As synonymous as ghostbusters are the ones to call when you have a spooky intruder as are the Wideboys; Jim Sullivan and Eddie Craig, the ones to call when you need a hot new remix. Known for their catchy club track Sambuca their ‘remixography’ spans a multitude of genres, having produced remixes and worked with artists such as Professor Green, N Dubz, Rhianna, Mariah Carey, Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys, Cheryl Cole, Enrique Iglesias and that’s just to name a few this duo are just doing what they love doing; making music.
What have you guys been up to since your hit Sambuca?
Jim: Well, if we work our way backwards, today we are off to meet David Hasselhoff as we’ve just been working on his daughters debut single, they are doing their video shoot so we are going up to London to meet him.
Ed: The girls have written a great song and David Hasselhoff has always been an idol of ours, he was like ‘can you write me a hit’ and we were like ‘sure’ and we couldn’t wait to get working on it. Also, this week we’ve just finished working on a remix for Cher Lloyd, a remix for Wretch 32 and a secret project for psycho records as well as something of our own. Since Sambuca it’s been full on. We changed management around five years ago and from then onwards it’s been flat out, doing what we love doing music.
Jim: One of our highlights has also been that we produced a Wanted track which they performed on Xfactor, we also produced a Comic Relief track for The Saturdays which went to no1 midweek.
Your catchphrase is ‘pigeon holes are for pigeons’ do you think having that mind-set has helped you in being presented with opportunities to produce for the wide range of artists that you have worked with?
Ed: Jim and I have such diverse tastes in music. We are very open and take inspiration from all sorts of styles; one day it may be from drum & bass, but we’ll put it into a garage tune, then we may take inspiration from a classical track and put it in a drum & bass tune, we are constantly evolving our sound. The best music we have ever done has come from experimenting with sounds. Pigeonholes are definitely for pigeons.
How do you deal with the on-going pressure to continuously produce hits?
Jim: The more pressure we’re under, the more we seem to like it. If someone says we need a top 5 written and we get the brief on Friday and need to turn it around by Monday we actually thrive on that.
Ed: We have very supportive friends and family that help and spur us on under pressure but as Jim said the more pressure, the better we like working to deadlines.
Tell me about your A&R work?
Ed: We’ve worked with quite a few labels most notably the H20 project ‘what’s it gonna be?’ and the Ministry of sound. We love to see new talent and music styles breaking through, if we can help people, then we try and do that. If music doesn’t change and evolve it’s just going to get stagnant and stale.
Jim: We really do support new artists, we get calls and emails from budding musicians who ask us technical advice, and we generally try to answer all of those. We have tutorials on YouTube and that’s all to help people out, so we are all about bringing through new talent.
Are you still releasing music through your label Garage jams?
Ed: We have been working on some new garages stuff and other styles, we also have our label; Worldwide Phonographic.
Jim: Worldwide phonographic is the label we have released our latest single on so that is very much set up for mainstream. We also we also have a publishing company where we take on peoples publishing and put artists together who are writing.
What do you think has been the key to your longevity in music and friendships?
Jim: Ed and I are practically married we have been friends for 15 years and to this day we have never had an argument, which is probably due to Ed’s calm persona than mine. His family is my family.
Ed: We are pretty much brothers. The thing is talking about things and being honest, a lot of very talented groups split up due to being greedy or arguing about money, that’s one thing we have never done, we are not greedy people we are very fair. We try and treat people how we would like to be treated, the music industry is so small that you have to be honest otherwise it will spread like wildfire.
Jim: Because have never been greedy, never blown our money on fast cars or lavish things. As a result we have gone from the slow burn. Ed’s done a video 5 steps to success and one of them is to ‘be nice to people and be nice to work with, be a problem solver not a problem maker’. We still get calls from A&R guys we worked with 10 years ago a) because we can turn stuff around quite easily and b) because we like to think that we are easy to work with. I think that’s a key thing in the industry, don’t be too greedy or you wont be in it for the long game
What can we expect from you in the future?
Ed: We’re just putting the final tweaks on our solo album and are also working on developing new artists in the camp and continuing what we do, writing music and having a laugh. If me and Jim earn 50p or if we earn a million pounds we would still be making music that we love making and that’s what we are going to do and hopefully people will like it.
Wideboys feat Sway & Mclean Shopholics is Out Now
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Interview by Sharleen Banton