P-Love Version 2.0

It's never easy to replace a band member, and it's that much harder when the member is your lead singer. When Travis Lee moved to Melbourne shortly after the band released their first EP, PocketLove found themselves in a difficult position. Fortunately, their early success allowed the band to convince Luke Kennedy, formerly a member of the internationally renowned Ten Tenors to step into the breach. 

“It helped that we'd had a bit of success, a little bit of movement with the band at that stage too,” Combes confirms. “We'd just released a CD and played on the main stage of the Caloundra Music Festival. It could have been catastrophic if it happened before then, so it was a good opportunity, if it had to occur, to happen at this time. Our previous lead singer, Travis, went [to] a bunch of muso jams that would happen every Wednesday at Alloneword. And Luke was there one night and seemed really interested in doing it [taking over vocals]. He'd just gotten off tour with The Ten Tenors – he was touring for a ridiculous amount of time, all over the world. Our previous singer was a ridiculously technically good singer, as well as having a good tone to his voice and it's very hard to replicate that. Luckily, Luke was very talented and he wanted to do it. So it could have happened at a much worse time, but it didn't, and here we are.”

A funk band, first and foremost, the change in personnel has meant a slightly different focus for PocketLove's latest songs; the new mixture of tastes and styles altering the way they interpret and present funk. Where Combes describes Lee as more of a soul singer, he explains that Kennedy comes from a pop-rock background, and says that has meant the new songs, including the lead single, I Know Where The Love Is, have leant in that direction as well, to take best advantage of the group's composition. During residencies at Cloudland and The Press Club, the band have mixed their originals with classic funk, but also covers of Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson.

“We play The Blues Brothers, funnily enough,” Combes says, “which is actually really cool stuff to play. Because we're a brass band as well, you can really get these songs that a lot of other normal pub bands can't really play. As well as that, some of these new songs actually came out of jams that we made up on the night [at the residencies]. Sometimes we'll be playing and I'll get my phone out and record them in the middle of the song, going, 'we're going to use this one', so we'll play that and it just comes out of the ether. Because our players are so good and we know each other really well, we've got this musical telepathy thing going on where I can start an idea and everyone else is able to put other stuff over the top, pretty much right away. So this new single actually came out from that initial riff, from the jamming process.”

It's going to be a busy year for the band, with their new single out and two more singles on the way in the next few months, before they settle down to work on an EP. As for the single launch? “We want to make it into a show rather than just a band playing a bunch of their songs,” Combes enthuses. “We've got light shows and we're doing an eight camera video shoot for this one. We'll be doing a multi-track recording as well, so basically we're recording as much as possible and then releasing stuff from that. We're trying to make it an experience.”