Black Country, New Road’s Charlie Wayne on The Next Wave

Photo by Jonny Nolan

Before Black Country, New Road became one of the most distinctive and unpredictable bands to emerge from the South London scene, drummer Charlie Wayne was a Classics student at King’s College London, spending his evenings playing shows and his days immersed in ancient texts. It’s a split life that makes surprising sense for someone whose musical instincts were born long before university: as an eleven-year-old sneaking every lunch break to the school drum kit, letting raw curiosity guide him toward rhythm long before he had the language to name it.

Since meeting the other members in sixth form and helping form Black Country, New Road in 2018, Charlie has been at the centre of the band’s evolution from early Windmill Brixton shows to a Mercury-nominated debut, a critically adored second album, and now Forever Howlong, their third record and a milestone in refining a sound that refuses to sit still. Their latest international tour, stretching from April to October this year, marked another moment of definition for a group constantly rebuilding itself in public, and for Charlie, it offered a rare perspective on how far they’ve travelled since those first gigs.

Away from the kit, Charlie has been building his own parallel creative world. He recently co-founded The Bird Records, a label committed to spotlighting new alternative voices, and has thrown himself into DJ nights at venues like the Shacklewell Arms – extensions of the same curiosity that first kept him glued to a drum kit. With tours across Asia, coming up next week and Australia, and New Zealand in the new year, he’s balancing the momentum of a band in motion with an ever-expanding creative orbit of his own.

This conversation traces where Charlie's been, what he’s learning, and where he sees both himself and Black Country, New Road heading next. 

You studied Classics at King’s College London while the band was beginning to take shape. How did being in that academic environment influence the way you think about music or creativity?

It’s funny because half the band went to Guildhall: May, Georgia, Lewis, and Isaac went briefly. Tyler went to art school, Luke went to Goldsmiths, and I ended up at King’s. For me, not doing formal music education was the more interesting part, and I was basically self-taught on drums. What made the band exciting early on was the mix of people who were technically trained and those of us who weren’t unskilled, just coming from different approaches, ranges, and influences. 

When you look back to discovering the drum kit at school and spending every break learning to play, what do you think kept you so drawn to the instrument?

I was listening to music and trying to play along, and that’s really how it all began. Playing an instrument is just incredibly rewarding. It wasn’t about becoming technically proficient – I was never great at rehearsing or drilling technique – but the joy of playing and listening. You have to really love music to be a musician. There’s also a kind of liminality to it: you’re focused, but it’s something you could almost do with your eyes closed.

Black Country, New Road have evolved so much since those early Windmill Brixton shows. From your perspective, what feels most different about the band now compared to those first years?

Honestly, not a huge amount. The band still works in the same way but we’re just slightly less cagey. Early on, we were more adolescent about things, trying to seem a bit scary on stage and taking ourselves very seriously. That never really matched who we are, because we’re quite unserious people. You always want a degree of separation between yourself and your stage self; being truly seen is intimidating. Performing lets you offer a version of yourself that’s both authentic and characterful, and if it falls flat you can separate from it. It’s an artistic entity, not something super personal. 

Forever Howlong is your third album in just a few years. What did making this record teach you about yourselves as a band, especially after such an intense period of touring?

It was great, but definitely the most challenging thing we’ve written. After Isaac left, we had to reconstitute the band very consciously as we were aware of what already existed and were trying to differentiate ourselves. It wasn’t necessarily a very conscious change, but there were influences in the room before that aren’t anymore, which is just the effect of time passing. The live record was a get-out-of-jail-free card because we were just presenting music. Making an album is different; it has to feel considered. It required less automatic writing, even though that’s still part of how we work. After having done so much already, you want to create something new while being wary of how contrived that can feel. The band is always shifting. It was shifting when we were seven people, and it’s shifting now as six. That’s just life.  

How do you feel the cultural landscape is shifting right now, and where do you see bands like yours fitting into that change? 

When we first started in London, post-punk and jangly guitar music was everywhere. The Fat White Family were the Windmill band I saw online as a teenager and they looked wild. That sound leant into the discordant - emotion in a super direct and purposefully straightforward way. When we started gigging more, we were part of a group that shifted things a bit. Bands like Black Midi (amongst many others) leant into the obtuse. The wave was super musical, technical, and used non-traditional ‘rock-band’ instruments. That tide is turning again though. Bands are going back to simpler rock lineups and more alternative sounds. A band like Westside Cowboy, who we just toured with, is a great sign of that 90s-leaning alternative space and they feel like what the next wave might look like.

There’s also this appetite for reviving older music, or a belief that nothing new can be made – very Mark Fisher, though I don’t fully subscribe to that. Business interests chase what’s bankable, which leads to revivalism and nostalgia. People love Radiohead or Oasis, and fair enough, I really like Oasis and Radiohead, living creatively in nostalgia can feel moribund. Culture moves on. Bands never stop being popular. Fontaines D.C. are massive now and came from the same scene as us. People say ‘rock and roll is dead,’ but that’s an old-head, boring take. Some bands copy their predecessors, but people also want to hear things that are genuinely new. That will always cut through, people will always want to listen to new innovative stuff. 

This year’s international tour stretched from April to October. What sticks with you when you think about that run, both personally and musically?

The band has always had a sort of on-edge quality, partly by choice and partly due to circumstances like COVID, and the line-up shift. Touring has never been easy, and we’ve been doing it consistently for nearly three years, but this tour felt settled. We’re unbelievably lucky to do this as a job. There are levels to touring where you can sleep on floors and drive around in your mate’s car, but we’re not doing that now. I’m very aware of how fortunate we are. 

You’re about to head to Asia next week, then Australia and New Zealand early next year. As a performer, what do you hope these shows will feel like, and what are you most curious to experience on this leg of the tour?

We’re starting our Asia tour in Seoul next Thursday and I can’t wait. I was talking to a friend about it and she said, ‘It’s so mental you can do this as your job.’ It never feels lost on me. You also have to make hay while the sun shines as this isn’t a guaranteed job, and we’re grateful people want us to come because they like the music. The schedule is intense: arrive, play, fly out, repeat. Sometimes we make a bit of time in places. After this tour, Lewis is staying on in Japan and Australia, and May is staying with her family in Japan for Christmas. Whenever we’re in America, I visit my brother. Little things like that mean a lot. 

You co-founded The Bird Records, which is already beginning to release new alternative music. What gap did you want the label to fill, and how hands-on are you with the artists you sign?

I set up The Bird with Mita De. We’d worked together on BC,NR. I called her in July with some questions about the industry because as an artist you don’t really see behind the curtain. I wanted to learn and get some actual skills. She suggested starting a label as a crash course, and it made sense. I’ve been around the scene long enough to know a lot of artists who deserve a light shone on them. It’s not like the alternative scene lacks attention, and we’re not pretending it’s a new idea, but the space between artist development labels and fully established indies is really blurry now. The industry is saturated, and it’s easy to get lost. The label is a curatorial thing, and we have the advantage that people know who Black Country, New Road are. The first artist we’re releasing, Nina, used to tour with us on violin. Her music is phenomenal. She was planning to self-release, which is such a gamble, so it made sense for her to do it with us. The EP is brilliant, and there’s more coming. 

You’ve been doing more DJ sets recently, including at the Shacklewell Arms. What draws you to DJing, and how does that space differ creatively from being behind the kit?

DJing is just something fun on the side. I’ve actually been helping set up with promoting this night with my friends Pepper Coxon and Jack Young for this new night called Our Mutual Friend. The label and the night are separate things but they have similar ethos’ at the heart I suppose. With OMF we all have the same taste in music, we love bands, and wanting to put them on in a venue we know as a night-out spot but hadn’t seen shows in. There's nothing more fun than putting on a night with your mates and seeing bands you love on the same lineup. It’s really just promoting a night, nothing too high-concept. 

Looking back at everything from the Mercury nomination to now preparing for another round of touring, where do you see yourself stretching next with either the band, the label, DJ, or something entirely different?

I’m not totally sure. We were talking the other day about what a new album might look like and when we’d even start thinking about it. We’ve probably got another year of touring, and after that…who knows. We haven’t had a proper break in nearly four years, so at some point we’ll need some time off to actually live and have something to write about. It’s all pretty open-ended, interesting, and exciting. I’d love to build more momentum with the label and the promotion stuff too, but we’ll see where things go. 

Follow Charlie on Instagram to keep up to date with all things label, BC,NR, and DJing.

Listen to BC,NR on Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud and follow them on Instagram. 

Buy tickets for Charlie’s next DJ set with Our Mutual Friend on the 15th of January 2026 and keep an eye out for Ninush’s EP coming out on the 6th of February 2026 through The Bird Records.