SheBangg
SheBangg are a female-fronted four-piece from the West Midlands, UK. Their music can be broadly described as power pop / melodic rock, but it also encompasses elements of many other styles, from blues and folk, through to soul and southern rock. Whilst difficult to pigeon-hole, SheBangg's similarities do cover a wide range of bands and artists and their influences are many fold: From the raunchy / soulful lead vocals of Janis Joplin, Anastacia or Pink; the lyrical attitude of Alanis Morissette or Skunk Anansie; the multi-part harmonies of The Magic Numbers or The Beach Boys; the tight musicianship and melodic power of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers or The Foo Fighters; and the innovative songwriting of The Beatles or No Doubt
SheBangg formed four years ago and whilst the line-up of Chrissii Wing, Tim Barratt and Leyton Burgess has remained the same since the early days, there have been a variety of bassists, second guitarists and keyboardists coming and going! SheBangg's music has developed and evolved over this time, and they now have a back catalogue of well over 50 strong, original songs. In a typical set, there may be out-and-out rockers, jangly pop, acoustic ballads, pop punk and blues … but all with very recognisable SheBangg trademarks and signatures. In four years, SheBangg have played over 200 gigs in venues ranging from small pubs and clubs through to theatres and outdoor festivals. Their music has been played on radio stations such as Beacon Radio, Kerrang, Radio Shropshire and Heart FM. SheBangg regularly feature high in the charts of many INTERNET radio stations and their music is particularly well received in the U.S. and Europe.
Chrissii
Deciding to be in the world of entertainment at the very early age of four, Chrissii began to learn and practice all forms of dance (ballet, tap, modern, jazz and theatre craft). She continued to do professional dance training until she was 18. Also from the age of four, Chrissii learned and honed her entertaining skills by appearing in many shows, musicals and pantomimes in a variety of dancing, singing and acting roles. She was signed up to an entertainment agency at the age of 16 and since then, has worked on several modelling contracts and gained various walk-on and extra roles for film and television, including recently “Waterloo Road”, “Sorted”, “The Innocence Project” and the new film “Control”.
Chrissii became a backing dancer for a professional singer at 19. Then, at the age of 20,
she decided to exercise her vocal chords and joined the professional ABBA Tribute band “ABBA UK” as one of the two lead singers. Chrissii toured all over the British Isles and Europe with “ABBA UK” for
three years, being paid extremely well (!) and gaining loads of gigging experience. However, Chrissii wanted a new musical venture…she had a hankering to perform in a band that played more original music and she felt that she had taken tribute singing as far as she wanted, so she decided to leave to
work on other projects.
Since then, she divided her time working as a dance teacher and regularly gigging in various acts, such as a vocal duo with singer / songwriter Nikki Rous; and an appreciation to the music of Alanis Morissette a trio called “Alanis More-or-Less”. Meanwhile Chrissii’s voice was developing and maturing. There began to be elements of the soul and emotion of singers such as Janis Joplin. She wanted a new singing challenge, so, in 2003 she formed a duo with Tim Barratt…which, shortly followed with the addition of a drummer and bassist at a later date, became SheBangg. Since then Chrissii has become widely known for her commanding stage presence and passionate, raunchy vocal performances, bringing one radio DJ to recently dub her “The Voice”.
Tim
<>After having had three guitar lessons and four piano lessons before being sacked for learning the music too quickly (!), Tim devised his own methods of learning to play his instruments, largely involving improvising over chart music on the radio. His first band was as a rhythm guitarist in the school rock group “Driftwood”. “Driftwood” played gigs throughout the school buildings and lasted until all the members left the school.
Upon leaving school, delusions of grandeur caused Tim to abandon the guitar and keyboard to become the lead singer/frontman of the epic U2-style group the “The Beginning”. This group lasted two years, before the stringed instrument again beckoned and Tim was asked to be the lead guitarist for a successfully gigging band “Double Vision”. When “Double Vision” imploded, Tim played in three bands in as many years: “Running For President” (Power Pop/ Punk); “Bloody Luxury” (Classic Rock); and “Rough Justice” (Blues-Rock). Disillusionment, caused mainly by the inability to hold down a regular drummer, encouraged three members of “Rough Justice" to undertake a recording project under the umbrella title of “Tempting Fate”. Two albums worth of material were recorded, with Tim composing all the melodies and playing guitars and keyboards. But the gigging bug resurfaced and Tim formed a guitar duo called “The Garden Party”. The duo played innumerable gigs throughout the Midlands.
1999 Tim met John Gorman (ex of “The Scaffold” and “Tiswas”) and formed a very prolific writing partnership…. together composing music for four musicals and material for a number of singers and bands.In 2000 Tim was asked to join the top ABBA tribute band ABBA UK as a keyboardist. The band played throughout the British Isles and abroad. But, despite the extremely good pay and experience, Tim decided that he wanted to concentrate on writing songs and playing the guitar, so in 2003 he formed a duo with Chrissii Wing. Other band members later joined them and SheBangg was born. Tim plays virtually any stringed instrument or keyboard and is a prolific songwriter. He has lost count of the number of songs he has written over the years, but over 60 of them are for SheBangg!
Leyton
Leyton has been a familiar face on the local music scene since the early 90’s. He lists his key influences as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, 70’s Queen/Bowie, Radiohead, RHCP and “The Funk”! His dislikes include: country music, tribute bands and the 80’s in general. Having acquired a set of drums at the age of 13, he made his concert debut the following year with Indie band “Pipeweed”. The group performed a mixture of cover versions and original material and Leyton found more inspiration and excitement doing the latter. From then on, he vowed never to end up in a dead end cover band reciting “Mustang Sally”!
Meanwhile Leyton was reluctantly attending school in Shropshire. Here he was the drummer in the 
school orchestra, along with a few friends who would go on to form another band. Influenced by the likes of The Chilli’s, Jimi Hendrix and Gong and 70’s funk, the new outfit Booyaka” were once described in the press as “Acid Funk Warriors”. Becoming popular in the early 90’s, they went on to locally tickle the funk glands of a new generation as they gigged extensively throughout the Midlands, Liverpool, Manchester, London and Barcelona.When Booyaka’s hedonistic party reputation became more notorious than the music, Leyton decided to move on to the relative calm of “The Graham Clews Band” and “The Poet Dogs”. Leyton was briefly part of the ever-changing line-up of The Poet Dogs as a percussionist (although there were also opportunities for him to play the occasional harmonica, keyboard, guitar and mouth trumpet!). A more permanent position came with backing Graham Clews, a virtuoso singer/songwriter and guitarist. His style of composition relied more heavily on melody and harmony, so Leyton took on a more active role as a backing vocalist.
In 2004, Leyton was invited to join SheBangg, who seem to get more popular with each passing year. Most recently, he has become more involved with the songwriting process, in his capacity as a lyricist and arranger. Leyton’s unique brand of drumming ranges from energetic and powerful to intricate and subtle. Leyton’s own words on the SheBangg phenomenon: “Bloody Marvellous mate!”…. you can’t say fairer than that and no mistake!
Ryan
Ryan’s (otherwise known as “De-la” !) bass journey started when he was 16 years old, a small garage project gave him the inspiration to join his first band “Stamp”. “Stamp” ripped up stages at local venues with their hard punk/funk performances and even managed to get to the semi-finals in the Wolverhampton battle of the bands in 1996, but due to work and college commitments at the time, disbanded in 1998.
In 2001, after a few years in and out of various musical projects, Ryan was invited to play bass for Telford’s funk/rock Chilli Peppers worshipping band “Monolith”. They soon became a very locally respected band playing many gigs across the county. Monolith ended in 2002 due to band disagreements (!).
In 2003, Ryan joined forces with Indie solo artist, Mark Murdoch, to do acoustic and open mic sets. After much discussion, Mark and Ryan decided to gather together more musicians to form a 5-piece indie band, called “Nineteen52”. They had massive local success when they managed to bag
support slots for ‘Mark Joseph’, ‘BellX1’, ‘Rainband’ and ‘I love UFO’. Off and on for the past few years Ryan has
provided soulful funk bass lines for the talented singer/songwriter Nikki Rous, as “Kinki Sour”. Nikki and Ryan played a collection of her acoustic songs across the West Midlands. They also worked with a latin/funk-style drummer for a brief period, but mainly performed as a 2 piece. For a short while Ryan joined the 7-piece funk band “ECFunk” (Electric Chair Funk)…. followed by a stint in Wolverhampton's soul/funk band “BrotherSister”.
Over the last two years, Ryan has worked extensively on his personal playing, extending his knowledge of jazz and world music…joining a soul/jazz/pop female fronted band “The Nikki Corfield Band”.
Following the departure of Graham Clews as SheBangg’s bassist, Ryan was approached to fill the void and, after a storming audition, formally became the new bassist in October 2007. Ryan brings a wealth of technical ability and fluid bass lines to SheBangg. His roots in Jazz Funk also bring a new edge to the SheBangg sound.