Part 2

Collaborations can take on many forms. What role do they play in your approach and what are your preferred ways of engaging with other creatives through, for example, file sharing, jamming or just talking about ideas?

Totally. This combo is almost entirely always a collaboration between the members there at the time. If you look at the credits of each record (and our live lineups, it’s always different). The last 2 albums have been pretty much the same personnel.

One example to answer your question is the 2nd album ‘Trash or Treasure’ – where Ravi had taken a family break and couldn’t take on much of the recording work, so we collaborated with Darvid & Henry from Cactus Channel / Karate Boogaloo who are mutual friends of ours, and we email back & forth ideas / riffs/ parts / approaches till the songs was pretty much complete (“hey here’s a groove, then the reply would be cool,- here’s a gutar riff parts, cool . . then here’s an organ part etc).



And in fact 2 weeks before we were booked to go down to Melbourne studio and record, the bass player had to pull out, so we ended up asking other bass player friends to cover – which turned out great (there’s 2 different bass players on that record – Jules Pascoe on the more souljazz numbers, cos he has a great R&B & jazz feel, and Henry Jenkins on the funk, quirkier numbers as that’s his qualities!)

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please. Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other - do you separate them or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?

Eesh, different for everyone. Some people like Joe, is up early and at the office making model teeth / gum mockups, but I’m sure while he’s doing that he can music things coming through. The others it might be teaching, or a separate band rehearsal that they’re on. In my case sometimes the best music ideas and Kerbside songs have come when I haven’t been doing anything musically related at all (on the bus home from work, driving to the coast for a surf, or like in the new record sparked from a world event like cv-19 for example).



Andrew writes things by accident sometimes – "Cajun Jollof" was written by accident, when he was tuning / oiling up a 1961 Hammond C3 Organ that we got, and I was in the kitchen cooking, and he literally was just fluffing round, and I hear this little vamp, and said “what’s that ?!”,  and he says “what’s what?”, “that little things u just did” (singing back the part I heard), and he said “I have no idea, was just mucking a round”, and the that that little thing he did was the main riff that’s the basis for that song. Funny huh?

Can you talk about a breakthrough work, event or performance in your career? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

Has to be the first single / 7” release I guess. The version of "Night In Tunisia". That was so well received and what got us our first record deal with the team at Légère Recordings.



First of all the original is so legendary, but we completely flipped it and made it in to a deep funk b-boy number. There was a nice clean funk version going round at the time (Jose James & Toshio Matsuura group), but we wanted to make our more dusty, gritty. We did that ourselves, pressed it ourselves, waited months for the pressing ourselves, even did the launch show without the pressing ourselves ... heh heh (as the manufactured in Germany had blown out run times)

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?

Geez getting deep here – thought you guys would just be asking questions about the new single, album, influences and inspirations etc etc – heh.

Guess it’s different for everyone, I mean in the studio there’s some nice things explained here previously, but generally people have to be somewhat ‘switched on’, clear, relaxed (but assertive ready) because we are recording together in the one room, instruments bleeding into other instrument mics etc, so we want to be ‘together’. Of course we won’t go past more than 3 takes on a song (any more than 4 takes on a song, and you should move on to the next .. come back ... as you’re going to loose something, and get too overly calculative etc).

I mean another story from this new album, is (as there’s a lot of schedules to align for a recording session to happen – studio, members, engineer, etc etc) the bass player had a big block of recordings to squeeze in, and wanted to hit things straight up, first time, but we had some studio gear issues, and there was some waiting round time, that didn’t sit well with him. But he still pulled off the part and track for that (in fact we didn’t touch 1 bass part of the last album and this new one – left exactly how he played it. Lachaln Swampdog legend!)

Music and sounds can heal, but they can also hurt. Do you personally have experiences with either or both of these? Where do you personally see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing?

Geez deep again – heh (It’s just starting summer here in Australia , and I’m tour with a Brazilian accordion player, so doing best to keep on track with these questions - heh).

True. I guess one answer to this question is that Kerbside Collection will always be an instrumental group. It’s not that we are against singers, quite the contrary we love singers (we flew to Sydney to see Sharon Jones, and Melbourne to see Gregory Porter for their only Australia shows) and we play behind singers a lot in other projects, but this projects is about letting the musicians ‘speak’ a little with their instruments, sometimes instruments (and good musicians who can play them) can have more interesting things to say (especially in today’s world) and because there’s no definitive words (other than a song title) people can sometime interpret different things from the music depending on their situations, environment and think this can definitely take on a ‘healing’ quality – because we’re not yelling at you, or whinging about something (which a lot of mainstream vocal music tends to have).

In regards to this new album, there’s definitely a story about how the complete stop of the whole developed word due to the initial covid pandemic, and how that stop helped us to reflect, evaluate, appreciate certain things, and also the planet itself seemed to like this ‘stop’ with countless stories of environments and natural areas responding to the human inactivity (cars, factories, shopping had to stop), with reports of clearer air quality in some big cities to bird species returning to places they haven’t been observed in decades (due to the lack of car noise and activity).

There is a fine line between cultural exchange and appropriation. What are your thoughts on the limits of copying, using cultural signs and symbols and the cultural/social/gender specificity of art?

I guess it’s about being authentic in a way. Not all people in the world know how to observe ‘authenticity’, I mean look at the mainstream things like Bruno Mars & Anderson Paak have started this throwback thing – which even though how good musicians they are, it could be seen as a little bit of a cop-out and purely commercial, money making executives exercise to cash in on that aesthetic (which someone like Aloe Blacc, Leon Bridges, Michael Kiwanuka have done much better , with more originality authenticity, starting out doing the hard work) – which was defined by people / bands / musicians who didn’t have much, so that was their reality.



Whereas these guys they could have any studio, any car, any stadium tour in the world, but they chose that ‘home cooked’ approach style for their image because it was popular, attractive or getting the sympathy vote.  

Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work?

Sight and sound seem to be the obvious one for music, but I mean look (pun intended) at people like Stevie Wonder / Amadou & Mariam / Raul Midón who can’t see anything at all – and they rely on a different number of factors (muscle memory etc) to develop, write and make music. When you see (pun intended again) those guys you realise, there’s not just one way to play music – I mean, how do you play the piano or drum set, if you can't see what you’re playing! Incredible.

They figured out a way, because the music was inside of them and need to get out somehow/someway (not because they went to a course, and followed this book and that, and did this exam and that – they obviously had to practice – aloooooooooooooooot!)

Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?

Only thing I can think of is comments from people like (for example on the latest single) they say that’s nice, laidback and calming track.

Obvious example is someone like Bob Marley, he was hugely influential around the world, don’t think there’s one person that doesn’t stop and smile when they hear one of his songs, doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer, ambassador, CEO, electrician, farmer – just strong music.