“It ain’t about the machine that’s behind you, it’s about how long you can stay in the ring”: How Skindred and Those Damn Crows played the long game and won

Both hail from hard-working communities in South Wales. Both have ended up scaling impressive heights. Headlining festivals and bothering the top of the charts is all in a typical year’s work for Skindred frontman Benji Webbe, and now also for Those Damn Crows frontman Shane Greenhall, whose fourth album God Shaped Hole entered the UK Album Chart at Number One in April. And they’ve headlined Cardiff’s Utilita Arena – twice.

Skindred started out in the early 2000s playing for handfuls of converts at tiny rooms like The Charlotte in Leicester. Years later they packed out the same city’s biggest venue, the O2 Academy, but now that’s been overshadowed by an epic Wembley Arena headline show in March last year. Latest album Smile had reached Number Two the because it was Skindred to the core – ragga, rock and reggae, with dynamo tune-bombs that you could actually dance to.

Those Damn Crows got things going at 2016’s Steelhouse festival, not far from their hometown of Bridgend, a performance that stressed Shane so much that he ended the day in an ambulance, heart-rate in overdrive. Next month, less than 10 years on, Shane and gang will be back to headline the festival for heart-stopping moments of different sort – chart-busting anthems, fireworks and probably a few tears.

It's fitting that both bands finally played together at Stevenage’s SMR 25 weekender last month. Different bands from parallel worlds they may be, but both acts prove what a diverse and thrilling place homegrown rock’n’roll is in 2025…

You both took the stage at the Lamex Stadium for SMR 25. Good vibes?
Benji: “We hadn’t played since March so I was very excited to get there, and it was a great stage to be playing on. I love being surrounded by brilliant young acts, including Those Damn Crows who had just been at Number One. Also, there’s nothing better than playing in places like Stevenage where people don’t get bands that often. It made me take a step back and remember how grateful I am that these things happen.”
Shane: “We loved being on with the Skindred boys. Their longevity, their unique style; it’s all so impressive and they’re just an animal when it comes to playing live. On top of that, they’re also lovely human beings. We deliberately played one of our heavier sets because that was the kind of crowd, and that’s an area we wanna get more into.”

Bob Vylan and SNAYX were also on the bill, comprising an unusually diverse set of artists. That’s a healthy thing for rock, right?
Benji: “The best thing is how British rock music is feeling right now. That bill was full of promising British acts, all of whom have their own thing going on. No disrespect to the Americans, but seeing us standing up on our own like that is brilliant. Our scene is getting its shit together.”

Both your bands have come so far. How do you feel looking back at the distance travelled?
Shane: “We’ve been living and breathing it for the past 10 years. With albums you can literally see the progress, and there’s no way that Those Damn Crows could’ve made the most recent album as its first record. We get to see the distance travelled right there. It’s every emotion you can think of. I’ve known Ronnie [Huxford, drums] and Shiner [Ian Thomas, guitar] since we were six – that level of friendship is probably the reason we’re still going.”
Benji: “There’s two ways to get where you’re going: one is in a fast car, and the other is by taking the scenic route. We took the latter. I am thankful because we got to see everything on the way. You just gotta focus on your own game. I’m proud that I can now say Skindred has been going 28 years with the same line-up, and we’re the only act from Wales to have a MOBO award!”

Is there one moment you can single out, something that made all the difference?
Benji: “Nah, we never had the big man coming in and pushing us. We were always the weird kids in the class, and happy to be. We make music for ourselves; it’s the only way. But the scene is so fertile; there’s room in guitar-based music for everything right now.”
Shane: “I had a very honest conversation with the band after our second album. We had to stop worrying about how other people perceive things. I had to write honestly, which might be challenging, but later you realise there’s a community that relates to it for that very reason – it becomes their anthem.”

Did you learn much from other bands – maybe even each other?
Shane: “You can’t look at a band like Skindred and not take something from it. Drop them into any festival and they’ll tear it up. We also pick up on how they handle things, and of course it helps that they’re from our neck of the woods. Talking to Benji is just like talking to one of the boys back home. On the one hand, there he is as a performer, absolutely masterful, but on the other hand he is one of us, talking in the Welsh accent. ‘Alright, butt?’ and all that!”
Benji: “I was alive at the same time as Led Zeppelin so there ain’t much young bands can teach us, but I do remember going to see bands as a younger guy, and that made me yearn to get to rehearsal, to do more, to try harder. These days it’s not about individual bands, but I do take inspiration from everything around me. That means our next album, which is coming around April 2026, is gonna be our best ever – you have my word!”

Skindred’s rise was a decade earlier than Those Damn Crows. Is there a difference now in how bands get noticed?
Benji: “These days there’s so much social media behind bands, but how much that helps is all relative. If you’ve got a good person doing all that for you, all those hashtags and shit, brilliant. We never had that hand up, and then again we’re on about our ninth fucking record deal. When we’d get dropped, I’d get upset. Now I’m like, ‘Well, who’s next?’”
Shane: “I don’t think there’s much difference – if you come from the right place, good things happen. With Skindred from Newport and us from Bridgend, there’s a very similar vibe in what we witness in our towns and cities. There are big homelessness problems, for example, and genuine challenges, and writing from that perspective gives everything you do an authenticity, and while Skindred’s music has a different sound to ours, we’ve both got that in common.”

What was it like when you found out you had a Number One album?
Shane: “I’m so glad we were in the tour bus together at the time. We just exploded and made a hell of a racket. Management told us we had to keep the news quiet till later. That was a challenge. I rang my brother, but I couldn’t get any words out. I was welling up. But he just knew. He said, ‘You’ve done it, haven’t you?’ I whimpered, ‘Yes.’ He was, like, ‘Bro, I’m so proud of you.’ We started talking about our dad who has passed away, and how proud he’d be. Damn, I’m getting emotional now!”
Benji: “I was thrilled for them. I bought two copies of their album, because no-one knows quite what that battle’s like. Our last album Smile was officially Number Two – but I suspect it was really Number One. I believe a major label could not be seen having an indie beat them, so a bit of skulduggery went on. I was upset for a minute but when I was on the breakfast TV sofa the following day talking about the album, I felt like we’d won.”

The cherry on top is surely gonna be headlining your home festival, Steelhouse. Skindred did it last year, and Those Damn Crows will finally do it next month...
Shane: “I was a bag of nerves for our first show there [2016]. We were playing too quickly, like we’d gone punk, and I was so wound up that I couldn’t get my breath. I ended up in an ambulance, wired up to an ECG machine. It was then I discovered I have a heart murmur. It’s under control now, and I understand it better. Mikey [Evans, Steelhouse organiser] always said we’d headline one day. We thought he was joking, but to see it happen is amazing. We always thought we could do it, but never seriously imagined we would. It’ll be a special and emotional night.”
Benji: “Those Damn Crows are there on merit, and it’s simply because they have real fans. They haven’t had hype or anything like that. It’s all grassroots, organic and building things up. It’s gonna be emotional, and it shows that rock’n’roll is not a 100-metre dash but a marathon. You gotta stay in the race.”

Finally, what one piece of advice would you give to a new band?
Shane: “Literally just go and play. We’d go anywhere, it didn’t matter. Put on your best show, whether it’s to three people or thousands. Attack everything, be a force of nature. Remember, you never know who’s watching. We were gigging at a little pub in London and it turned out there was a record label there.”
Benji: “I think of Tyson Fury. Remember how that guy [Deontay] Wilder floored him? Fury’s eyes were rolling and he looked out of it. But he got up, carried on and he still bloody won. Stick it out. Slipknot were turned down by everyone at first, but to me that’s encouraging. What I mean is, it ain’t about the machine that’s behind you, it’s about how long you can stay in the ring.”

Skindred tour the UK this October and November – get your tickets now. Those Damn Crows will headline Steelhouse on July 27 and tour the UK in October – get your tickets now.

Read this next:

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• “Even when I was a crack-head, I was still writing”: How Ginger Wildheart became British rock’s greatest survivor