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.
04:15 [Music]
04:20 [Music]
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