Nicky Bomba speaks to Luke Balzan
One of my favourite musical artists is Australia’s own Nicky Bomba. I’ve been watching him play in his various bands for many years now, and it was actually a concert of his that was the first music show I took my wife to see years before we got married.
There have been many guises for the Melbourne based musical genius, all with a unique soulful reggae edge to it, and his music has always left me happy. I’ve even come to know the man over time, and as a fellow Maltese chap, he seems like musical family! In recent times, his focus has been on his bands Bustamento, which showcases awesome reggae and calypso grooves, and his big juggernaut, the Melbourne Ska Orchestra (MSO), a 20-something piece outfit that first wowed audiences at WOMADelaide a few years ago, as one of the best acts of the weekend.
With a solid first album under their belts, MSO has continued to grow and develop, and with their latest offering Sierra Kilo Alpha (that’s S K A for the phonetically challenged!) having just been released, it was a good opportunity for me to catch up with my ol’ mate Nicky to see how things are going.
“Heeeeeey, kifinti! How are you man!” Nicky’s Maltese greeting rings out as he calls from a freezing cold Quebec City, where he was busily doing some solo shows. Of course, I was feeling fine on a warm autumn morning.
“Beautiful, that’s good man,” Nicky responds. “It’s good to hear your voice again!”
It had indeed been a long time.
“Totally!”
Despite so much happening since I last spoke to Nicky, things had been going really well for him.
“I’ve been great,” he exclaims “I’m presently in Canada, but I’ve been flat out this year, it’s been lots of great stuff happening, and I’ve been active on many different fronts, and mainly concentrating on getting this new album up and running, and that’s been exciting! It’s been great to get involved in a whole new juggernaut, doing shows, writing for it… it’s been great, it’s been really good.
“And we’re coming to Adelaide, doing the Governor Hindmarsh again!”
It’s always great watching Nicky perform at the Gov, with the stage right in the middle and the crowds all around, it makes for such an intimate setting. And with the huge personnel numbers in the Orchestra all crowding in on the stage, there will be fantastic energy!
“We’ve always had great connections with the audience at the Gov,” Nicky recalls, “it is that kind of venue, you can’t help but be connected with the audience because they’re right there, with the way the place is set up and everything, and it’s not too big so it’s like a, kind of like a big lounge room! So I’m thinking of it like a big lounge room and we’re going to offer everybody cups of tea. ‘Would you like a cup o’ tea?’,” he chuckles in an English accent.
The intimacy of the venue and the connection with the band will play right into the hands of the MSO at what is sure to be a killer show.
“That’s the essence of the band, the connection with the audience has always been a big part of our make-up,” Nicky explains.
“It’s a beautiful thing as that’s the essence of what we’re trying to do with ska. Ska is a metaphor for community if you think about it: heaps of people on stage, doing their little bits to make something that’s quite beautiful, people working together… it’s a loose metaphor for humanity too. The sense of community; any time we can create that, and any venue that supports that, is great!”
Not only is it exciting that Nicky and the Orchestra are returning to Adelaide, but they’re peddling a whole swag of new tunes and goodies for people to enjoy. With the new album Sierra Kilo Alpha, they demonstrate just how much depth there is in ska music, that it’s more than just old-school Jamaican sounds, and there’s so much variety, from funk to old school to the new wave ’80s style, and more, with plenty of depth to be discovered with each successive listen.
“That was definitely the intention,” Nicky admits. “The first album was a combination of all these songs that we’d been playing as cover songs up until we recorded the album, so our first album was kind of a reflection of all the music that turned us on in the first place, and then with this new album, we wanted to take it a step further and offer something new. We wanted to say that Melbourne Ska Orchestra is defining their sound and their composition, so it was a definite considered effort to make, to go in that direction, to offer something new.
“That’s the beauty of the band: we’ve got a beautiful cross section of humanity, people from all walks of life are in the band. When you draw on all the goodness that’s in the band, there’s a lot there… we actually recorded 23 songs, and we’re going to be releasing more of them later on in the year. The idea is keeping the whole listening experience interesting; you’re taken on a bit of a journey and it’s got to the point where you can call it global ska, international ska. And being from Melbourne especially, with the multicultural mix that makes up the band, we wanted to really reflect that. It was really important, and I think we achieved it. I think we took our time, and having the 23 songs, we were able to, when we did the first batch of Sierra Kilo Alpha, we were able to fine tune and pick songs that really reflected that beautiful kaleidoscope of sound and colours that make up the international make-up of the band.”
If that was the band’s intention, then they certainly did a great job! For this music fan, listening to the album, it was very clear that you were being taken on a journey, a listening experience, and the whole things fit together beautifully. Not just a hodge-podge of individual tunes, but an album that flows like an album should.
“There’s a whole art in that,” Nicky muses. “I think that’s really interesting because, there’s many different ways and formulas for working out what you can do, and one of them is that you can do songs by how they work in terms of the keys of the songs, the tempos, the colour, the mood, where you’re trying to take people… For me, when we were putting the album together, it was very much an energy thing, each song has a particular kind of energy and colour, and we didn’t want to be too erratic, so the flow was very important and I’m glad you picked up on that, cos that’s exactly what we were trying to do! And it’s hard to please everybody too, when you’ve got that many people in the band, there can be opinions for days, but funnily enough, we were all on the same page, which is amazing given how many people are in the band and the different people who make up the band. It’s quite remarkable that we were able to have this kind of sense of direction.”
It’s nice to know that artists still care about such things when it comes to compiling albums, particularly in the modern musical landscape where the tendency is to just put together or download individual tracks. Having a cohesive piece of artwork in an album is great to see.
“Yeah, that’s a beautiful thing,” Nicky admits. “We try to make each album, even with the artwork of the album, it’s all in 3D. You get a pair of 3D glasses with the album, and the poster, the street poster, is in 3D, so if you’re in a café, and see the poster and have your 3D glasses, you can actually see the effect! It’s exactly what you said, because music is so disposable this days, especially with things like Spotify and Pandora and that, it’s basically like one big radio station, where you can listen to anything you want at any time. It’s good in some ways, but it also kind of dilutes the special nature of being able to save up your dollars and purchase something. So you have to make sure that you’re on top of your game, and that what you’re presenting is of an international level, the artwork and the sound and how the things flow. We all agreed that we wanted that as a band, and I think we achieved it, I think that we’re all happy with the babies and the children, and I think we’ve set afloat a good boat.”
It’s nice to know that both the artist’s intention and the listener’s perception fit together so well!
“And when we recorded it, it was a little bit different this time,” Nicky continues. “We really wanted the grooves, so we played as a rhythm section first, and wanted to make sure that the essence of the groove in the first place, apart from all the horns section and everything, was really something that came through. Any opportunity where we could create something that had a bit of the funk or a bit of the Latin or the reggae or whatever it was that we were touching on at the time, that that came through, that the engine was always good, that it was always danceable, it was always in the pocket and had a nice balance as far as the rhythm was concerned.
“Then we layered the horns.” He continued “When you’re doing ska or things related to ska, and the things upon that thread, there a so many different levels of rhythms that you can attach yourself to, that you can relate to: things that run at half time, things that run at double time, things that move in triplets… we were aware of that and wanted to explore that as much as we could. So we took the time with that, and I think as a result… is a bit more hard hitting. You can put any of those songs next to any songs on the radio at the moment, and they’ll stand up.
“Some of the criticisms of the first album were that it was a bit old-sounding, and that was exactly what we wanted, but here we tried to raise the profile of the band so that [we] can get to a point where lots of people listen to it, and radio is - as much as it’s been diluted in its potential - it’s still one of the major ways to get to people, to get things played. So we wanted an album that was strong, and we took the time to make sure it was a step up, a stronger step to where we wanted to be.”
Another interesting aspect of the new album is the role Nicky plays in the band. He’s obviously a key focal point, but with Sierra Kilo Alpha, he’s not the only focal point, and we get to see and hear from more of the diverse talent that makes up the Melbourne Ska Orchestra.
“I think we wanted to reflect the make-up of the band more with this album,” Nicky explains.
“On a number of different levels, from a singing perspective, we had songs that we tailor made to certain singers, changed the keys and that type of thing, and with the three singers, we did a lot of collaborations with the lyrics and the melodies and everything, so it wasn’t just coming from me, it was a communal effort. And the same with the song writing, we really opened it up and accepted everything that everyone had to offer, whether it was just a little MP3 with a little horn line or a complete song, and one thing I’ve learned is that you have a brains trust if you like, we have a lot of talented people in the band, and it’s… wise to utilise all that goodness, and you end up with a lot of quality songs and quality ideas; you’ve got a lot of things to choose from.
“As a result, we recorded 23 songs, while we only needed 10 or 11. And those songs will see the light of day, as all the songs were valid; all the songs had strength to them. We definitely opened it up this time and made it much more of a communal effort.
“There always has to be a captain,” he continues, “where there’s someone directing or saying yay or nay to ideas, otherwise it’s chaos and you get nothing done, but I think one of the things you need to have a sense that everyone’s contributing to the team, that everyone feels like they’re part of it, and it makes a lot of sense to me as well, so you can really go here’s that team, and when I’m doing my other stuff it’s quite distinct from the orchestra. I think it’s important for the longevity of the band too, to have that open, that everyone has a voice to be heard.”
Like all good things, my conversation with Nicky had to draw to a close.
“We’re really all on the ship and ready to set sail!” Nicky adds.
To finish, in Maltese, sahha!
“Sahha, bye ciao!”
Melbourne Ska Orchestra’s new album Sierra Kilo Alpha is out now. They play the Governor Hindmarsh on Fri May 20.
Luke Balzan
When: 20 May
Where: The Gov
Bookings: thegov.oztix.com.au
Chris Robertson speaks to Luke Balzan
After many years of creating music, relentless touring and really honing their craft, change was in the air for southern US hard rock band Black Stone Cherry. They had recently switched record labels, and suddenly they were afforded the freedoms to do exactly as they wanted with their music. To celebrate, the band headed to their home state of Kentucky, and set about creating a new collection of music, taking things in their own direction.
The fruit of their efforts, their new album Kentucky, was recently released and has already been doing amazing things for the guys in their homeland and abroad. The album is energetic and punchy, with raw and gritty tunes that feel familiar and all new at the same time. Just as the album had dropped worldwide, singer and lead guitarist Chris Robertson called up from his home, in between playing with his three-year-old, to have a chat about the journey to get to here…
“Everything’s been good so far,” Chris enthuses in his beautiful southern drawl.
“We finished recording the album in the end of October, early November, so we’ve been sitting and living with it since the beginning of December, and we’ve been pitching for everyone to hear it, cos we self-produced this time, we did the whole record on our own. But so far man, it’s been a hundred percent positive reactions to the record.”
There was no deviation from that perfect record from this keen music fan either!
“Thanks man,” Chris chortles. “We had a change in record labels, and we were set in the way we wanted to do things from here on out… basically we just wanted to be able to make whatever music we wanted to make without anyone trying to sway it to go a different direction or to have a different sound. Cos here’s the thing man, our previous record label always, the higher up in the label, kind of were hoping we would be the next Nickelback or whatever, and they tried to make a successful radio band, but that’s not what we are. We’re a live band, and luckily at Mascot, they understand that and they did that. They’ve got a great history with live bands, and hopefully they continue to be awesome” he continued.
“It’s been a truly remarkable and freeing experience. We’ve worked with some of the greatest producers in rock’n’roll, and they’ve worked with some of the biggest artists, and we’ve learned from every one of those producers, but for us it was like, we’ve been doing things for 10 years now, and if we don’t know what we need to do, we’ve got bigger problems than needing a producer.”
Clearly, the band had no problems when it came to creating Kentucky, and freed from any other opinions, they put it all together in record time!
“Man, we recorded this entire record in like, 22 days. It was the fastest record we’ve ever made”, Chris chuckles. “There are bands that spend three months on one song, and we spent three weeks on a whole record!”
Having a good work ethic helped to bring things together for the new album, with a cohesiveness that translates very nicely for the listener.
“We record all together,” Chris explains, “and get the drum track, and if there’s a magical moment or guitar or vocals or bass, we try to keep that, but generally once we get the drum track that everybody’s happy with, then we go ahead and re-do everything, but it’s all hands on deck all the time. It’s cool, cos we’re actually a band: we write all the songs together, split everything equally, it’s all four of our names on the contract, so we figure why bother with being a band if you’re not going to be a band. We all get ideas for John on drums, he’ll give us ideas for bass, and everyone is very hands on with everything.”
As the album’s title suggests, Kentucky was recorded in the band’s home state, which was also a blast for the guys.
“Man, I’d say the biggest thing that I liked about it was that I got to leave the studio every night and within 25 minutes, be home to hang out with my wife and my kid,” Chris recalls. “They’re my whole existence, and to be able to get with them and see them every single night, was truly amazing. It was so awesome! We could take off for the weekend, as we only worked Monday through Friday, it was really awesome.”
Kind of like having a normal job!
“It kept everyone from burning out,” Chris continues. “People do this shit for seven days a week, 12 hours a day, and at the end say I’m miserable, and you start becoming a nuisance rather than prospering.”
In addition to having an awesome new album under their belts, the band is also looking forward to a journey to Australia, where they’ll be joining Steel Panther in an Aussie tour, including a spot here in Adelaide on Wed, Jun 22.
“Yes sir,” Chris explains excitedly. “We originally booked our own tour there, but we’ve known the Steel Panther guys for a long time but never toured together, and they’re awesome dudes and incredible musicians, and it was a great opportunity for us. I think the fans are going to appreciate being able to see both bands together, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. Those dudes are a trip!”
Black Stone Cherry’s latest album Kentucky is available now.
Luke Balzan
When: 22 Jun
Where: Thebarton Theatre
Bookings: ticketmaster.com.au
Greta Bradman has been in the interview loop for days. She has a new album out. It is a realisation of many of her dreams.
And, she finds herself flying on a media zeitgeist, her private past freshly exposed on a two-part Australian Story program.
If she was busy before, she is off the scale now.
She is on the phone from Sydney - cheerful, enthusiastic, effusive and, she volunteers, glad to be talking to someone who is familiar from home.
It has been a thrilling experience for her, she says, not only to meet Richard Bonynge but to be tucked under his professional wing, to make a recording with him conducting the sublime English Chamber Orchestra.
Do things get better than this?
Greta has considered Bonynge as one of her heroes for a long time.
“I SO admired him," she enthuses.
And he clearly admired her, describing her famously hard-to-define voice as the “true old-fashioned bel canto sound - the sort we only dream about today”.
“He asked me if I wanted to record with him,” she exclaims.
"I can’t believe how lucky I have been to be there with him, doing work in Switzerland at his home, amid all the memories of his world. Me. A girl from Adelaide, from a farm in the Adelaide Hills. That he could be accessible to someone like me. It felt quite profound.”
The result is the Decca Classics record, My Hero.
She sings a string of beautiful arias - from Handel to Verdi with some Bellini and Rossini thrown in and even a Rodgers & Hammerstein for popular measure.
Promoting the record, she pauses on the modern dilemma. Is it an album or a record? What should one say these days?
“I think I prefer ‘record’,” she concludes.
“It encapsulates a classical recording better.”
But, of course, the record is also available as a “download”.
As granddaughter of the famous cricketer, Sir Donald Bradman, a keen musician, Greta grew up surrounded by LPs, those which we now call “vinyls”.
From these grew her love for Haydn, Mozart, Handel et al and a lifelong drive to make music her world.
As she bravely reported on Australian Story, her path in the complex shadow of the immense celebrity which caused her father to change their family name, was not straightforward.
When her parents broke up, she fell into a pattern of self-harm and negative self-esteem. Even at university, she was trying to sabotage her singing career, drinking salt water to harm her voice.
Now 35 and having studied psychology as well as music, she chose to make these emotionally raw admissions as a form of outreach to other troubled young people.
It has worked.
“I have been overwhelmed at how positive the feedback has been and how many people have been in touch,” she exclaims.
“I’ve talked with parents who have kids struggling with issues. This was my intention in telling and I want to do more of this. It is critical that I finish my Masters in Psychology. This has energised me. It is so important and I want to make a difference for kids who are struggling and feel that they don’t have opportunities.
“I have been lucky in life in so many ways but it’s not just roses and sunshine and I wanted to show it is possible to overcome the dark, to come out on the other side.”
Greta will have to do this while on the go. She has a very full schedule ahead and plans which may take her overseas for long periods.
“Independent of music, living overseas has always been a goal for Didier and me,” she says.
Greta and husband Didier Elzinger have sons aged five and eight.
“We love being in Australia for the kids but moving into a second language has always been a goal and living in Europe would make it possible.”
Meanwhile, with My Hero out there as a tribute to her musical heroes, Bonynge, Bradman and her maternal grandfather, amateur opera singer Horace Young, the Adelaide girl with the magical mystery voice is out there on the road.
There’s a Mahler 4th Symphony performance under concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto in Sydney, a From Broadway of La Scala national tour with Teddy Tahu Rhodes, David Hobson and Lisa McCune (in Adelaide’s Festival Theatre September 5), then Carmina Burana in Melbourne, Haydn’s L’anima del filosofo conducted by her pin-up Richard Bonynge, plus a substantial tour of India with Zubin Mehta and the Australian World Orchestra.
On top of all this, she has special plans for her home state - a regional tour of SA singing the music of My Hero.
Oh, and there’s Annelies, the choral work based on the diary of Anne Frank which she is performing in Adelaide next year.
“It’s fabulous,” she promises.
Samela Harris
We can buy the album with a signed score from her website.
The sky’s the limit. Literally.
Gareth Hart has been making his performance spaces larger for each of his celebrated dance productions. For ‘Ellipsis’ in 2012 it was a 2 1/2 metre cube, a tiny, wee, confined space. Then for ‘Symphony of Strange’ in 2013, he went big and into a cavernous expanse of warehouse.
“And then, what else?” he pondered.
“The horizon? That would be as far as I could push it.”
And so it comes to pass that his Adelaide Festival Fringe production of ‘Excavate’ will have the horizon as its backdrop.
The daring Melbourne-based dancer is performing on a rooftop in Adelaide’s CBD - timing his shows so that they can glow in the fading light of sunset.
Hart’s previous Fringe show have been five-star hits, one nominated Best Dance and the other cited for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance in the Australian Dance Awards.
Hart says he has been ruminating for a long time over this one and it is his boldest yet.
His spacial concept is quite thrilling. With the horizon behind him and the sky above, he is reaching down from the rooftop terrace through the layers of the building and into the depths of history and mystery below.
“I am digging up spaces and digging up the past with my own body,” he says.
The past comes in several forms. One is pure history - the darker sides of Adelaide’s past, things Adelaideans might not want to talk about. The other side is a physical past which is borne of dance expression, Hart’s vocabulary of movement.
Hart’s performances are improvisational but informed through training and based on thorough studio work. “They are spontaneously choreographed from conscious choices made in the studio,” he explains.
“There is a structure, a form to be followed.”
His movements are intricate, his sounds, created in collaboration with Edward Willoughby, are delicate. And beyond that lie the evocation of these themes of excavated past.
Hart gained the spirit of his quest on five or so past visits to Adelaide and has been researching online and with National Archives in Canberra. His rooftop setting will feature small screens revealing chosen still imagery and archival footage.
“I have gorgeous old photos of iconic Adelaide families along with a few news reports or murders, some politics, and gorgeous footage of an early school,” he enthuses.
“The changing face of Adelaide colonisation.”
The dancer hopes to suggest that the things we don’t talk about may indeed help us to understand our future in some way.
The shows are intimate. Being performed atop the Edments Building in the city, they can accommodate audiences of only 25 at a time. They must meet in the street below before the 7pm performances. And performances are only from March 3 - 7.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 7 Mar
Where: Edments Building Rooftop
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
More information: GarethHart.net
Kutcha Edwards is a celebrated Indigenous Australian musician, and member of the stolen generation.
Born of the Mutti Mutti people, Kutcha was taken from his family by authorities when he was 18 months old. After spending 14 years in institutions, Kutcha was finally reunited with his mother and family.
As a performer Kutcha has toured the world with renowned Melbourne Koori band Blackfire and released a solo album in 2002. He has also produced his own theatre show, Songlines of a Mutti Mutti Man, and performed with the Black Arm Band on murundak (2007), Hidden Republic (2008) and dirtsong (2009).
In 2001, Kutcha was named AIDOC Indigenous Person of the Year.
In the lead up to his performance on the 7th and 8th of March, 2014 at WOMAdelaide, Paul and Kutcha had a great interview and chat about the important things in life, Kutcha's musical influences and the highlights of his career.