With a headline slot on the Devonshire Green main stage at Tramlines Fringe on Saturday, Kiziah Watson reflects on the band’s biggest year yet, genre-spanning live shows and the community that’s grown around them.
First things first – congratulations. It feels like you’re having a brilliant year with the band. You mentioned things have gone a bit crazy recently. What’s changed?
Things have just taken off, really. We brought in James Wells on trumpet, who’s been sensational. He’s helped with the social media side of things too, and we’ve built this core fanbase – we call them ‘The Kavalry’ – who’ve really got behind us.
We’ve had some brilliant sell-out shows and this following has become like a family. They create this incredible energy at gigs and that spreads to everyone else in the room.
One of the things that stands out about the band is how many different influences there are. You can hear ska, reggae, soul, rock, pop… there’s a bit of everything in there.
It’s eclectic. Years ago, people might have said, “She doesn’t know what she wants”, but that’s exactly what makes us who we are. We’re all influenced by different genres. There’s a thread running through the songs, but because we all bring something different we can switch genres quickly.
What really changed was bringing in the right people. James came in, Callum joined on bass and mixed the live EP, and Wez has produced the latest EP. Having those key people with the band has transformed things. It feels like we’ve finally got the right team around us.
The live side of things seems to have gone up another level too. What’s the secret to putting on a great show?
For me, it’s all about energy. I’ve been lucky enough to play some incredible shows like Amsterdam Pride and headline the International Women’s Festival in Greece for three nights, and every one teaches you something.
On stage I’m like a tornado. Someone once described it as “Tina Turner meets Prince meets James Brown” – and I promise that wasn’t me saying that!
But it’s not just chaos. It’s about the light and shade of a show. You have those quieter moments where it slows down and there’s a breath, then you lift it with a ska track and everyone just erupts. It’s that contrast that creates the atmosphere.
I think people previously tried to put us in a box – “they’re just a reggae band” or “they’re just a soul band”. Now people come to a show and realise we take them on a journey through different genres and different decades.
It feels like audiences are craving that sort of experience more than ever now. After everything that happened during Covid, people seem desperate to really lose themselves in live music again.
That’s right. After Covid, I noticed people started turning up to shows differently. They got it more. They were more willing to let themselves go.
We’ve got people from every background, every culture, every creed coming to the gigs, and they’re all in the same moment together. That’s what I’d say our shows are about. Whatever your background, you’re in amongst the Kavalry and everyone’s sharing that experience.
That sense of unity also feels especially important at the moment. It can feel like a very divided world, and music has always had a way of bringing people together.
You’ve nailed it.
There’s so much division and so much fear at the moment. When people come to our gigs and unify, that’s one of the biggest messages we want to put across. It’s always been part of what this band stands for – peace, love and unity.
We have this chant at shows: “One love, peace, unity.” It builds and everyone joins in. That’s genuinely what we stand for. In a time when people are so divided, that’s the message we’re trying to push, and it’s finally starting to be heard.
We’ve been building and building for years, so to be headlining Tramlines Fringe means everything to us. I can’t really put it into words. It feels like the cherry on top after years of slogging away. To be given that platform where we can bring people together and create that same energy on a bigger stage means a huge amount to all of us.
In fact, you’ve got two headline slots – Hagglers Corner on the Friday and Devonshire Green on the Saturday. What does Tramlines, particularly the Fringe, mean to you?
It is everything that is Sheffield.
I remember going to university in Sheffield around 2012 and heading to Tramlines with my friends. I remember seeing Miss Dynamite headlining the Devonshire Green stage and thinking it was amazing. Now we’re going to be headlining that same stage ourselves – that’s a bit surreal.
What I love about Tramlines is the chaos of it all. We used to go from venue to venue, playing the Green Room, then over to Henry’s car park, then somewhere else. We’ve done so many shows over Tramlines weekend over the years. I think we once played six gigs in one weekend.
You’d come away absolutely drenched and you wouldn’t come down from it for days. That’s what Tramlines is to me.
The Fringe at Tramlines feels especially important because everyone’s up for discovering new music. It must be a brilliant opportunity for bands.
Definitely. You can step onto a stage and don’t have to bring your own crowd; it’s an opportunity for young bands to be seen and heard without the pressure of selling loads of tickets.
With Tramlines weekend, wherever you play in Sheffield, it’s packed. People are there because they genuinely want to discover music. They’re open to finding new bands and being in the moment. That’s a really special thing.
If someone’s never listened to Kiziah and the Kings before, where should they start? Which songs best sum up what you do?
I’d start with ‘Get Up or Get Out’, from our most recent EP. We wrote it after touring with Bad Manners because we thought, “We’d better write our own ska song.” That’s become the one that gets everybody going absolutely crazy.
And then there’s ‘Wait for Me’, which completely changes the atmosphere. That’s the breath in the set that I was talking about earlier.
It’s a very emotional song. I had a nervous breakdown after we lost three family members in six months, with two of those losses only three weeks apart. My brother Dane and I wrote that song during lockdown after one of our family members had contracted Covid.
Then ‘Power of You’ comes in with pure rock energy. I don’t want people to underestimate us because they think we’re one thing. We rock and roll, we play reggae, we play ska – we throw ourselves into every genre. We really do take people on a journey from rock to reggae.
Finally, after Tramlines, what’s next for the band?
Tramlines is massive for us, but we’ve also got new festival announcements and gigs coming up. At the same time, we’re concentrating on recording because that’s where these new members have transformed the band.
It feels like we’re on the cusp of something now. I’ve been in this band for a long time, but it’s transformed over the last two years.
One last thing – we’re not taking these Tramlines shows lightly. We’ve added keyboards and we’ve got a percussionist on electronic drums now, so it’s going to be the biggest show we’ve ever put on.
Kiziah and the Kings headline the Devonshire Green Main Stage at 20:00 on Saturday 25 July and Haggler’s Corner at 20:30 on Friday 24 July. Follow @kiziahkings for updates on new releases.
