“That’s where I was when I found out we’d made the last eight,” says Jimmy Bradbury, gesturing at a particular corner of Johnny Roadhouse Music, an institution that’s been furnishing Manchester musicians with instruments since 1955. The list of past customers is illustrious, including Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher and, now, Bradbury’s band Westside Cowboy, this year’s winners of the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition.
Continuing the city’s proud tradition of breaking the mould, the four-piece find room for everything from country and skiffle to folk and alt-rock in their sound, imbuing classic influences with the ramshackle, youthful charm and witty, insouciant lyrics. Bradbury, who plays guitar and shares vocal duties, works here at the shop, and remembers the moment he found out they’d made the final phase of the Glastonbury contest: “John, my boss, was making me take the bins out. My phone buzzed, I dropped the bags, and I saw we’d made it through. And I was annoyed, because the next stage of it clashed with a Cameron Winter gig we had tickets for.”
Said tickets were duly resold, and Bradbury headed for the finals alongside bandmates Aoife Anson-O’Connell (bass and vocals), Reuben Haycocks (guitar and vocals) and Paddy Murphy (drums). Westside Cowboy – who were previously named to the NME 100 of 2025 – proceeded to win over a judging panel that included both Michael and Emily Eavis with what they call ‘Britainicana’, blending country-tinged US indie touchpoints with a decidedly British brand of droll lyricism that finds beauty in the mundane.
Now, they’re looking forward to the fruits of their victory: a slot on the Woodsies stage that’ll announce them to the world ahead of the August release of their debut EP ‘This Better Be Something Great’.
Is this the corner of Johnny Roadhouse where the band was formed?
Jimmy Bradbury: “Yep. Paddy, Reuben and I were sitting in this exact spot one day. I work here, and he was just hanging out – I think it was August, so we were on holiday from uni.”
Paddy Murphy: “Jimmy turned to us and literally said, ‘do you want to start a band called Westside Cowboy?’ And I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing else on this evening. Why not?’”
Aoife Anson-O’Connell: “We did think that we might have to change the name before we started to really take it seriously, but it stuck.”
Bradbury: “I’d read something about when the industrial revolution was first happening in New York, and they started to build train tracks through all these small towns to the city. The locals didn’t know what trains were as they were so new, and people were getting hit by them, so to control the speed of the trains, they would have guys ride slowly on horseback in front of them, and they became known as the westside cowboys.”
There’s a lot of different American influences in the sound of the band…
Bradbury: “Yeah. Hank Williams and Bob Dylan were important early on.”
Murphy: “Reuben and I were coming out of a band that was way more experimental and noisy, and we’d kind of burnt ourselves out with that – we wanted to reconnect with more traditional styles of music. Reuben was raised on folk music, and Jimmy’s a massive Elvis nut, really into his early rock’n’roll.
“So, it just felt easy compared to what we’d been doing previously, where everything was overcomplicated and maybe even a little bit pretentious. It seemed like way more fun to just have a laugh playing skiffle covers or country songs, really simple and timeless stuff with just three or four chords.”
“The more we played, the amps got bigger, the songs got faster and everything got louder”
How do you get from skiffle and country to the sound you have now? There’s a lot of classic indie rock in the background on ‘This Better Be Something Good’…
Reuben Haycocks: “We try to keep everything about this band completely natural, and because we like a lot of that stuff, and we listen to so much of it, it was inevitable that it would come out in the music. So, the more we played, the amps got bigger, the songs got faster and everything got louder.”
Bradbury: “But there was never a sit-down meeting: ‘let’s develop into a rock band.’”
You’ve described your sound as ‘Britainicana’. Was there a blueprint for that style?
Anson-O’Connell: “I think there’s many different blueprints for Britainicana. We’ve just given a very old thing a new name. Folk is in the mix, too; we have some amazing friends in a Manchester folk band called Brown Wimpenny, and although they make such different music to us, they are Westside Cowboy in ethos. Or maybe we’re Brown Wimpenny in ethos.
“We all grew up with folk music and religious music, and the first song I ever wrote was inspired by a Lankum gig. I think not being able to play the guitar very well lends itself to writing in that style, actually.”
“Going to grassroots gigs and supporting those venues – the power of that shouldn’t be undervalued”
How important has Manchester been for you as a base? What’s it like to be a young band starting out here now?
Bradbury: “COVID felt like a bit of a reset for Manchester. It seems much easier to get people out to shows now than it used to be.”
Anson-O’Connell: “At the minute, I don’t know if there’s anywhere more exciting for music. We’ve had a few conversations about that with friends recently; just talking about how lucky we feel to be here.”
Murphy: “It’s nice how small and tight-knit the community feels. You’re bumping into friends who are in bands on the street all the time. And everything feels new. There’s great bands coming up, like Martial Arts, Shaking Hand, Dove Ellis and Holly Head, and none of them sound like Joy Division. None of them sound like Oasis or The Smiths.”
You won the Glastonbury Emerging Talent competition, which is a major opportunity for an emerging band. Do you think there’s enough support for the grassroots in music generally right now?
Bradbury: “I think that kind of thing has been being squeezed for decades now. But, in a way, it’s cool to see the younger artists are willing to keep doing it, keep fighting for it, even when there’s no money in it.”
Haycocks: “As venues shut down and the community starts to suffer, people begin to want to go to gigs less and it becomes a vicious cycle. So, making an effort to go to grassroots gigs and support those venues – the power of that shouldn’t be undervalued. We’re lucky that Manchester is still crawling with those kinds of places, but we’re aware too that you lose those places if you don’t use them.”
Will Woodsies be the biggest crowd you’ve played in front of?
Anson-O’Connell: “It will be if people show up. We’re on at 11:15am…”
Bradbury: “Neil Young is playing the night before. So maybe we won’t even be there! We’ll still be partying it up with Neil.”
Haycocks: “Maybe we can switch slots with him. We were going to ask him to feature on a track anyway, so we can discuss that with him at the same time…”
Westside Cowboy play Woodsies at Glastonbury Festival on Sunday (June 29). Their debut EP ‘This Better Be Something Great’ is out August 8 via Nice Swan Recordings / Heist or Hit