AJ Gilmore and Steve Simms of Rumour Den: “The music industry as we knew it and tried very hard to break into when we were younger is gone, and it won’t be coming back”
Rumour Den is the brainchild of long-time collaborators AJ Gilmore and Steve Simms - a project they use as a vehicle for, in their own words, "melancholic, dark, and reality-infused songs." Based in Northern Ireland, the pair have released three official singles to date, and their most recent, the gritty and powerful All In This Together, was a tune that truly blew me away!
Keen to get to know the duo better, I reached out to AJ and Steve to see whether they'd be up for an interview. Thankfully, they were more than generous with their time.
Chatting about the very beginnings of Rumour Den, why they believe they've already found success, and what they've love to see change in the music industry, please welcome AJ Gilmore and Steve Simms of Rumour Den!
AJ, Steve, I'm honoured to sit down with you two. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat!
Let's kick things off with an easy one...Who are Rumour Den, and how did you find one another?
AJ: The story of RD began in Carrickfergus, N. Ireland, in 1989 when I joined the metal band Steve was in. We clicked as songwriters almost immediately, and our friendship has been based on that ever since. Rumour Den became the band name for a group of songs Steve & I wrote in the late 90s and recorded on our debut album, Melancholics Anonymous. Unfortunately, the project didn’t go as planned, and we ended up with an album that we felt didn’t match our expectations or sound like the songs we had in our heads. Discouraged, we put RD on ice.
We restarted it again in 2013, but life got in the way this time, causing another pause. Then last year, a former bandmate sent us a couple of our old songs that he had found demos of and had polished up. Something in those recordings just lit a fire under both of us that is hard to explain. It is like 20 years of frustration, unfinished lyrics & unused guitar riffs just came tumbling out of us. And here we are – clear-headed, focused, confident.
I want to get stuck into your latest single, All In This Together. A tune I was proud to recently review, the powerful track has basically made its way onto every one of my playlists. It's just great!
Do you see the song as a natural progression of the Rumour Den sound, or does it mark the beginning of a new chapter?
AJ: The whole album is a new chapter because we have written an entirely new batch of songs and written them in a slightly different way from how we used to do. Before, Steve & I lived closer, and our writing sessions were in person, sitting in front rooms matching music to lyrics etc. But we live 50 miles apart now, so we have altered our method. Steve now matches my completed lyrics to music, then records listenable demo versions using home recording methods. This has meant deciding if a song makes the cut is easier. It also meant we arrived at the studio with a far more developed song than we did for our first album.
There is no getting away from the fact that our first 3 releases are not identical triplets. This is partly due to becoming a little bit more comfortable in the studio and partly being a little bit more decisive about what sound we wanted. We are pleased with the strong reaction to the slightly rawer sound of All in This Together – but the bottom line is still that we aim to make a song echo the atmosphere of the lyrics and we think the first 3 songs do that. And, because I write about all sorts of things, there are variations of the Rumour Den sound still to come, and the next release isn’t All in This Together Take 2, that’s for sure. Stay tuned!
Steve: I don’t see it as the beginning of a new chapter as such; it’s more like we are continuing to have our songs sound the way they need to sound rather than trying to keep them tied to a tight genre.
AJ, I've got one just for you!
As a lyricist and vocalist, I'm wondering if you've ever listened back to a song of yours and realised it revealed more about you than you intended at the time?
There are some that definitely do! Our next release, Chapter & Verse, for example, has touches of self-reflection in it, but I rarely write anything truly autobiographical – I’m just not that interesting!
But I think lyrically. By that I mean that when anything takes my interest, or I experience something or just thoughts I have, they tend to formulate in terms of a line and then a rhyme. Once I have that and things click, everything flows naturally, and quite often takes me where it wants to go, not where I thought it was going. But there are bits of the real me scattered about throughout the songs – you just have to listen to them all to put it together!
Right, Steve, your turn in the hot seat!
Every guitarist has their heroes. Who were the players that first made you want to pick up a guitar, and who continues to inspire you today?
That would be an easy one for me: Brian May from Queen. For me, he is the ultimate “song first” style guitarist. I’m not really inspired to play guitar by listening to other guitarists; I play guitar as part of the overall songwriting process.
What would “being successful” in the music industry look like for Rumour Den? And do you see it as an imperative or more of a cherry on top?
AJ: For me, RD in 2026 is already a success. The songs are written, and they say what I wanted to say, and they sound like I want them to sound. They make me feel like a genuine songwriter again, so any success they have beyond that is the cherry on top. I’m also proud of how my vocals sound, or should I say, how Frankie has made me sound! He pushed me, but also gave me confidence to push myself. I’ve ticked all the boxes for personal satisfaction.
Steve: For me, getting this batch of songs out for people to hear them and following that up with having the album released on Vinyl, Cassette and CD later this year, that’s as far as I care to think about.
What are your thoughts regarding the music industry of today? And, if you were able to, what changes would you make to it?
AJ: The music industry as we knew it and tried very hard to break into when we were younger is gone, and it won’t be coming back. Streaming is here to stay, and with many people thinking anything on the internet should be free, this drives prices down, and I think artists are the ones who pay for the squeeze. I touch on this a little in our song Bargain, by the way. So, while the legacy artists are doing just fine, thank you very much, newer artists are literally doing the work that the record company used to do, which involves a huge amount of self-investment for very little initial payoff even with a decent streaming level. And of course, I’m old, so I think a lot of modern music is overproduced & underwritten and the "band" ethos is sadly disappearing as well as the idea of the "album" as a standalone piece of art.
Steve: We have been around long enough to see some unbelievable changes in the music industry and not for the better. One thing never changes though, and that’s that the guys at the top always manage to stay at the top and everybody else just scrapes around the bottom trying to pick up the bits they leave lying.
If each of you could collaborate with any musician or band, who would it be and why?
AJ: I have quite eclectic tastes so on one hand I’d say the guys from Stone Temple Pilots, but on the other hand Steve reminds me of a slightly rockier version of Lindsey Buckingham (and I’d like him to hit the high notes for me).
Steve: At the minute I’d say Vessel from Sleep Token - that guy can write a good song.
AJ, Steve, thank you again for taking the time! It's been wonderful getting to know you better!
Before we sign off, what’s next on your creative radar, and do you have any words of wisdom you'd like to leave us with?
Our pleasure – thank you for all your support for new music in general and us in particular. We are well over halfway through recording for the album, so we are still on schedule for the end26/start27 release for that, but our 4th song release, Chapter & Verse, is ready to drop next month.
We also told ourselves we’d stop writing for a bit while we concentrated on recording…but we erm…relapsed. As for words of wisdom – Elton said it best: "Sad songs say so much."
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