Fat Freddy’s Drop – A True Story by Jon Lusk PDF
Seven heads are better than one. If there's one thing New Zealand's 'seven-headed soul monster' taught the world of music in their sterling first decade together, it's this truism. And in an industry dominated by ego, image and short-term impact, Fat Freddy's Drop continue to swim against the current with their uniquely democratic and slow-burning approach to making music. It's won them a steady stream of accolades and a growing army of fans at home and abroad. Not to mention considerable commercial success. Their debut studio album Based On A True Story (2005) has sold over 200,000 copies and the follow-up Dr. Boondigga & The Big BW has shifted over 80,000 since its release in 2009. Both were issued on their own independent label, The Drop.
Eschewing the usual promotional channels, Fat Freddy's Drop have relied largely on the buzz generated by word-of-mouth recommendation, critical praise and exposure from influential DJs such as Gilles Peterson and the late Charlie Gillett. Backed up with a dedication to taking their music live around the world, with celebrated appearances at hip musical events including Sónar, Big Day Out and Glastonbury - even Cannes Film Festival.To the novice, their relaxed, decentralised shows may at first be a little baffling. That's until the realisation hits home that each night finds them reinventing themselves onstage, jointly feeling their way into new grooves.
"We actually perform as a group," explains their unassuming trumpet/flugel horn player and founder member Toby Laing. "It's not just a bunch of people doing their bits at different times - it's a real ensemble event. No one can go to the next page without taking everyone else with them. And that has to happen at a certain pace and with a bit of communication ... and that takes a bit of time. All those lines are open."
While their music is generally based in 'old school' reggae, Pacific soul and jazz rambles with a strong undertow of electronica, the diverse makeup of the group - which boasts Maori, Samoan and Pakeha members from a wide range of musical backgrounds - means that almost anything else that catches their collective ear can creep into the mix. That includes influences picked up on their globetrotting tours as documented on the DVD Fantastic Voyages, Volume 1 (2007).
"There's definitely inspiration from our travels," offers Chris Faiumu ('Mu' for short) another key founder member who is the group's onstage producer and arranger as well as being responsible for most of their bass lines, beats and sound effects through his MPC (Music Production Centre). "But I think it's actually more just the diversity of the people that are in this band and bring those flavours. We're all quite big record collectors, and ... I've always been a very eclectic DJ. I've always kept an eye on my reggae and soul but I've always been influenced by the better end of electronic music too."
As Toby sees it, being based a long way from anywhere has also been key to the development of the Freddys' trademark eclecticism. "The isolation really helps you to look outwards. You do have the sense that there is something somewhere else that you should know about and find out about. Musicians in New Zealand especially are quite driven to gather information about different music from elsewhere."
Yet somehow, whether the music in their heads is a Jamaican Studio One vibe, gritty Memphis soul, or a New Orleans-style jazz breakdown, the sounds they actually create arrive with a distinctly Kiwi flavour - and a deliciously laid back, unhurried ambience - which people everywhere instantly pick up on and appreciate.
"The environment somehow makes its way onto the recordings," observes Toby. "We do reflect our environment and the cultures that we're from in our own way. People overseas can immediately see that there's something about our music that marks it as being from this place. We love soul music, but anyone can hear that it's not American soul music what we're doing. Sure, it's influenced by it, but the way Dallas sings is very different - a lot simpler, a lot less flashy, but no less sincere."
An ongoing dedication to producing high quality vinyl has given Fat Freddy's Drop enormous cachet with collectors. "We all like vinyl, but also we actually do really well from selling it," reveals Toby. "If we press up a bunch of vinyl, we sell it all, so our fans definitely like it. And because we've been producing a lot of vinyl over the years, collectors who truthfully wouldn't have heard of us otherwise actually are into our music and always get hold of the records. There is something special about vinyl. You can attach a lot more sentimental affection to a record than you can to a CD or a download, I suppose."
Apart from generating an enviable back catalogue of 'necessary plastic objects' such as the classic 10" Hope b/w Bluey (2003), vinyl has been an invaluable promotional tool for the band, and goes right back to their early days.
"One of the earliest discussions that we had when we formed the group was 'Let's put out a record!' We were all excited by that idea, and it's something that we still like to do."
In fact, they've just released a 7" version of The Raft, versions of which also appear on Dr Boondigga & The Big BW as well as their new album Live At The Roundhouse. It was a 12" vinyl single of Midnight Marauders b/w Seconds (2002) that really got Fat Freddy's Drop noticed outside New Zealand.
Having formed in 1999 from the ashes of the legendary jam band Bongmaster and contributed tracks to local compilations as well as releasing the rough-and-ready Live At The Matterhorn (2001), Fat Freddy's Drop decided to conduct an experiment ... but first a little history.
Since the mid 1990s, Mu had been DJing on radio, in clubs and at parties on the Wellington scene. Jointly setting up and running a commercial studio to produce TV soundtracks for advertising companies gave him a fair idea of what he didn't want to do. But it also provided an invaluable grounding in the music industry, as he recalls: "It was always a means to an end - to have a nice Pro Tools system to use to record proper music. I didn't like the people I was dealing with and got sick of talking to agencies, so I got out of there. But I got a good schooling on how to run a studio and lots of gear that I needed to have to move on and get involved with the likes of Bongmaster and Fat Freddy's Drop."
Bongmaster were a short-lived but mercurial late 1990s Wellington outfit with a fluid membership based around a core of keyboardist Iain Gordon and guitarist Aaron Tokona."Those guys were heavily involved in sort of more mainstream covers-orientated stuff, making quite a good living in the wrong part of town, playing bad music really well," says Mu with a chuckle. "You could say we rescued them outta that scene."
With input from the likes of saxophonist Warryn Maxwell and singer Dallas Tamaira, Bongmaster gravitated towards a more original jam-based music, but when Tokona left for Australia to work with his other band Weta in 1998, Bongmaster more or less dissolved soon afterwards.
"The rest of us wanted to keep something happening, so me and Dallas got together and just started jamming at home actually, starting to write some beats. And when we had a few songs, we kind of got the rest involved." Thus was born Fat Freddy's Drop.
By the time they made Live at The Matterhorn, they were a six-piece that included present members Toby Laing ('Tony Chang') guitarist Tehimana Kerr ('Jetlag Johnson') and Iain Gordon ('Dobie Blaze') . And well before they came to record Based On A True Story, hip-swivelling trombonist Joe Lindsay ('Ho Pepa') had come on board, to the delight of audiences.
Mu and Dallas had adopted their respective monikers ('DJ Fitchie' and 'Joe Dukie') for the first time as the main writers on Midnight Marauders b/w Seconds:
"It was actually just an experiment," explains Mu, "'cos we thought it was all about getting stuff onto vinyl at that stage and getting the vinyl out to key people."
Since he was enjoying George Horn's work for the Ubiquity label in San Francisco at the time, Mu asked him to master it, and they pressed just 300 copies. Mu then slipped '20 or 30' of these to their friend Recloose (Matt "Bubblicious" Chicoine), an New Zealand based American DJ and producer who was heading over to Europe. And so the likes of Gilles Peterson and Daniel Best (of Berlin's Sonar Kollektiv imprint Best 7) came to hear it.
"Daniel Best loved the tune, and wanted to get it signed up and released, and they pressed up and did their own version. So that was kind of like an answer to how key and how important vinyl was."
This led to a short promo trip to Europe for a series of small 'sound system' club dates by Mu and Dallas ... and of course a little meeting and greeting. It was the first time anyone in Europe got a taste of what was to come - a series of tours by the full band which road-tested the material that would ultimately become Based On A True Story and moulded them into a formidable live attraction.
Inevitably, it was a shock for many when Warryn Maxwell (a.k.a. 'Fulla Flash') decided to leave the band in 2007. Like several other members, he'd become a father and also founded his own band Little Bushman and so found his loyalties divided.
"We had all decided that Fat Freddy's Drop was our mainstay, and I just don't think he felt he could prioritise it any longer. But it was through no bad blood or anything that he left," Mu assures. Fortunately, just as this happened, Scott Towers - an old friend of Warryn's who had studied alongside him at Wellington Jazz School and later tutored Joe Lindsay - was returning from a stint in the UK. It was he (a.k.a 'Chopper Reedz') who took up Warren's place in the horn section. "So it was all pretty natural, it all made sense. We were kind of lucky in that."
Fat Freddy's Drop collective creativity is mirrored in the way song writing credits and royalties are evenly divided between all seven members and have been from the start. "We've built a very democratic form of song writing and financial rewards within the band," Mu continues. "As with most bands, each song is written quite differently and the input percentages from each player are very different on each tune. We find it easier to just split everything down the middle regardless of who wrote the tune. And I think it's probably a big reason why we're still together."
As Mu sees it, members who have less input as writers compensate for this in other ways that benefit the band."Everyone has their job. Joe probably has the least involvement in the writing, but we still cut him in on it. We just have a natural understanding with each other. And he knows that, so he makes up for it in other ways - he's one of our show ponies onstage, and that pushes the sales of the CDs. So we all have faith in each other that it's all gonna come back and around in some other way. And Joe will be the first to put up his hand and do a bunch of promo work. Whereas Dallas probably does the most writing, but he does little work other than that and performing on stage [and doing the band's distinctive artwork]. And that's fine with us. We'll pick up the slack in other areas. We're not too paranoid about who's doing the most work 'cos it all just seems to work out."
Those lucky enough to have witnessed their shows on a regular basis will have noticed the way the different roles members play are constantly shifting, just as the tunes they revisit and revamp change shape. These days Tehimana Kerr mixes his reggae strum and wah wah pedal with a battery of other effects more typical of a rock guitarist. Dallas has taken to helping put the rhythm section on guitar. And Hopepa is now far more than a boogie 'n' 'bone man: "He is the multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire at the moment," says Toby. "He's playing a lot of tuba bass lines, and he takes a few cataclysmic harmonica solos as well in the country-ish numbers we're doing. We've countrified Rain pretty well. We've even countrified Seconds.
"At the moment we're on a real country and blues vibe," adds Mu. "It's not that pure, but it's hints and influences that come through in the riffs and melodies."
That should go down well in the US, a new market where the Freddies have only just started their 'breakthrough' with California their first port of call this summer. Aside from the expense and the hassle of getting visas to go there, the band simply haven't got around to it till now:
"We just haven't put any time into going to the States, mainly 'cos we just had better contacts in the UK and Europe," explains Toby. "I think what we do is always gonna be 'niche' or 'underground music', but if you are talking about a place like California, a niche over there is pretty bloody big. So we're really happy to be finally going over there."
These days Fat Freddy's Drop are focussing more on honing their stagecraft with increasing emphasis on their light shows and, as Toby puts it, 'being entertainers'. And even the way they approach studio recordings is changing. Up to now they've taken a rather painstaking and perfectionist approach to building tracks over months and even years, but as Toby reveals, that's not set in stone: "We've got this plan for the near future of recording our next album completely live in the studio, with live takes and very limited post-production. I think it just comes from rehearsing a lot and also from having been together for a long time now and wanting to try a different process. We know we've got a process that works, a very time-consuming process where we go over things and really hone them down, but we do actually want to try something else now - which is the way bands usually work. It's gonna be our fresh new style!"
"I don't think any of us wanna go through that old style of process any more," adds Mu. "We'd rather write the tunes, practice them and then play them five times and pick the best take... more in an 'old school' fashion. We just wanna be a little more productive and less precious about it."
One thing that hasn't changed is the centrality of Mu's MPC to their music.
"It's not state-of-the-art any more," admits Toby. "I mean, there's lots of other sequencers and synth samplers and things that we could be using, but the MPC is fundamental to our kind of music and it's one of the things that brought us together," he says, recalling how the early days of the band were a bit like a club of musicians, united by their desire to master the black box that Mu had 'more of a clue about' than they did.
"I'm still a big fan," Mu says of his 'if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it' philosophy. "There's so much new software out there now, but I don't rate any of it. I just think the MPC is still the best thing there is."
Jon Lusk, 201