Dave Woodhall talks to the Sound of New Zealand.
Even though the world seems to be shrinking by the day it’s still difficult for bands from unfashionable regions to make it around the world. New Zealand, for example, is known for the Finn brothers and little else, which is why a band such as the Feelers can boast a string of chart-toppers and more radio play in their homeland than any other act yet remain relatively unknown elsewhere. They’re playing the O2 Academy in Birmingham on Tuesday at the start of a British tour and we spoke to drummer Hamish Gee about why they’re trading Antipodean summer for a damp, grey November in the UK.
“We like to keep busy. The main reason for coming over now is to set ourselves up for the festival circuit in the summer. Back in New Zealand there’s a lot of outdoor shows at the holiday resorts over the Christmas holidays and during our winter we usually do a tour, but this is the quiet time now so we’ve come over. When we get home we’re doing some more recording, then hopefully back to the UK next year.”
Do you find that your fellow countrymen living in Britain consider it their patriotic duty to attend your gigs?
“We do, we come here every two years or so and we do quite often get ex-pats watching us. I’ll be playing and see some guy I was in English class with at school in Christchurch. We’re trying to break the UK market and that sort of backing helps.”
You are, to put it mildly, massive in New Zealand. Have you thought of moving away permanently in an attempt to break the rest of the world?
“We haven’t really focussed much on other markets. I wouldn’t call it laziness because we’re pretty hard workers, it’s more of a comfort zone. New Zealand’s a small country and we can keep ourselves busy just between writing, recording and touring. We should concentrate more on getting our music into overseas markets, though. We think we’re good, whether people in the UK think we’re good enough is a different story but we’ll never know until we try.
“We’ve been talking about moving permanently. When we first broke through things got so good for us it was easy to just tour New Zealand and Australia, we did reasonably well and went to the UK every couple of years, to the States every three years but we were warned that nine out of ten record companies in America will tell you what you want to hear then never get back to you while the other one will say there’s 10,000 American bands here doing exactly the same as you are. We saw other bands, good friends, going over to try to crack these markets and a year or two later they came back with their tales between their legs after nothing much has happened for them. But we’re really seriously now considering starting to move further afield while we’re still young enough to be passionate about what we’re doing.”
We hear very little about music in New Zealand. Is there a thriving scene?
“Radio stations are very pro-active in promoting local music. We have a quota system whereby they have to play a certain percentage of local stuff and most stations exceed this just because of the quality of the music. It’s like when I first came to London everyone would tell you they were a DJ. Everyone in Christchurch between 18 and thirty is in a rock band.”
Yet New Zealand has always been seen as a quaint, old-fashioned place, almost like a big country market town. Not the sort of place that’s likely to be a breeding ground for rock bands.
“It is like that and it does seem counter-intuitive to see New Zealand as a breeding ground for bands. It’s quiet and it’s very rural but maybe that’s why. One of the things I love about it is that it’s quiet, but I suppose that when you’ve got a lot of spare time you’re going to find something to do and that’s often learning to play an instrument then joining a band. Maybe the Maori culture has a lot to do with it, plus a lot of people with a Celtic background, things like that. It’s part of our upbringing.
The one act everyone knows is Crowded House. Do they act as an inspiration to New Zealand bands, or are they more of a millstone in that you invariably get compared to them?
“Definitely inspirational. We’re all looking at their success and they’ve been a big help to a lot of us as well. We do a lot of recording at the studio Neil Finn owns in Auckland and he’s really helped us. They’re a tough act to follow and we’re all jealous of their success, of course we are, but that’s why we’re spending more time in the UK, to do what they’ve done.”
Your latest album (2011’s Hope Nature Forgives) featured a cover of the Jesus Jones song Right Here Right Now, which you recorded at the request of the Rugby Union World Cup organisers. Does that nineties dance/pop crossover still influence your music?
“It did initially, but we’re changing all the time. When we started out grunge was all the rage so that was what we did, then we started introducing keyboards and sample, things like that. The new stuff is shaping up to be influenced by what we’re listening to now such as the Killers, but it’ll also have a lot of keyboards on it, lots of other stuff, the full bells and whistles. We’re putting things together one song at a time, we’ll see how it goes and we hope to be having something out in the New Year.”
You’re playing Birmingham on Tuesday. What kind of show will the audience see?
“I know it’s a big rock city so what we do will probably go down well. As the band have gone on we have to do longer and longer sets because we play all the material we love and we want to play the new stuff as well. With the old and new it’ll probably go on for about two hours but we’re all looking forward to it.”
The Feelers play Birmingham O2 Academy 3 TONIGHT (Tuesday 20th November)
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