LOVE AND BASS
Listen-Able Band? Legs And Butts? Ludicrous Artists Bop? L.A.B. frontman Joel Shadbolt challenges Cityscape to come up with an acronym. League of Argentinian Bicyclists? Like A Boss.
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t’s been a big few years for the band with three albums and a lot of touring. What’s been a highlight moment for you? It’s been a buzz. Our goal was to do three albums in three years and we just seem to be keeping the ball rolling and hoping to get another one out by the end of this year. The highlights have been touring, getting over to Australia and playing some massive festivals here in New Zealand. When are we going to see L.A.B. IV? Early December. Safe to say. We’ve got strings on the album, more than we have done in the past. It’s been cool having that and experimenting with a whole ‘nother layer to the sound. There’ll be a lot of groovy funk stuff, so it’s giving that old-skool soul train kind of vibe. You’ve got a big summer of gigs?
Yeah we’ve got One Love, Northern Bass, Bay Dreams, and of course Electric Avenue in Christchurch. To me that looks like the best lineup of the summer so far. Who are you looking forward to seeing there? I’m looking forward to seeing Scribe and P-Money. That’ll be a buzz. And actually I’ve never seen Benee live, and I really want to see what she’s all about. I love her style and her voice, what she’s got going on, so it’ll be cool to see what she brings to the table for a live show. The name L.A.B. started off as an acronym of band members’ names. With the new lineup have you come up with a new meaning for it? We’ve got an A and a B, but we don’t have an L now and we can’t change it to J.A.B. Yeah, it’s an acronym but we just kind of leave it. It’s a weird one, we’ve
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never thought about changing the name because it just stuck. We just think of it as the ‘musical laboratory’ now. You can make some up and put them in the magazine if you want. You might regret giving us that licence. People talk a lot about ‘genre’ and say L.A.B. is ‘mixed genre’. How do you describe yourselves? I’d say we’re a roots band. Obviously there’s a reggae influence in there, there’s a blues influence. There’s funk, soul, RnB, and obviously a bit of electronic as well. But it all kind of stems from some form of roots music. Your background is playing blues in Tauranga, right? Yeah I’m Tauranga born and bred, I used to play all the jazz festivals. I’m a blues guy but I studied jazz in Auckland because it’s just such a beautiful style, understanding how harmony works and whatnot. I played in heaps of covers bands as a young fella. Your bandmates Brad, Stu and Ara are Kiwi music legends – Kora and Katchafire have been the soundtrack to a lot of summers. What’s it like working with them? It’s a laugh a minute. They’re hilarious dudes, they’re humble, talented, talk a lot of shit. And when it comes to the music side there’s such an array of flavours. Brad’s all over the place with what he likes – everything from metal to electronic to Robert Cray to blues. Stu’s one of these guys that can play anything. He’s a guitarist and a keys player. He played guitar in Heavy Metal Ninjas so he played real out-of-it shit like playing in 11/8 time and that kind of stuff – real complex metal. And then he plays reggae, like, he’s just incredible. And Ara’s bass lines are on everybody’s stereo. He’s right into his RnB and funk. I think
