It also attracts some of the best bands/artists in the nation, and 2014 is no different. One of the feature acts this year is long running Melbourne funk/soul outfit The Bamboos, and while this is not the band’s first appearance on the festival, guitarist Lance Ferguson has great memories of their previous appearances, and is very happy to have been asked to play again.
“Really stoked actually,” he enthuses. “We’ve played the St Kilda festival a couple of times before, and in 2010 we got to headline on the main stage, which was wild, one of the best gigs we’ve ever done. Yeah, I’m totally thrilled to be getting a slot on the main stage again, it’ll be great.”
The band released a new album, their sixth, towards the end of last year, and toured extensively off the back of it. They also added another member during 2013, so they will be primed for a ripping performance at the festival.
“We’re just coming off the back of a national tour, and we’ve had a record out recently, so we’ll be playing a bunch of material off that record,” he reveals. “Plus your favourite Bamboos songs as well. The band expanded to include Ella Thompson on vocals, so there’s now nine people on stage. It’s the largest incarnation of the band up until now, so it feels like there’s a lot of intensity there, it feels like a powerhouse. It really feels like the most energetic and musically exciting lineup we’ve ever had, so I’m really happy with what’s going on at the moment.”
They are also playing a number of other similar summer festivals around Australia after St Kilda Fest, and are breaking some new ground for themselves as well. “Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a few things on,” he confirms. “A few festivals, and we’re actually going to New Zealand for a festival called Store Festival, which we’ve never done before, which will be really cool as well. I’m a Kiwi and we’ve never really officially done a Bamboos show in New Zealand, it’s taken a long time to happen, so I’m pretty stoked about that gig too.”
Beyond that, the band have even bigger plans for the rest of 2014, opening up the big wide world to themselves for the first time in their lengthy career. “The Bamboos are going to head over to the States and Japan,” he tells us. “I think it’s happening some time during May. We’ve never been to either one of those countries, so it’s going to be a lot of fun to do that, it’ll be like starting again in some ways. We’re going to be literally doing that driving from west to east coast thing; it’s going to be the proper tour bus slog.”
With the length of time the band has been around, and the prolific nature of its output, it is quite surprising that they’ve never really left our shores to tour. You can trace the origins of The Bamboos back to the year 2000, and the band has released six albums since 2006. That said, Lance tells us that it definitely doesn’t seem like almost a decade and a half the band have been doing their thing.
“It doesn’t feel like that to me, because it’s just been a continual cycle of making a new record and then touring it, and then all the stuff that goes along with that,” he says. “It’s felt a bit like a whirlwind in some ways, it really doesn’t feel like 14 years since we started this band as a four-piece thing at (Melbourne jazz venue) The Nightcat.
“At the same time, I can look back and look at the records we’ve made and the stuff we’ve done, and say ‘gee, that was 14 years of work’. As long as I’m excited about it, I’ll keep making new records and touring.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
