Having eight people in a band, you’d tend to expect a lot of conflict between members. Especially when not in the studio recording, those members are out on the road touring constantly. But Bart Denaro of Kid Confucius enjoys the time he spends with his band mates. “It’s almost like a school camp with us,” he laughs, “because there’re at least 10 people in the entourage and it’s just a lot of fun. Even if you do have a problem or a problem comes up you can distance yourself from it because there’s so many people [to interact with].”
Kid Confucius are promoting their sophomore album ‘Stripes’, a soulful exploration of funk and hiphop, inspired by the likes of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder, with a little bit of rock thrown in. “Personally as a drummer,” says Denaro, “I would say my biggest influence would have to be John Bonham (of Led Zeppelin fame), but then it moves to the old soul session players like Bernard Perdie and Al Jackson, and those kinds of bands. Our influences have changed though and me and a lot of the band have a strong rock influence”.
“When we got together the first song we jammed on was Suck My Kiss by the Chilli Peppers,” Denaro explains the rock link further. “And that kind of party funk thing we were doing in the beginning, that is appealing to anyone on the level that you go out to a club and don’t really know the song, but still dance to it. And for a young band that’s really appealing. You don’t need people to know you, you don’t need to be on the radio to be able to do a good gig, the people just get into it because it’s got that groove to it,” he smiles. “Then we started looking a bit deeper into the music we were listening to. We started looking at those who inspired the funk, like Stevie and that, and started focusing on those elements for this album.”
Not only have the influences evolved, but also the whole song writing process. “In the beginning Andrew (Guirguis aka Pre Fab, the band’s MC) penned pretty much most of the songs on the first album. Since the first album I’ve had a lot more to do with the production side of things because I spent a lot of time working with our producer Buckman (Tony Buchen). Also Rob (Hezkial, the bands main singer) became more involved with the writing process. The songs start from one person’s idea, say a verse idea or chorus, and grow from there. We did about 4 months of pre-production in which we brought those ideas to the table and worked through them as a band. So ‘Stripes’ was a much more collaborative thing than we’ve ever done before.”
Their tour,called ‘The Street Corner Soul Tour’, celebrates Soul music in a similar way to Aretha Franklin’s Fillmore West concerts of 1969 by playing at traditional rock venues around the country. “The Fillmore West was traditionally a rock Mecca in San Francisco and the very gesture of Aretha Franklin playing there was a real statement for soul music. She sold out two nights there which was a real landmark for soul at that time. This idea really struck true for us because we live in such a rock centric country, and we wanted to do something in the same vein – play rock venues and pubs and brazenly play soul music.”
“We kicked the tour off with two nights at the Annadale in Sydney, it’s THE pub-rock venue in Sydney,” Denaro explains, “and we’ve had a couple of gigs there before and haven’t had the greatest time because of therock status. But going in there with this premise, with the word Soul in the tour name, we had two of the best shows we’ve ever played there!” he grins.
They also hit the street corners in the literal sense. “We get as much of the band out there on the street and do an impromptu performance, and the response has been awesome! So far we’ve done a performance in Sydney in Newtown, Brisbane in the Valley, and on Brunswick St in Melbourne. We’ve bought a little battery powered speaker we can plug a couple of guitars and the vox mic into, and we drive around the city, look for a nice spot and then do it as quickly as we can before we get any police attention!” he laughs.
He’s pretty confident it will happen in Adelaide, so don’t be surprised if you see a Tarago pull up to somewhere around the city, and eight musicians pile out and start playing sweet soul music. But if you don’t manage to catch them this way, they’re playing Fri 12 Oct at the Governor Hindmarsh.