AN UP-AND-COMING band whose lead singer has played alongside The View and The Coral are gearing up for their first Scottish tour.

Johnny Brown and the Devanties, made up of frontman Johnny Brown, 21, Erin Ritchie, 18, Andrew Dobie, 21, and Struan Blacklock, 23, will be heading to Aberdeen at the start of next month on the first gig of their headline tour.

Johnny told the Courier: “I’ve been singing and writing music since I was about 12 years old.

“I knew the tour manager for The View so ended up playing a few gigs with them.

“I’ve played the EH6 festival and once I had the chance to play with Republica.

“In January I reconnected with a few people I went to school with through the music scene and we decided to form the band.

“We’ve released one single and our next one, Streetlights, will be released after the tour.”

Johnny of Edinburgh Road, Cockenzie, met his fellow bandmates while at Preston Lodge High School.

He said: “We had to make sure that we were able to sell out shows before we knew we could tour.

“We sold out about seven gigs in a row, so that’s when we thought we should give it a go.”

The band’s first single, Brooklyn, was released just after they were first formed in January and garnered good reviews, in particular from Discover Music, Scotland’s Music Blog.

As to the future, Johnny said: “We’re hoping our tour and our new single will do really well, hopefully it’ll help us break through. We’ll just take it step by step.”

The band head to Aberdeen next Thursday (September 5), then play on the following days at Inverness, Edinburgh and Glasgow, with Amy Lewis supporting.

For more information or tickets, visit facebook.com/pg/JohnnyBrownMusicScot land/events