BONJAH BY KRISSI WEISS
Like Rusty Crowe, the Finn brothers and many, many more artists, New Zealand ex-pats Bonjah have become both embraced and claimed but Australia. After bringing their rockdominated reggae sound to Melbourne many moons ago, the band have evolved (no pun intended) into a powerhouse live band with that earlier sound a distant memory. After the success of 2011’s absolutely smashing release, Go Go Chaos, Bonjah are dropping the first single from an album they hope to have out this year. Crowds have grown a lot in that time and guitarist Regan Lethbridge is stoked with the band’s ever-changing sound. “We never wanted to conform to just playing reggae although that was our earliest influences,” Lethbridge says. “Now that’s completely erased from our set. There’s a hint of roots in a couple of songs – we don’t want to completely turn our backs on it – but in terms of the old school reggae it’s pretty much gone. We just want to try to carve out our own sound instead of trying to do something that the Jamaicans did really brilliantly in the ‘70s … we’re lucky that we’ve had people stick with us through our changes. They could’ve just gone, ‘Stuff you guys, I liked the reggae’, maybe some of them did?” While Lethbridge does have immense respect for the fathers of reggae, and is pleased with his band’s current sound, he’s still a fan of those modern artists who do it well. “There are artists that we look up to – Trinity Roots, The Black Seeds, Salmonella Dub – they inspired us to be a band and they all really put their own spin on things,” he says. “Artists that take that mould but move it forward
are the artists we enjoy. But then also I’ve seen some amazing bands like Kingfisha who are just absolutely flawless reggae players, you could listen to them all day, so I guess there’s really no right or wrong, from our point of view personally we just wanted to steer away from it.” Bonjah’s progression from rock-reggae artists to a band who are truly creating their own sound doesn’t seem to have cost them many fans, in fact, the crowds keep on growing. “We’ve gone from playing to two people to playing to a bit more so that’s been great,” he says. “We’ve never wanted to repeat ourselves musically so we’re always trying new things and ensuring that we’re pushing ourselves in our live show. We know people are paying good money to see us so we always want to put on a good show.” Apart from supporting their music, the Bonjah crowd help the band determine exactly what songs will earn a place in their set. “We always gauge things on the au-
dience response,” he says. “Sometimes when you play something to an audience for the first time you can tell straight away that it works but then when we played ‘Evolution’ in the band room for the first time we were all grinning. We do it for ourselves but it would be foolish for any band to say they don’t care whether or not their audience enjoys what they’re doing or that they don’t want success and to be able to go from The Corner to The Forum.” Evolution underwent its own transition with the band put in a position where they were finishing off the mastering the night before the track was headed for radio. “We recorded it and mixed it with the same person and when we heard it we made the very hard call to go back in and do it again,” he explains. “We ended up getting two good friends to help us record it and we were way happier with the result. We had different visions, I don’t want to name the old producer he has done and does do some great work but he came in and changed the drum beat and dropped the guitar hook and we thought ‘Okay we’ll
roll with it’ but then the sound just came out a bit too dark and it just didn’t feel right. We got some advice from friends and we went back in and did it in a more relaxed environment and it came out in the way we’d envisaged it in our heads. I was sent Evolution while I was over in New Zealand from songs we’d demoed and literally within the first ten seconds I was like ‘wow’ and then when the vocal kicked in it was instantly like, ‘Yes that’s the single’. The vocal melody stuck in my head, I loved the guitar hook and I just knew, it’s hard to explain it and yet I dunno what our second single is going to be, we probably haven’t even written it. We know the album will be out around spring of this year but there’s still probably a lot of writing to do.”
After the commercial and critical success of his first album, Bilal was eager to experiment further on his next. “On the first album I was allowed to produce but I had to have kind of a ‘big brother’ watching over me,” he says. “This time I wanted to produce on my own and that started some friction.” A series of drawn-out rows with label Interscope ensued. Interscope eventually rejected the album, Love For Sale, which was subsequently bootlegged and leaked on the internet. Does Bilal have any conspiracy theories about the leak? “Hmmm, you know, I have a few. Of course, I’ve tossed that around, thinking maybe it was an inside job.” Bilal admits that for a brief time he wondered whether he would ever release his own material again, which made the completion of his 2010 LP Airtight’s Revenge all the more satisfying, particularly when it earned him a Grammy nomination. “It really just fuelled me to do what I wanted to do because there was no filter for the music
on that album,” he says. Now Bilal is back to somewhere near where he feels he should be at this point in a difficult career, with a third album that he is pleased with and that he hopes will open him up to more fans. “I wanted to make an album that was more accessible. On Airtight I got a lot out. So, on this record I was in a warmer place and in a different kind of vibe. On this record I’m still speaking about passion and I’ve just focused a lot of it on love stories,” he says. Looking back on a decade and a half as recording artist, Bilal makes no secret of the fact that has spent much of it frustrated at the industry’s gearing towards making money. But he’s philosophical about his experience. “It’s the story of an artist,” he concludes matter-of-factly.
thinking – soldiers get trained, then they go into battle. But when they come back, they’re not trained to be a civilian again, so it’s obviously difficult for them. I had that in mind with this album, hoping it might touch on the minds of ex-soldiers everywhere. I just wanted to have a feeling where they would be quite calmed by the music.” “My dad’s seen the video [for Many People I Know] that we just made and he really loved it, which is amazing,” he says. “He gave me a call the other day, and I know for a fact that it’s the first time any of my music has connected with him. He’s very straight down the line with music, and he knows what he likes – real
old genuine country music guys like Merle Haggard or bush balladeers. Even Johnny Cash is too commercial for him. It’s been something I’ve been working towards forever, to make music that my Dad enjoys, so yeah, it was fantastic.”
BONJAH’s Evolution tour stops by The Corner Hotel on Saturday April 13 with special guests Ghost Orkid and Old Medicine. Evolution will be out on the same day through iTunes.
BILAL BY DAVID WILD
At the turn of the millennium U.S. soul music was in a state of rude health. The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill had switched everyone on to ‘neo-soul’ and D’Angelo was at the peak of his powers. Then in 2001, along came an artist whose debut album, 1st Born Second, expanded the boundaries of this recently-labelled genre and threatened to blow the too-small box into which he was being forced to smithereens. Bilal Oliver did cut his chops singing in the church, but was also a classically-trained performer capable of singing opera in seven languages who loved freeform jazz. In the 12 years since, Bilal has failed to really capitalise on that early promise and not much has been heard of him. But Australian fans will soon get to hear his exceptional voice as he visits the country for the first time showcasing material from new album A Love Surreal. Speaking from his home in Brooklyn, the laid-back Bilal remembers how his love for music was formed when his father used to sneak him inside the jazz clubs of his childhood home, Philadelphia. “I used to have to sit in the back where the cigarette machine was. They had a curtain they could put over me just in case the police came. I remember sitting back there watching all of these different bands who really intrigued me a lot. I liked the way the cats dressed, the way they talked. I got to see Terence Blanchard, Kenny Kirkland, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts. I was 13-years-old – I made up my mind then that I wanted to be in music in some kind of way,” he says. Stints with various bands at high school followed before
Bilal met many of the musicians that were carrying the torch for soul in the 21st century and eventually became part of their loose collective, The Soulquarians. “I met Ahmir (‘Questlove’ Thompson, of The Roots) through jam sessions in New York City. Ahmir used to come to that jam session, Erykah Badu. Everybody. Common, Mos Def. And from there I would go to the jam sessions in Philadelphia and meet more people. I would go up and sing. I just kept showing up to all of them,” he laughs. One of Bilal’s earliest mentors was fellow Soulquarian, the late hip hop super-producer J Dilla. “Oh man, I just learnt his fearlessness, his charisma,” says Bilal. “He had this kind of way where he made everything look easy and he didn’t really have any boundaries when he was creating. I’ve seen Dilla play bass, guitar, drums and he taught himself how to play them all. He was really inspiring.” Bilal talks about his departed friend with a deep sense of gratitude. “He opened my mind to just exclude rules. Coming out of school you think there’s a rule for everything. After working with him I threw all of the rules out. Do whatever your heart says, y’know?”
BILAL brings his debut Australian tour to The Hi-Fi on Friday May 3.
TIM GUY BY SIMON TOPPER
Melbourne singer-songwriter Tim Guy has just released his fourth album, but unless you’ve been living in New Zealand, his name will probably be new to you. Guy started his musical career by taking his first home-recorded demo to a Bic Runga soundcheck during an Australian tour. By luck, the demo found its way into Runga’s hand, she signed Guy to her label, and he moved to New Zealand to record his first album. That was more than a decade ago. Guy’s now back living in Melbourne, and finding himself in the unusual position of releasing Dreaming Of A Night Mango as his first album in his home country. Finding success in New Zealand, Guy says he was overseas for long enough to feel lonely upon return to the city he had always called home. “That’s what Many People I Know was trying to get at,” he says, referring to his current single. “A lot of my friends and some of my family had moved away since I was last here, so I’m getting to know the town again as a stranger. It’s bittersweet, but I’m finding parts of the city that I love, that I never knew about when I had a bigger network.” Dreaming Of A Night Mango is a dusty, minimalist album; you often need to listen closely to hear more than one man’s voice and his acoustic strumming. Guy says his albums haven’t always been so wilfully sparse. “My previous record was recorded with high fidelity sound and big choruses, and probably 12 or 13 different
people. This record was the complete opposite,” he says. “I wanted to do as many things as possible myself. There’s a core group of guys that play [who are] sprinkled over the record, but the majority of it was just myself in the bedroom.” The album’s obscure title was also inspired by members of Guy’s family moving away from Melbourne, though a generation earlier. “My family was part of the ‘gold rush’ of the early ‘80s, when there felt like there was a big push to get people to move up from Melbourne to the Gold Coast, to build it up,” he says. “The album title just stems from touching on my family line, because it’s tropical up there and in summer there are mangoes everywhere.” The theme of family runs deep through the entire record. “I had people like my father and grandfather in mind. They both served in the military in wartime,” he says. “They weren’t career soldiers, they just put their hand up when they were needed. It got me
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Dreaming Of A Night Mango out now through Lost & Lonesome Records. TIM GUY launches it at the Grace Darling on Wednesday April 24. Beat Magazine Page 51