Matt Everitt on pivoting from indie drummer to radio presenter and the BBC 6 Music Festival 2025

After a few years enjoying success with bands Menswear and The Montrose, broadcasting veteran Matt Everitt found his true calling in radio on XFM and then his long-term home of BBC 6 Music. He chats to Headliner about the upcoming 6 Music Festival 2025 and its phenomenal lineup and his show The First Time, which has seen him interview Noel Gallagher, Yoko Ono, David Gilmour, and more.

Everitt can be found in Manchester, at the Victoria Warehouse for the 2025 edition of the 6 Music Festival, where he will be joined by BRIT Award and Mercury Prize-winning jazz act Ezra Collective, rising indie stars Fat Dog, acclaimed writer and musician Kae Tempest, English Teacher (who scooped last year’s Mercury Prize for their debut album), unlikely chart-toppers and Glaswegian noise-act Mogwai, and more.

The Festival had moved around a fair amount in its earlier years but is once again returning to the city of Manchester. Seemingly finding a home in the city, it prompted the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to say last year that “We are delighted to welcome the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival to Manchester. There is a rich musical heritage in Greater Manchester and a real pride in the independent music scene, and as BBC Radio 6 Music has always supported new and alternative artists, it’s a perfect fit for the festival to have its permanent home in the city for the years to come.”

How are you today?

I think I'm all right. It's weird, isn't it? When anyone asks that these days, you just have to have a bit of a think about it. ‘Really, is it all right?’ But yeah, philosophically, physically, spiritually, I think we're all right.

Were there any early signs you were destined to become a radio presenter one day?

You know, there's that thing where sometimes you don't realise how significant something in your childhood is until many years down the line. And you think, ‘Oh my gosh, the signs were there.’ If I ever do any interviews with musicians, and I'm asking questions about the start of their life and how they first fell in love with music, you can often find the direct through-line with what they became famous for doing with very early formative things. It's always there straight from the off. And I remember making radio shows on my own, on little cassette tapes in my bedroom. So I probably would have been about, I don't know, eight, maybe nine, recording myself pressing the two buttons on the recorder and recording myself doing links for imaginary radio shows, but I never thought about becoming a radio presenter.

Did your experiences in Menswear and The Montrose as a drummer help you when interviewing musicians — having experiential knowledge of touring, the financial side of being a musician, and all the rest of it?

Or the lack of a financial side of it! I think that definitely there's empathy, but there's an understanding of how it works when you've done it. There is a knowledge and understanding of some of the nuts and bolts of it. I don't often get intimidated when a I interview well known or famous musicians; because, no matter how famous you are or how big the stadium you're playing these days is, at some point, you were probably sat in the back of a rubbish van, living on terrible service station pasties, and playing to no one. And I don't care if you're Muse or David Bowie or Florence Welch, it doesn't matter. You probably did that, which means there's a certain down-to-earthness. Even the most egomaniacal musicians, you've probably all done that bit. It's a great leveller.

All bands have probably slogged it out and played to two people and a dog in Carlisle and made a loss. So I understand what that's like. I think it kind of takes the edge off the hero worship for me. And just sort of understanding the difficulties that there are in being a musician. And the joys as well.

So how did you pivot from touring band member to an XFM presenter?

When the wheels fell off both the bands I’d been in, I started to question myself. ‘Is it me?’ Then I started to write music reviews for anyone that would have me while I was working at a video shop in Camden. I was basically doing it for free, often getting ignored, and then occasionally someone would say ‘Here’s 25 quid for that 300 word review you wrote.’ And then I eventually started getting to do interviews as well, and I became a music journalist via that route. And then when the dot com thing happened and web sites became the big thing, all of a sudden I was actually getting paid decent money to write reviews, interview bands, and to go and review four gigs a week.

And then XFM, now known as Radio X, was really coming through. It had just been bought by Global, who were Capital back in the day. And it was a really interesting time for music, you know. After the Britpop slump, there was an opportunity for indie to go more mainstream. XFM were looking for journalists and I applied for the job and got that. Weirdly, the guy that gave me the job is now my co-director at Cup & Nuzzle, my production company, which is nice. XFM had me writing stories for the website, doing lots of interviews. And they’d often say ‘Oh, this is a good interview. This should go on air.’ So I could talk about the music news on air. XFM was a good station back in the day. It was really strong, which is also where I met Sean Keaveny (who only recently left 6 Music after a very long stint as one of its weekday DJs).

In 2007, you found your spiritual home of BBC 6 Music, where you’ve presented the music news, and your show, The First Time With… with some huge guests. But to start with a philosophical question, as 6 Music means so much to so many people, could you talk us through your connection to the station and what it means to you?

I remember when the station was first getting started, and it was where I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to be at 6. I was thinking, ‘Listen to what they're doing. Listen to how diverse this is. Listen to how connected they are to all different kinds of music, and genuinely care. I was overjoyed when I got the job. And I love the familial nature of it. It does feel like there's a shared ethos, even if the music taste is varied. I think it's enormously important. I think, as a platform for breaking new artists, it's still vital. Radio is still really, really important. It can make a difference. Going back to when I interview people, older musicians all talk about the first time they heard their track on the radio.

And it's still like that even for new artists, even when there are thousands of platforms, countless different ways of communicating to people and communicating to your audience. Hearing it on the radio, and especially, hearing it on 6 Music means something. I believe it’s the biggest digital station in the UK. Every single one of those people who listens cares about music and will tell you they’ve discovered so much music by listening to the station.

There must be a huge buzz around the place, with Lauren Laverne returning and with Nick Grimshaw presenting the new breakfast show.

Nick has been doing so well! I know someone who worked with him when he was on Radio One, and they told me whenever Nick got to do a free play and choose a track himself, it was always a song he’d found listening to 6 Music, for example, an FKA Twigs song or something like that. He’s always loved it. And I’m so glad Lauren is back. She’s a broadcaster of huge pedigree and experience! She does the One Show and Desert Island Discs, so she doesn’t have to keep doing 6 Music. But she loves it, and she’s so connected to the station.

How are you feeling about the 6 Music Festival 2025, and what will you be up to over the weekend?

I'll be doing what I normally would, just interviewing people and reporting from backstage and front of house. I’m trying to communicate what's going on in the audience to the listeners. You don’t want people to listen to it and it to come across as ‘Hey, we're at a great thing, and you're not, isn't this great for us?’ Whereas with Glastonbury and the 6 Music Festival, it's like, the BBC gets to go really deep and play whole sets, and then get them up on BBC Sounds. You can hear them again. It's not just a blink and you’ll miss it clip. And then we get that access where we can really take you backstage, we can talk to those artists.

6 Music isn't just like, ‘Hey, artist, when did you get your name from, what's the new album about?’ We've got a chance to dig deep in those interviews and really find out more about the motivations behind the artists and why they do what they do and how they do what they do. And I think with everyone playing, Ezra Collective, Fat Dog, Mogwai, English Teacher, and Kae Tempest, there is an existing relationship with 6 Music. I think one of the reasons they do the festival is because it’s not just a trusted place, but a place where their music will get heard and get heard properly.

Something the BBC does so well with coverage of events such as Glastonbury and the 6 Music Festival is how it’s done so immersively, and it really softens the blow if you weren’t able to make it.

You want to paint an audio picture… I wish I hadn't said that. [laughs] But you do want to put people in the crowd so they hear it when the gigs are broadcast like they are there. And this isn't just blowing the BBC’s trumpet, but there isn't a broadcaster that captures live sound and live performances both sonically and visually better than the BBC. You see it at Glastonbury. You can see it at the 6 Music Festival. It’s not like we'll just film it on phones, and we'll take a feed off a desk. It's filmed brilliantly with some of the best technical crews in the world, and it sounds amazing. So we put you in the audience for that, to capture that excitement.

I do love those after-performance interviews. We try to do those quite a lot. We did one with a Gossip last year that was completely insane. I spoke to Beth Ditto within minutes of her coming off stage, still completely adrenaline-rushed out of her mind. A lot of music broadcasting can be quite sanitised and safe. We film the artists doing it, but we love speaking to someone just after they’ve performed because it's perhaps the most honest and least guarded capturing of how someone's feeling if you get them straight in the euphoria of that.

Matt Everitt presents New Album Fix on BBC Radio 6 Music and will be on-air during the 6 Music Festival in Greater Manchester, 26-29 March. Tickets are available at bbc.co.uk/6musicfestival