Family First

Quality time is pretty few and far between these days,” Logan Bell laments. Currently enjoying some downtime with his family before he and his Katchafire bandmates – drummer brother Jordan, guitarist father Grenville and five other friends close enough to be called family in a wholly different sense – embark on a lengthy tour in support of their retrospective, The Best So Far, it seems a bittersweet irony that, soon, the singer will be exchanging one nuclear unit for another. On the plus side, his departure is for an ambitious and potentially rewarding reason.

“Katchafire's been together for ten years-plus now, and we've got four studio albums and a lot of remix albums and limited editions, but a lot of places in the world haven't seen Katchafire, and one of the big markets is Europe, and Asia,” Bell explains of the ulterior motives behind releasing The Best So Far. “So we thought we'd put together a 'best of' so far.”

BUT the song selection process for the retrospective was a tense one, though once again the band's close ties made swift conflict resolution possible.

“We've had different songwriters on the last two albums, so we would just lock ourselves in a big room and just had it out, man,” Bell laughs. “Well, not had it out… well, it was like that, really, but verbally. It was quite a hard process, coming to 21 tracks, but we got there in the end.”

Some tracks were natural inclusions, such as 2003's Get Away and Giddy Up, from their debut release, when the band were doing just fine at earning themselves a reputation as one of New Zealand's hardest-working bands.

“The early days, man – we worked like madmen. I think we laid down a template for a lot of the bands in New Zealand, and the mould to follow, I guess. Every week had a gig somewhere, at least one, and for those first five years of the 2000s, we were just running around New Zealand just lapping it up, mate.”

Mid-career songs such as Frisk Me Down (2005) and Working (2007), in contrast, bring Bell to another place entirely: “We were just leaving our record label; they taught us a few hard and fast lessons from the first two albums. So it was still all very fresh and new, the industry, going out on our own, doing the next two albums independently was exciting and scary at the same time, but we knew we had the ability to write great songs still. We just took it on, took the bull by the horns and pushed on. That's when the other three songwriters – Jordan, Haani [Totorewa] and Leon [Davey] – jumped in, pitching into the songwriting process, adding songs to the repertoire. We made a template up that we're following today: we're all writing and still very excited. It still feels like we've got a lot of miles left in the ticker.”  

He's not wrong; this tour is far from their first this year, having already taken in Europe and the US from April to July, and they're currently working on their hotly awaited fifth full-length album and they're appreciative of what they've got.

“We still pinch ourselves every day,” Bell admits. “To be able to do what we love in life as a job… success and making money is just a bonus. But I guess the thing we've learnt along the way is I think definitely having the family vibe has helped....You'd rather go through good times and bad times with family. It's a lot more special, the bond, you know?”