Stone Roses. Well had five years and we had 15 years.

“As I say, we’ve done a run of these big Christmas shows.

“But quite clearly, over the space of years, people who like us ask us for something new. It was a difficult question to answer. Seven or eight years ago, there was no chance of doing anything new because we were so busy doing other things.

“But it go to about three years ago, after being together for seven years, and we started to think ‘Is there any room for this?’”

Fans were instrumental in encouraging the band to record new material. But Rick is quick to dismiss the idea that they were simply pandering to public demand. Rather, the band members wanted to challenge themselves creatively to come up with songs that surpassed those from their heyday.

“It wasn’t because we kept getting asked. We were just getting together to do material to get match fit. I’m always writing down new words, I’ve always done that. Then we found ourselves after a couple of rehearsals with three new ideas. It was a really natural kind of thing. That made is think that we could write four songs and do an EP on iTunes to appease the fans.

“But we just kept writing and before we knew it we had 15 songs. Even at that point, we still didn’t know what to do. We got in touch with a few friends in the music business to see what they thought. We just wanted people to hear the demos. But everyone was getting back in touch telling us we needed management and a deal. That was satisfying to hear so we went for it. We didn’t want to just please 100 people who are hardcore fans.”

The band found management and lined up a deal with the sought-after producer Youth. Their stock was rising all the time and they almost felt as though they were back in the mid-1990s, during their Britpop heyday. “We were pleased. The new stuff still sounded very Shed Seven, but it was fresh and current. We don’t want to be old has-beens trading on past glories.”

Youth was in interesting figure for the band to work with. The founding member and bassist of Killing Joke is friends with Sir Paul McCartney and has worked with The Verve, The Orb, David Gilmour and many more.

He has also worked, produced and remixed for bands including Kate Bush, Guns N’ Roses, Primal Scream and The Charlatans.

“It was intense – that’s probably the most accurate word. He told us that most of the bands he’s worked with don’t bother going back. He’s not bothered by that. He’s there to do a job and he does it well. At base level, he’s just a really nice fella. He’s got opinions and isn’t bothered about offending. In the 90s, we were a little bit guilty of turning up to a studio and producers might be offering advice and we’d tell them ‘no’. We’d be quite precious. Now, in our mid-40s, with nothing to prove, we really took on board what he said.”

The band won’t be bombarding fans at Birmingham with too many new songs. They’re aware that they’ve rebuilt their reputation during the past 10 years by playing hits. And they’ll continue to feature songs that fans expect.”