“My writing is a bit pigeon-like, I’m not great at the piano. I’ll write something, crank it up, then go upstairs and ask my wife ‘What do you think of this?’
“If she says it needs something else I’ll run back down and write a coda or a tag. Then, hopefully, she’ll be like ‘Yep, it’s great’.”
The end result was a series of “good, catchy tunes”.
“When you’re checking out The Beatles or the [Rolling] Stones, it’s very simple,” Lockett said.
“Just because we’re playing improvised music and jazz music, it doesn’t mean it has to be really hard. You don’t want to go too far away from the blues.
“When we were doing the sessions, the bass play Matt [Penman] said ‘Thanks for writing some music that wasn’t so difficult we couldn’t play it’.”
He said the songs were interesting enough though, and the band would have some fun with them.
The rest of his touring outfit is made up of saxophonist Roger Manins, trumpeter James Guilford, bassist Daniel Yeabsley.
“I’ll be behind the kit, bashing the living daylights out of it.”
Lockett started playing drums at the age of 10 and was a professional musician at the age of 17.
He graduated from Massey University in 2001 with a bachelor degree in jazz performance and has now released six full-length records, either solo or in collaboration with artists such as Paul Van Ross, Veronica Hodgkinson and Jeff Henderson.
After spending time in Melbourne and New York, he returned to his hometown of Wellington in 2017 and founded The Wellington Jazz Co-operative (WJC), a not-for-profit initiative that presents fortnightly concerts.
Lockett and his band are playing at the Whanganui Musicians Club on February 3.
“When I think of Whanganui, the musicians club is just spot on. It’s a beautiful place and it’s exactly where I want to be,” he said.
“I just love hanging with the townsfolk and getting the party going.”
Swings and Roundabouts is released on February 1.
