Joss Stone: “I’d like to investigate music that was born in Australia”

March 18, 2014April 30, 2015 / Paul McBride / Leave a comment

SHE MAY HAVE worked with Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr and Jeff Beck, but Joss Stone will be on the hunt for new Australian talent when she tours here next month.

“I’m trying to find people to collaborate with when I’m there,” she says. “I’d like to investigate music that was born in Australia. It’s nice to be exposed to other things; things that aren’t influenced by America or the UK. Maybe I’ll have a little sneak around Byron Bay and see what’s about. I really enjoyed Byron last time; it was more earthy, which I liked. We were only in Australia for a week, but that was my favourite spot. I’m definitely excited to be going back there; hopefully we’ll get more time.”

The 26 year-old English soul singer and her ten-piece band will be part of a mammoth Bluesfest line-up, as well as doing a run of shows with multiple Grammy Award-winner India.Arie.

“Expect a very good band playing what is hopefully very good music,” she says. “I love my musicians; I hold them in very high esteem. I’ve been working with them for a very long time and I just love playing with them. We have a really nice time on-stage; we just ‘soul out’ a bit and try to play a bit of music from each album. So far I have six [albums], and we like to play the songs people know as well as a few new ones. The double bill [with Arie] was just one of those things. Obviously, the second they asked me I was like ‘yes please’; I love her. When I was about 14 or 15 the song ‘Video’ came out and I got her album, and I would play the songs with the tape or CD in reverse, so I could try to learn the way she sang and her little ad-libs. I could never do it; I’m terrible with ad-libs as I’m not really that type of singer, but I would listen to her over and over. I think some days she’ll start the set and I’ll finish it and vice versa, and hopefully if we feel the vibe we’ll sing together, if I’m lucky. I know her songs, but I don’t know if she knows mine!”

Stone’s last release, 2012’s The Soul Sessions Vol. 2, was a collection of 11 soul covers, but her upcoming – as yet untitled – record promises to be more eclectic.

“It’s a little bit different this time,” she says. “A little bit more hip-hop and reggae. There are a couple of tracks on there which are just classic soul, but it’s so hard to talk about right now as we haven’t even finished the percussion yet, so I don’t know what it’s going to turn out like. In all honesty, I could turn round and go ‘oh I fucking hate this, let’s just cut it again’. I’m trying to keep that safety, you know what I mean? New influences come in naturally when I’m beginning writing, then I latch on to whatever that newness is and make that choice to continue in this path; it’s a conscious decision from that point. I’ve got thirty songs, but I’m going to see. I’ve just done two weeks in the studio, and I’ll have to listen back and see which ones I like. Normally an album doesn’t go longer than fourteen to seventeen tracks. I never really like to play a full show where I just play new songs to a group of people who haven’t got the album. Putting in new songs can be cool, but until everybody gets the album, it can be a bit of a bummer to go to a show when you don’t know any of the songs. When the record is out I’ll play them all, but when the Australian tour comes around I’ll just play a couple. I’ll rehearse my band; by now they know all the songs, but we’ll rehearse and learn a couple of the new ones, so when we get to the stage I can kind of call it, you know? I know what’s going to happen in general, but I don’t know what the audience is going to be like until I meet them. In fact, they are the eleventh member of my band. That’s the fun of it.”

Stone was a part of short-lived supergroup SuperHeavy in 2011 with Jagger, Dave Stewart, A.R. Rahman and Damian Marley, and has performed with big-hitters like James Brown, Rod Stewart and Melissa Etheridge, but one musician inspired her more than the rest.

“Jeff Beck; I’m in awe of him and the way he plays,” she says. “When he’s talking to you he’s just a normal guy, but when he plays it’s entirely different; it’s like ‘wow’. If we’re playing on the same day [at Bluesfest] we might even do a little song together. He’s amazing.”

JOSS STONE PLAYS BLUESFEST APRIL 18 AND THE TIVOLI WITH INDIA.ARIE APRIL 20.

Cut Chemist of Jurassic 5: “We’re not just phoning it in”

February 21, 2014April 30, 2015 / Paul McBride / Leave a comment

WITH WOUNDS HEALED and lessons learned, Jurassic 5 are back and better than ever, explains DJ Cut Chemist (Lucas MacFadden).

“[Getting back together] was super-easy and amazing,” he says. “It was like no time had passed. The magic we had on stage ten years ago never went away. We got an offer from Coachella, who were interested in getting Jurassic 5 back together and having us perform. I think it was the perfect timing as everybody had done their own solo things and were ready to come back together and do something. The fact that they asked us at that time was kind of perfect timing for everybody, and everybody was up for it.”

The alternative hip-hop group formed in California in 1993, but split in 2007 amid rumours of the dreaded “musical differences”.

“They just didn’t get along at that time,” says Cut Chemist. “I left in 2004, and I read it somewhere in an interview and I was heartbroken. I had my own solo career during the split; I had a deal with Warner Brothers at the time, and put an album out through them. I toured a lot for the Hard Sell album with DJ Shadow in 2008, and in 2009 I worked on a project called Sound Of The Police, which came out in 2010. After that we started talking about the reunion, which then happened in 2013. It’s been a year now and it’s been great; one hundred percent. People can’t be cynical about it because we’ve done so many different shows, not just big festivals. I think there was some talk in the beginning about us just doing it for this or that reason, but we’re doing it because we love it and when you see our show you can tell that we’re not just phoning it in.”

With a diverse group of members featuring five rappers and two DJs vying for creative input, it would be easy to suggest that the reunion will be a short-term one. Not so, says Cut Chemist.

“I think any past disagreements became irrelevant,” he says. “It had just been so long, and people doing their own thing outside the group gave them the perspective of what they can do on their own and what they bring to the group. I think the split reinforced everybody’s idea of themselves and it’s given us a more professional approach this time around. We’ll be taking it year by year, you know? As long we have a project and work to do this year we’re good. Last year was the reunion, and this year it’s to expand the brand and get it back up and running, and continue re-establishing ourselves. Next year it could be anything, and I couldn’t say right now, but we’re not just going to go dark again. J5 is a strong brand and we want to keep it going for the rest of our lives, and any way we need to do that we’ll do it; whether it’s touring here and there, putting out product, videos and documentaries or whatever. It’s something we don’t want to die.”

The group may have an EP and four albums worth of material to play live, but new tracks can be expected in the coming months.

“We got something coming out,” says Cut Chemist. “We have a single that may or may not be ready by the time we get out there, but it will be some time this year. We don’t know about anything bigger yet. Right now we’re just trying to take baby steps towards locking our show down and our touring down, then we’ll work on putting out some music and see how that goes. Not only has our music changed in terms of technology [since 2007], but in the way people buy music too. We come from a day and an age when people bought the product in a case, but in the age of free downloads and singles content we’re trying to figure out how we can adjust, and that’s what this year is going to be about.”

Australian fans can catch Jurassic 5 in March during a five-date tour; something Cut Chemist is looking forward to.

“Australia has always been one of the best places to tour, no matter if it was Jurassic 5, with DJ Shadow or myself,” he says. “I’m just looking forward to being out there and digging the shows, because I think people are going to go crazy over the show; it’s going to be nuts. I just can’t wait to see the support and excitement we get from the Australian audiences, because you guys get wild. Expect a very entertaining show that encompasses a lot of the elements of hip-hop; DJ-ing, creativity onstage, and all the different things coming together. We’ll be bringing in a lot of new sounds; we’re not stuck in the time when we were making music before; DJ Nu-Mark and I try to mix it up a little bit. Anyone who has seen Jurassic 5 in the past won’t be disappointed.”

JURASSIC 5 PLAY EATONS HILL HOTEL MARCH 22.

Interview: Jerry Only of the Misfits

December 13, 2013June 27, 2014 / Paul McBride / Leave a comment

AS iconic and influential a band as you’re likely to find still touring today, horror-punk Godfathers the Misfits are known as much for their genre-swapping music as they are for their Halloween-themed image. With line-up changes, legal battles and reunion tours behind him, bassist/vocalist Jerry Only continues to fly the band’s flag as loudly and proudly as ever. I spoke to the energetic frontman from his tour bus near Pensacola, Florida.

Hi Jerry, how are you? What have you been up to recently?

We’ve been up to just about everything, to be honest, I guess. We have a whole bunch of new releases all in different categories, we’ve been working on our label, and doing a world tour right now. We’re just finishing up the last leg in the United States and then we’re down in New Zealand and Australia after the new year break.

Tell me about the current line-up of the Misfits. Who have you got in there?

The current line-up of the Misfits has been around for going on thirteen years now. We have Dez Cadena, who was originally Black Flag’s frontman, and he was guitarist when Henry Rollins came on board. In 2001, I brought him out as a special guest for our 25th anniversary, he’s been with me ever since, and we’ve been doing some really great stuff together. He adds a dimension to what we do that we didn’t have earlier. He’s very fluent and has the ability to do some very fancy chords and stuff like that; his dad used to run a jazz and blues label. Dez basically grew up around the studio, so he’s got a really great ear, so when we do a cover of Elvis’s ‘Blue Christmas’ he can add some guitar over the top of it that’s still very punk rock, but fits very well with what we’re doing. He’s also working on a thing called Flag right now, which is the original members of Black Flag minus Greg the guitar player, and that’s going extremely well for him. I tell him that he must be a professional musician now, as he’s got more than one gig going at a time! Then we got Eric Arce, or as we call him ‘The Chupacabra’. He joined up with us back in the day when we had some issues and he was in Murphy’s Law, who were on tour with us at the time. When the band kind of melted down in the middle of the tour he filled in for us, and in the early 2000s he kept filling in for Robo every time he had a problem with his Colombian passport, and he would fly in and do the job. He’s young, hungry, and really aggressive with his very strong double-kick drumming, so he gives us this extra element of surprise. Now, we’re right up to speed with the tools needed to pull off some really thrash-y stuff these days. And me, I’ve been doing this shit forever!

What can Australian fans expect from your shows?

We try to be consistent, you know? I mean, for those of you who’ve seen us before, we have some new material which we think is amazing. We’ll be bringing that all with us, and as far as the fans go, they can expect pretty much more of the same. I tell people that every day we get a little better, and one day we’re going to be the best, so it’s a work in progress. It’s not something I’m going to change; I’m not going to try to come up with some sort of new gimmick for you. Our material speaks for itself, and you’re getting what you expect when you come, and we hold no reservations there. It’s just a matter of if you like the Misfits, come on down, and if you don’t, stay the hell home.

I notice you’ve made a Christmas record…

Yeah! I haven’t got one in my hand yet. I’m getting my first one tomorrow, and I’m very excited. I grew up watching all kinds of Christmas shows; as a kid Christmas always started around Thanksgiving, and I’d be looking in the catalogues thinking about what I want for Christmas, and The Grinch would always be in there. We re-did the song for that; it took a little while to figure out the formula to make it really, really cool, but it came out great. Then we did a cover of Elvis’s ‘Blue Christmas’. Now, back in the day when Glenn was in the band we had done a quick spurt of ‘Blue Christmas’ in Max’s Kansas City one night. I always wanted to redo it, and I always thought it was a cool song, and that’s where Dez comes in and shines. If you listen to it, it’s a punk song, but it has all the little Elvis innuendos that really make it amazing. We also did a song called ‘Island of Misfit Toys’; now I don’t know what Christmas programmes you have down below, but we have what’s called Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which is kind of an animated cartoon with clay puppets, and they have what’s called the Island of Misfit Toys, where all the toys that have been fucked up, have got something wrong with them, or nobody wants them, or whatever the problem is, go to this island, and this song is based on that idea from that Christmas show. For me, it’s like being a kid in a candy shop again. I get the songs about all the stuff I liked as a kid, and use them, and I’m very happy with it. I was thinking of pumping gas, but this might have changed my mind!

You’re often credited with inventing the horror-punk genre. When you started out, did you have any idea that you were starting something like that?

Well, I’ll put it to you this way. I thought we did the same with speed-metal and hardcore as well. We’re a very diverse band, and our subject matter and our image is definitely a horror and science-fiction based image, but our musical extravaganza is all over the board. We go from songs like ‘American Nightmare’, which is a pure rockabilly Elvis Presley/Gene Vincent kind of a song, to something like ‘Earth A.D.’, which is pretty much the speed-metal bible when it comes down to it. We got songs like ‘Halloween’, we got ballads, we got thrash, we got metal, we got it all you know? A lot of time that leaves us in a position where we’re kind of in a class all of our own; it’s really hard to lock us down. A lot of people tag that horror-punk thing on us. Are we a horror-punk band? Of course. But do I think a horror-punk can sustain itself without having great songs? No I don’t. The longevity is in the music, not the look. We’re almost finishing up our fourth decade, we’re going into our 38th year, and my job is to try to keep the band together for fifty. In that time, I’ll build my catalogue to a point where I have stuff all over the place, so when people make movies in the future, they can come back to a Misfits catalogue and pick a really great song that fits any application. I’m not limiting myself to being a horror-punk band. Did we father it? Sure. But we also fathered the Metallicas and the Anthraxes of this world. We have a lot of influences, and it’s based on simplicity and tasteful vocal melodies. I think Glenn really struck a chord when we did something like ‘Earth A.D.’ and he’s really crooning through this stuff, you just realise that it’s a matter of doing tasteful stuff, and I like to think we have a little bit of taste.

What would you like to do in music that you haven’t yet done?

Right now it’s funny, because I kind of covered a lot of things with this Christmas record. Covering ‘Descending Angel’ again, which is a song I wrote for my dad about 1999 when he was sick, and he just passed and didn’t get to hear the song before it came out, is important. I’ve realised the importance of trying to get things done as quickly as you can and not put things off, but the B-side of that is ‘Science Fiction Double Feature’ which I’ve always wanted to cover. We’ve always wanted to do a fifties project; we’ve done that. The new album, I’m very happy with. Right now, I want to go back into the studio and do a lot of the Elvis tracks that I’ve always wanted to do. Also, with the Christmas record, we missed the shelf time for it to actually be bought, and we’d like to get a full-length album out of it for next year, and really go for the Christmas angle with some really cool artwork. We also have images of Marilyn Monroe wearing our T-shirts all over the country now; that’s something I always wanted to do. I mean, if you can align yourself with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe and people like that, I don’t see how you can’t be recognised as a force, you know? And we’re doing it in a tasteful way too. People who see our skull on a T-shirt know exactly what it means, and those who don’t are still attracted to it. It’s like a moth to a flame; we’re just trying to make that flame as big as we can to get as many of those little moths in there as possible.

What are you most looking forward to about coming to Australia?

The only throwback about coming to Australia is the distance between cities, so for us to actually make it economical, we need to fly between shows, so we do kind of come bare-boned. In saying that, if there’s any band out there who can come and take it to the hoop for you guys, it’s us. We’d love to come down and do some of the big festivals in the future, where we can bring all our stage gear, lighting and set. At the same time, seeing the Misfits in our raw form is what it’s all about anyway. We haven’t been there in three years, so I think it’s going to be refreshing for those who have seen us, and for those who haven’t it’s going to be an experience. So, I hope that does you!

MISFITS AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES 2014:

Thursday, 16th January
The Zoo, Brisbane

Friday, 17th January
Corner Hotel, Melbourne

Saturday, 18th January
The Factory Theatre, Sydney

Sunday, 19th January
Amplifier, Perth