In case you’re wondering, Eilenberg clarifies there’s no one in the band called Arthur Penn. “Arthur Penn was a film director in the ‘60s and his most famous film is probably Bonnie & Clyde,” he says. “But his most important asset is that his name rhymes with ten.”
Slightly miffed by the simplicity of his band-mate’s account, Sneddon expands on why they chose Herr Penn as the band’s namesake. “It’s a reference to him, but the whole idea of the band was to be a bit weird from the get go,” he says. “I studied film and I was doing a project on him the week we were deciding on the name. We wanted the initial atmosphere of the band to be a bit bizarre, so the fact we have this weird name, people are always trying to guess who is Arthur Penn.”
The 11-piece initially wanted to be a straight up funk band, but the aforementioned ethos has led them to dabble in multiple genres. Henshall, Sneddon and Eilenberg detail the role of the band’s remaining eight members.
“Grace [Cummings] is the female vocalist and I met her through school theatre,” says Sneddon. “Keeping It Together will be a single and Grace mainly sings that song. We are really excited about it because we have literally just finished recording it.”
“Edward [Lloyd] is our guitarist and he started off as a good old rock’n’rollin’ guitarist,” says Eilenberg. “If you go on Youtube and search you can find a video of Edward shredding to Heartbreaker by Led Zeppelin. He was only 16 when he posted it and it was literally one of the first videos of its kind, so it has 2.1 million views.”
“Our saxophonist, Theo Conos, is the man. He studied at Melbourne conservatorium of music and he now teaches music and he takes most of our sax solos because he is just insane,” explains Sneddon.
The youthfully friendly Henshall fills us in on the act’s tenor sax/flute player: “I’ve known [Ben] Harvey since we were like five years old and he has always been able to just pick up anything,” he says. “Give him a couple of days and he is playing it at a competent level.”
“Stikki Roder or Ricky Soda or Roger Godero – I don’t think he cares what we call him – is actually a guitar player, but he just picked the trumpet because we told him to and he’s a musical genius,” says Sneddon. “All the four horns players are geniuses.”
This brings the conversation to trombone player Josh Lynzaat. Although assigned to the horns section, Henshall is quick to attest, “He has a voice of an angel.”
Another aspect of Arthur Penn & The Funky Ten’s complex and textured sound is their dual percussionists/drummers/keyboard players Tyler Daglish and Ben Winstanley.
“They sort of switch between drums and keyboards because they both have very different styles so they work well on different instruments for different songs,” says Sneddon. Henshall adds, “Yeah and sometimes they just run around the stage dancing and stuff to create a vibe.”
BY DAN WATT
