After having an incredibly busy summer performing at Queenscliff Music Festival, Woodford Folk Festival and Mullum Festival, just to name a few, it’s time for Bullhorn to perform at Blenheim Festival.
Their upbeat, high-energy shows take elements from a wide range of genres that depict their musical background.
Steve Buchanan, the man in charge of the sousaphone, started it all. “I formed the group in 2011 as an instrumental group. We didn’t even get an MC involved until 2013. The concept was doing brass band music but playing really with modern material. At the time I was doing a lot of D&B, hip hop, funk and soul,” he says.
“We’re not just that jazz stuff that brass bands tend to be, our format is quite different.”
Contrary to popular belief, it was not The Breakfast Club line “you mess with the bull, you get the horns” that gave inspiration to naming the band but a movie called Black Dynamite. Buchanan says, “There’s a character in Black Dynamite, which is a remake of a black exploitation movie that’s called Bullhorn. When we were coming together I saw that movie and immediately thought it was a rad, awesome and hilarious name.”
After performing at a plethora of major festivals their live gig has vastly changed their setup. The type of gigs they have been doing and the need to adapt to each venue ensures a fresh and dynamic show. “It ranges from playing at the bottom like all other bands and doing the local and more intimate shows, to working our way up and playing at bigger festivals like Woodford Folk Festival in front of 20,000 people,” Buchanan says. “That’s definitely been our biggest and most loved gig. We were pretty much prime time on New Years Eve from 10.50pm to 11.30pm. The crowd was absolutely frothing, with everyone dancing and our energy at an all time high.”
Having been around for the past six years, the discography and repertoire of Bullhorn is quite vast but their favourite song to play live is Roll Off The Top, a single from their last album. “It always starts with MC Roman doing a freestyle where he gets a few people in the front to give him a few random words. He’s an incredibly gifted freestyle artist; he creates these incredible stories from what he is given. It’s different every time and this song has always been about embracing the chaos.”
Bullhorn has had a plethora of releases, with their most recent Uphill EP. In the lead up to their heavy touring schedule they always find time to write a few more songs.
Their creative process often starts with a single band member. “[They come up with] a concept for a tune and will sit down on a program and put down ideas to paper. Then we run the grooves at rehearsals with Roman and go back and forth making modifications.
“It can be quite long with the nine of us as there’s rewriting, reprinting and a heavy amount of collaborating to be done. It’s constant, we have rehearsals every week trialing new ideas and then separate rehearsals for tightening up for our live show,” Buchanan says.
The rest of 2017 is an exciting time for a band like Bullhorn. “We’re hoping to drop a new single at the end of the year. We just went to New Zealand as part of out first international tour, which we absolutely loved. Now we are looking for more international gigs but we still have to admit that we have a heap of growth to be done within Australia.
“By hitting the festival circuit as hard as we did, we are starting to spread our wings and do more awesome live shows. The Blenheim festival in the only gig we have in South Australia in mid-April so we’re super psyched for that.”
By Romy Elle
