The Bamboos: Soul purpose

Lance Ferguson says he, Kylie Auldist and Ella Thompson are less focused on genre than creating their own Bamboos sound.

Lance Ferguson talks to Lydia Jenkin about his homecoming with the Bamboos for Splore and the latest developments in his writing.

Lance Ferguson gets a bit of ribbing from his Kiwi cohorts in Australia. He's been living in Melbourne for 20 years but still considers himself a Kiwi and thinks of New Zealand as home, even though his band the Bamboos, who've released six albums in the last 13 years together, have never played a proper gig here.

"I get given a lot of shit, which is fair enough, really," Ferguson says.

"We've only been to New Zealand once, and it wasn't really a proper Bamboos gig, because we were acting as part of a backing band for Alice Russell and Quantic, so it feels like Splore is going to be a bit of a homecoming and it's very exciting that we get to play our first proper gig there."

He may sound more like an Aussie, but Ferguson maintains a great interest in his roots. When TimeOut calls he's in his studio working on an album under his solo moniker, Lanu, strongly influenced by his Polynesian ancestry.

"I've been looking at the influence of my grandfather, Bill Wolfgramm, a famous Hawaiian-style steel guitar player from Tonga who actually made New Zealand's first LP record [in 1956] called South Seas Rhythm. I'm kind of confronting his music and investigating some new Polynesian music on this new record, which is really exciting."

The music he makes with the Bamboos, as producer/songwriter/guitarist, is also a blend of looking back and looking forward at the same time.

"We've kept a traditional soul band line-up, with the horn section and live rhythm section, but push the music in a different direction. We're working under the umbrella genre of soul music, but I want this band to be progressive, and to be from 2014.

"It's interesting though, because if someone asked me to 'put on some cutting-edge soul music of 2014', then I might put on some James Blake, so I guess the challenge is to make this traditional line-up new and relevant without bringing in the technology that moves you into another area completely."

So they're staying within the physical parameters of what you might expect from a nine-piece soul band, but they're also trying to bend the edges of the genre, and add a few twists, including the influence other artistic mediums.

"I love comics, I collect them, and I love to watch noir films, so I think those influences all roll out in there somewhere, maybe particularly in the videos and album art.

"I guess we started out being fairly derivative and retro, and I think those years and those albums were immensely valuable to me to really understand how that music was recorded and created, so I'm certainly not dismissive of that at all. But I think now we are moving in a direction where we don't think about genre so much, and just really try and cultivate something that is a Bamboos sound."

Their fifth album, Medicine Man, saw the band collaborating with a wide range of people to push their genre boundaries, and featured a wide array of guest vocalists - including Aloe Blacc, Daniel Merriweather and Tim Rogers, but Ferguson approached their most recent album, Fever in the Road, with a different angle.

"Whenever I get in the studio I seem to want to go crazy with all the possibilities and I guess that craziness peaked with the last album, Medicine Man, where it was almost like a concept album of guest vocalists. It was so guest-laden, that I really wanted to strip it back this time, and really celebrate who our live band is, and have that represented on the record. And it's not just about the live logistics, it is also about celebrating how good our vocalists are too."

Having two talented women to work with means he still has plenty of choices when it comes to writing for different vocal styles.

"Ella [Thompson] and Kylie [Auldist] both represent two different sounds, and so that is a joy when I'm writing. Ella brings a more ethereal, dreamlike sound, but she can also belt stuff out, and Kylie's just got that amazing full soul voice. So it feels like I can really wander musically and stylistically with them."

With a background that crosses through various genres, it's no surprise that Ferguson likes to keep wandering musically, but he's not surprised that soul continues to draw him back too.

"My brothers and sisters introduced me to a lot of music, definitely I was exposed to classic stuff like James Brown and Earth Wind and Fire and Aretha Franklin from a young age, so it didn't seem exotic to me. But there was also a whole other side of straight-up pop and rock as well.

"And then I kind of got into hip-hop, and I discovered a lot of jazz through hip-hop, tracing back samples, you know, through De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. So I spent a bit of time studying jazz guitar.

"But soul and funk have been around me for a long time, and I think that's why I'm drawn to it naturally."

Who: Band leader of the Bamboos, Lance Ferguson
Listen to: Fever in the Road (2013)
Where and when: Performing at Splore, February 14-16, Tapapakanga Regional Park, Auckland.

- TimeOut