Transcript of an interview I recorded with ROBYN FERGUSON - 20200612. Full article here. MAL-
Chatting to ROBYN FERGUSON. Robyn, thanks for joining me. ROBYN- Thanks so much for having me. MAL- Now, tell us whereabouts you're located. ROBYN- I am in Cape Town, South Africa. MAL- What's the scene for our top of music like in South Africa? ROBYN- Oh, it's an interesting one. And the metal sub genre. It's smaller than most countries I would imagine. But the few that are around are diehard fans, hardcore to the bone. So yeah, I think it's alive. MAL- Yeah. Good. When did you first pick up guitar? ROBYN- I picked up guitar about a week after I saw somebody playing it for the first time and thought I had to have this in my life. And I was about 12 years old when I picked up a guitar for the first time. I was walking with my father and I saw a guy busking on the street corner and that completely changed my life. So I saw him playing and this is way too cool. And I bugged my parents until they got me a guitar. MAL- Were you self taught? Did you take lessons? How did that go? ROBYN- Part of my journey has been self taught. But I was very fortunate to have a really wonderful guitar teacher called Nathan Smith for about 10 years. And he is fairly well known in South Africa as a hired gun session musician as well. So I was very fortunate to spend a lot of time with him. Yeah. MAL- Have you played in other bands? Or is this been a solo project? ROBYN- Traditionally I've actually been mostly in bands. And the solo project is a bit of a new thing. So I think I've always been in bands and then started migrating into session work in about 2017/18. And from there, natural progression into solo. MAL- Right, so tell us about your first EP 'Alizarin' that came out last year. Tell us a bit about that. ROBYN- Yeah, 'Alizarin', super short little EP to test the waters. It is something that I really wanted to do and I've been working on for many years sort of bits and pieces here and there and perhaps never had the confidence to do it as a solo thing. I was so focused on bands and session work at the time that I had all these little bits and pieces, but they never really fit into the band that I was with at the time or project. So eventually I just decided, you know, this is all cool. Why don't I just release it under my own name and give it a bash? See what happens. And it was great fun. So yeah. MAL- And how did it go? ROBYN- Very well. I was quite overwhelmed by it. The response was quite amazing. And so much so and I had so much fun that I decided to immediately start recording again. Yeah, there we go. MAL- And so the the new one followed up pretty quickly after that, ROBYN- I was gonna release it on the same day as 'Alizarin'. So 'Falling Forward' would have come out in the same day, but because of COVID, there was a slight delay so it was about a week later, two weeks later, which I'm still stoked about. MAL- We're talking about 'Falling Forward' now. Tell us about the the process behind that. Now who have you got in helping you with it? Or are you playing everything? ROBYN- Yeah. So for both albums, completely solo work, no other musicians involved. The only other person that's touched the music in any shape or form has been my mixing and mastering engineer Clinton Watts. So all the guitar work the bass, the drums, everything. I've done myself. Drums are programmed, but the rest has been recorded and played by myself. Yeah. MAL- Well done. ROBYN- Thank you. It was a lot of fun. MAL- The first three songs I noticed 'Gravity', 'Oxygen', 'Carbon', what's the reasoning behind that? There's got to be some story behind that. ROBYN- Yeah, so the entire album follows the journey of last year and last year for me personally, it was quite a challenging one. I think we all have challenging times and it varies depending on who you are and how it's relevant or relative to your situation. For me last year, there was a lot of things that happened, a lot of change and a lot of new things and a lot of difficulties including quite a serious health problem that I picked up. So the entire album follows the journey of the highs and the lows of my life at the time. So going from being super active and having a great time and then suddenly collapsing and being in hospital and having to go through a huge recovery process for months. So the songs kind of relate to that as well as to the visions and the feelings and the space I was in during that time. I was finding myself a lot between conscious and unconscious while I was very, very ill. And so it's the journey of overcoming all of that 'Carbon', 'Oxygen' and 'Gravity' the first couple of songs are relating to the weight of my situation and how I felt so helpless and struggling to not only physically breathe but in a mental space and in the spiritual space find myself, and realising that we are all just simple, and we're all just common life forms so breaking everything that was complicated down to something simpler, and then rebuilding it from there. I had to do that with my life last year. I relocated, sold everything and relocated across country and rebuilt the life and had to do so again with my health issues. So the whole album is an overcoming, a rebuilding from basics all the way, yeah. MAL- Have you played this material live? And if so, how? Considering that you did most of the work on it. ROBYN- Yeah, it is quite an interesting one. So I have performed both albums live. It's a bit of an interesting one, there's a few options that we can do, depending on the size of the show, the nature of it, where it is, and I suppose how I feel. There's either session musicians that will join and perform with. I've written everything in such a way that it can be recreated live and for most parts, there are literally just two rhythm guitars, a lead guitar, bass and drums. So I try to keep it simple so that it can be recreated and so that it can be quite cool. So yeah, getting a couple of session musicians in to play along is never a huge issue, but I do thoroughly enjoy playing solo and for solo, I've spent a lot of time with Clinton Watts my mixing mastering engineer and producer to create realistic and good sounding backtracks so that it can be performed where I play the solo, the main parts, and then the backdrops are just there as a backing band. It's perhaps a bit weird, but if anybody has seen me on stage, you'll know that I run around like a maniac. So hopefully it's enough and I haven't had any complaints. So either way band or solo, if there's a gig, I'll be there. MAL- That sort of thing is something that is probably viewed a bit more favourably these days than many years ago, if you were playing with an obvious backing track many years ago, you were,.. you know what I mean? Whereas now it's seen as a way to augment things that can't be reproduced in any other way. So it's probably a good time to be doing that. So that's good. Do you want to talk about your other bands, any other band you're in at the time? ROBYN- SISTAS OF METAL is a supergroup. We perform once or twice a year only. We get together from our separate bands. It's an all female group. And we get together from from all of our separate bands once or twice a year, we come together and we play a big show. And then obviously, a lot of people know me from ADORNED IN ASH. And there I'm the lead vocalist and guitarist. ADORNED IN ASH, we've been going for about 11 years and at the moment, we're taking it a little bit slow. The boys have a lot going on as do I, with some new children on that side, and I've got album stuff going. So we're exploring a whole bunch of different avenues, but it's you know, there's always there's always some kind of band or project that's happening. MAL- Are you doing session work as well at the moment? ROBYN- At the moment it's quite quiet because of covid, but are there are session recordings, I'm fortunate that I can record within my flat so I don't need to go anywhere to do that. So there are a couple, but honestly right now I'm focusing on the release of 'Falling Forward' and enjoying it a little bit. MAL- So what is the release and distribution situation with 'Falling Forward'? ROBYN- Currently completely independent. I've done everything myself. I've had a lot of help from Devo Graphics, David Devo Oosthuizen. He has been a huge supporter of marketing and PR and he's helped put us in contact. John has also been fantastic from Nuclear. But as of today, nothing greater than that just a lot of hard work. We're still gunning for bigger deals and bigger things to happen. But I'm very, very blessed and fortunate for the journey that we've made so far. MAL- Is it available on physical CDs? It's a bit of a weird question these days, but physical copies, how would one get a hold of one physical copy? ROBYN- Physical copies at the moment not available, It's quite a lengthy an expensive process to print hardcopy these days, especially in South Africa, it's very limited. I am considering an alternative to a CD hardcopy though, perhaps a vinyl release a limited edition. I think that's always quite nice. And unfortunately, as much as I love my giant CD collection, I think it's a platform we're moving away from, but I do think vinyl will always remain and I'm a sucker for holding something tangible in my hands and loving it and looking at the album art and all of that. MAL- It's interesting how all these bands are getting vinyl printed again these days. ROBYN- There's something about vinyl that is just cool. You know, it's the whole process of, I think it's maybe a tradition as well. It's just that like, wow, holding a vinyl, this is legit, this is real, you know, this is cool. MAL- How restricted are you in South Africa with the COVID? thing? Are you in lockdown? Or are you just discouraged from going out? What's the deal? ROBYN- It's been fairly strict here, although not everybody follows the rules, unfortunately, which obviously puts a lot of people in to jeopardy. But currently we've just moved to lockdown level three, although there is talk of potentially increasing it's back to level four or five, just because we've got a great deal of our population who's immunodeficient. So if somebody with HIV and AIDS get Corona, the chance of their survival is very small. So we've had to be quite strict. So I've been in self isolation for about two and a half months now, which has been interesting. Only in the last week have we been able to go outside and exercise freely and stuff like that, walk around and such, but the last month and a half, we've been stuck indoors with very strict curfews and such like that. But music continues. And as a solo artist, I'm fortunate that apart from touring and apart from live shows, my life hasn't been too heavily affected in terms of music and music creation, because I do it all myself, that can continue. The tragedy is I can't get out and tour and play live. However, as soon as this is over, obviously, that's a huge priority. There were some tour plans booked for international and well, I'm hoping that they're not cancelled, that they're just paused, you know. We'll see. If it's safe to go out that it's responsible, then we'll pick that up again, but a lot of big things happening, a lot of music being written and a lot of cool things in the pipeline, I can say that. I know a lot of people I mean, I myself, I'm still continuing with my day job, I'm fortunate to still be working. But I know a lot of people who are without work at the moment and take it one of two ways, I suppose. And perhaps it's a bit cold or a bit harsh. But I truly feel that the world is coming to a standstill so that we can try new things. And you can sit on the couch, become a couch potato and complain about life or you can do something with it and take it as a cool opportunity. People are stuck behind their computers, people are looking for things to do and looking for new things. So now is the time to not feel sorry for yourself but push as hard as you can and connect with people on the other side of the world like we are, and chat about some cool music. You know, I think it's wonderful. MAL- I do too. This is my first contact with anyone directly in South Africa, so it's very good. ROBYN- Oh, cool. MAL- On the whole of the African continent I believe, actually. ROBYN- Thank you. Africa is an interesting place. There's a lot of cool musicians and a lot of different genres, different styles. But I think it's perhaps quite underrated. MAL- You know how when you hear something, it won't so much remind you of, like another band or whatever. It'll remind you of the feeling you had when you heard that person for the first time? And when I heard your music, it reminded me of the first time I heard JOE SATRIANI. ROBYN- Wow, that's a huge compliment. MAL- The 'Surfing With The Alien' album was the first SATRIANI I heard and it just sort of popped into my head. So music's great like that. ROBYN- Thank you. That's a really big compliment. SATRIANI has been a big influence in my life over the years. I think he's a great player. So that's a huge compliment. Thank you so much. MAL- No worries at all. All right, ROBYN FERGUSON, thanks so much for taking my call. Best of luck with your EP 'Falling Forward', what's the best way for people to listen to that? ROBYN- Anywhere where good music is played, great radio stations, podcasts and streaming platforms. It's available on all major ones. So you can have a listen, wherever good music is played. MAL- Excellent. Hey thanks so much for talking to me and you ever. You have a great day. ROBYN- Thanks, Mal. It's been awesome. Thank you. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |