A Risky Collaboration

"It is a strange beast,” Black Seeds co-singer and guitarist Barnaby Weir admits of Fly My Pretties, the amorphous collective of fellow Wellington, New Zealand musicians – among them members of Trinity Roots, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Kora, The Phoenix Foundation, Head Like A Hole, Kora, The Nudge and Electric Wire Hustle – that he put together with Mikee Tucker from Loop back in 2004. “It’s unusual, but it’s so special, you know? Obviously it changes up almost every show unless we’re doing an album tour, but you have different flavours and a variety of skills and personalities. It’s certainly not your usual band but I think people get that now.

“It crosses a lot of genres, though we don’t quite go full tick dance, house and techno kind of vibe because we do have great musicians that play real instruments, so we don’t kind of go there, but the focus I guess is the central part of the band, which is generally myself, Mike Fabulous on bass, Jarney Murphy on drums and Nigel Patterson on keyboards – they’re part of The Black Seeds as well – so that’s the gooey centre of the chocolate if you like, and that means there’s a consistency in all of the songs, in a sound. They’re the engine room and they make things work and sound good almost immediately if we’ve got a new song or a new talent that’s joining us. We listen to their song and we do a version in our style.”

From very humble beginnings as just an opportunity for Weir to jam with friends he’d been wanting to jam with but hadn’t, Fly My Pretties has grown to something of a New Zealand institution, recording, releasing and touring five live albums over the past decade, the show lasting up to three hours. 

“I wasn’t thinking I’d start a band. I was thinking we’d do a live recording and make the audience really feel a part of that. So I was really interested in the risk of a collaboration in front of an audience that’s seated in a theatre environment that’s being recorded. And from there we took the thing a little bit more theatrical, especially with the third album [2009’s Fly My Pretties – A Story, which debuted at #1 on the RIANZ album chart]. Me and my father wrote a story, had it illustrated and we wrote songs around its theme.”

The collective has also collaborated with local visual artist, Flox, to create a series of animated film clips, and have written on themes of national identity and environmental issues.

“I’m a musician, that’s into a broad range of musical styles, so why do we feel that we have to be locked into your main band’s style. For me that’s The Black Seeds, and that’s more a soul/funk/reggae kind of a sound. So Fly My Pretties is about expressing those other styles.”