Not much seems to faze Dave Hemingway from The South.

“We’ve played all sorts of venues to be honest. Both big and small; old and new. So we treat each one as it comes.”

The South reach The Orchard Theatre in Dartford on October 30, as part of their 64 date tour, and with the variety of venues, Hemingway is confident that the band will impress.

“We still play the same sort of show, still putting everything into it. Unless it’s a really terrible venue…”

“But 90 per cent of them are really good and we enjoy ourselves.”

The South formed from the ashes of The Beautiful South with the original members Dave Hemingway and Alison Wheeler joining regular bandmates Damon Butcher, Tony Robertson and Gaz Birtles to create a new nine piece. In reality, not much has changed for them.

“As The South, we are not dissimilar to The Beautiful South. The transition is seamless really, because in essence there are so many of the original band that are there anyway.”

“We play a lot of Beautiful South songs. People come along and expect to hear some of the older songs that they know and we’re happy to play them.”

Yet, The South have ambitions outside of their past, and they want to be a band in their own right.

“We want to do that but it’s difficult because we haven’t got a record company that finances us. So we have to finance all the new stuff ourselves. That takes a bit of doing.”

Their debut album, ‘Sweet Refrains’, came out at the end of 2012 and there is more new music in the works.

“The songs are written but we haven’t had time to forge them into the proper songs they should be and the proper way they should sound.”

“That will be a long process. What we’ll do is work on it on the road and between gigs.”

“It’s frustrating for us because you’d think the hard part would be writing the songs.”

It can be hard for bands like The South to be thought of as cover bands and expected to just play their older songs. Yet, the band have found that they have generally had a pretty good reaction to their new material.

“It’s a mixture really. People want to come and hear something they know but we find that they are willing to give a listen to three or four songs of ours that are new ones.”

“Usually, they’re more than happy to have a listen and they’ve been going down ok.”

Much of The South’s new music sounds pretty similar to The Beautiful South’s songs. They still have the same root in pop music.

“They’re not radically different to what people who come to the gigs are expecting to hear.”

“It’s not been one of those gigs where it’s like “Oh they’re playing a new song, let’s go to the bar”.”

“That’s the most pleasing thing really.”

The South play the Orchard Theatre in Dartford on October 30. Call 01322 220000 or go to orchardtheatre.co.uk