25 years ago, at the very start of the new millennium, Melbourne-based musician Lance Ferguson – at the time best known as founding guitarist for rising funk trio Cookin’ On 3 Burners – put together a new project The Bamboos virtually on a whim.

The New Zealand-born producer and multi-instrumentalist – who’d crossed the ditch in the early-‘90s – answered the call from a scene stalwart to help soundtrack a month of evenings at a boutique Fitzroy nightspot, and just like that a musical institution was born.

“The Bamboos kind of fell together,” Ferguson smiles. “A friend of mine Henry Maas, who ran a legendary venue in Melbourne called The Night Cat – it was his vision originally – he was running these monthly residencies and he said to me, ‘Can you put a band together for one of the residencies?’ 

“At the time I thought immediately that I'd love to do something like The Meters, that kind of thing – a little organ, drums, bass, guitar outfit – and play this repertoire of old school music we admired. We formed a band basically around a gig and it went well enough that we sort of got more gigs without trying, and it just snowballed from there. 

“And then I became aware of the whole deep funk thing going on in London and New York and I was, like, ‘This is kind of what we're doing, let’s make a record!’ So I put the band together, but it was sort of a little circumstantial as well.

“It’s hard to believe that was 25 years ago!” he adds. “I was just talking to my wife earlier this morning at breakfast about how in some ways it feels like 25 years – a quarter of a century, it’s crazy – but in other ways it's about your perception of time and it does feel like yesterday. I mean, that's what life is like for everyone, I guess. 

“But I can remember getting the first seven-inch records pressed up myself and packing them up, honestly, like it was just yesterday, so it's funny like that.”

That DIY first vinyl 7” featured The Bamboos’ originals Eel Oil and Blackfoot – the release earning immediate praise from the international funk community – setting the ball rolling on a canon which now comprises 11 acclaimed studio albums as well as a raft of singles, collaborations, and live recordings.

To celebrate the band’s 25th anniversary that body of work is being augmented by new two-LP compilation The Bamboos Best, tracing the band’s journey from such happenstance beginnings to becoming one of the nation’s most enduring and beloved funk and soul acts.

“It really was hard, honestly,” Ferguson admits of putting together the new career overview. “To be blunt, I don't always enjoy listening to my own music. I'm often listening to it with a sort of a revisionist ear and going, ‘Oh, wow, if I could do that again now…’, but that's just kind of the way my brain works. 

“So because I had to listen to the masters – John Castle, our long running engineer, he actually mastered this record because he recorded these tracks, he co-mixed a lot of them and co-produced some of them so it made sense for him to actually master the compilation because he knows the music intimately – but I had to still approve the various masters and approve the [vinyl] test pressing, so I was cornered and made to sit down and listen to this whole, almost hour-and-a-half of music. 

“It was kind of agonising. I agonised over the track-list because this is The Bamboos Best,” he admits. “It’s not like a ‘greatest hits’ thing, as it were – so there weren't really any constraints about, ‘Oh, we've just got to put the biggest singles on it’ and all that sort of stuff. 

“So I just tried to create a balance of songs that people do know us for and they would expect to be on there – including some songs we did with guest vocalists like Tim Rogers and Megan Washington – but also a few things that maybe are songs that we've always played live, but maybe they weren't necessarily big songs for us in the recorded world even though they've always been really great songs to play live. I made sure there are a few of those in there too. 

“So it was a bit of a balance and I also wanted to put something new that hadn't been on vinyl before, so we've got a song we did with Bobby Flynn [Lucky] that came out only as a digital single semi-recently, that’s in there as well. But yeah, I found the whole experience pretty tough to get through.”

One thing that The Bamboos Best definitely provides is a nice overview of the band’s sonic evolution over time, as they morphed from their deep funk beginnings to take in aspects of disparate sounds such as soul and even psych.

Ferguson – who quit Cookin’ On 3 Burners in 2013 to focus on his role as bandleader of the burgeoning Bamboos – explains that the shift in aesthetic was both gradual and entirely organic.

“The band obviously started out in a fairly… I was about to say a purist mindset, but I feel like I'm not really a purist of anything because I like so many different kinds of music,” he smiles. “But look, we started out definitely going for that rawer sound but even back then I wasn't really trying to make a time machine-type thing. 

“I mean, we mixed the drums louder because I'm just always into hip hop and I wanted the drums to be really loud. I remember at the time some people were, like, ‘Ooh, the drums are a bit loud!’ and I was, like, ‘Well, that's kind of where I hear it’. 

“So we started there and then I guess as I grew as a songwriter and a musician in general, I just wanted to bring more of these other influences to the palette – psych came into the mix, and just sort of more straight-up soul, which is really in essence to me just great pop music. 

“A lot of hard funk is really one or two chords and a bridge or something, but after a while I wanted to broaden that out and just write songs, and then I had to sort of bring them into the world of The Bamboos. I think from around our second or third album in, I was really wanting to not be sort of constrained too much by this genre thing.” 

The Bamboos’ sonic evolution was matched by their gradual shift from an instrumental outfit to one incorporating vocals into the arrangements, first via celebrated UK soul vocalist Alice Russell and then with the permanent addition of Melbourne soul powerhouse Kylie Auldist to the ranks in 2006.

“We collaborated early on with Alice, who was a label-mate with [celebrated UK indie] Tru Thoughts, who we'd signed to at the time,” Ferguson tells, “but then obviously when Kylie Auldist – the wonderful Kylie Auldist – joined the band, I mean that changed the game entirely.

“It seems like her and my musical relationship has also, I like to think, blossomed over these decades. We've got a really close connection where it feels very comfortable to write music together. It's always like getting blood from a stone, but we just feel very comfortable with each other to try and get that blood out of that stone together.”

It seems strange hearing Ferguson talk about a problematic writing process, given that he’s so prolific you’d be forgiven for assuming that creativity must flow easily for him.

“Oh, starting songs is really easy, it’s finishing them off is the tough part,” he chuckles. “You get that initial thrill and buzz with an idea that's come through, and then you've got to try and sustain that. And eventually that buzz will fade off, but the song still needs work and you've just got to remember, ‘Oh, I was vibing on this initially. I think it's still got legs, even if I am completely sick of it now’. So yeah, it's just an ongoing challenge.

“Songwriting for me is sort of a thing where I will procrastinate until I've got my back to the wall and just have to come up with the songs – I really work better under deadlines. I think when there's endless time to do something, I tend to meander, but then when the deadline is looming, that's when I kind of just have to do stuff. 

“I think that's just the way my psychology works. I enjoy the writing part, but I find the mixing of music quite stressful, that’s something I will always agonise over. The writing stuff is fun, but finishing off songs can be hard work. 

“I think maybe my favourite two parts of the whole train of activity that happens is firstly recording the songs – I think that’s really fun because you kind of hear them for the first time as they’ll hopefully turn out to be. It’s that thing you've heard in your head coming to life, that's always fun. And then going out and playing them live is always fun. They're the two most fun parts for me.”

The Bamboos have long been acknowledged as one of our country’s most energetic and entertaining live propositions, and Ferguson admits that it’s occasionally proved a challenge to marry the good-time concert vibes with the band’s recorded output. 

“Because we've been around for so long now, I think I've experimented with all of the possible approaches over the years,” he reflects. “Our last record [2023’s This Is How You Do It] was quite produced, if you will, rather than a kind of ‘live band in a room’ type scenario. But then the album we did before that called Hard Up (2001) was a bit more trying to capture the live vibe, we just went to a country house and set up and recorded.

“So I think we've done a bit of both – I think both have their benefits. They're just two different types of approach, and there can be crossover within that as well, so it's the whole spectrum of stuff. 

“But I guess with my producer hat on, I do like to add bells and whistles and tend to maybe do a bit too much of that sometimes. Then we have to try and recreate it live. If anything, it would be better if we did a sort of ‘no frills, stripped-down’ thing because then it would be closer to what happens live, but I just get carried away sometimes.”

In the 25 years that The Bamboos have been starting parties, the thriving Melbourne soul scene of which they’re such an important component has flourished to the extent that it’s now spoken of with envy by international aficionados, though Ferguson says that he’s too close to the eye of the storm to really give much insight to the expansion.

“Oh, there's so much going on,” he marvels of his adopted hometown. “There's just almost too many bands to mention, but something like Hiatus Kaiyote springs to mind as someone who's certainly gone on to do amazing things on an international scale – just musically they've kind of changed the game for even people in America and beyond with what they're doing, so to see a band like that flourish has been amazing. 

“I mean, it is a little bit hard for me to have a perspective on it because I'm sort of here in the middle of it all and have been here for so long. But all I can say is if we have had some influence or input into what's happened here, I'm certainly proud to be a part of it.

“It was a very different scenario when we started off with what was going on, and it's just been amazing to see the flood of stuff that's happened now. And it's multi-generational – I remember when The Bamboos were maybe 10 years in or something and suddenly there were a whole bunch of the next generation of younger musicians kind of playing that sound, and now there's another generation again beyond them. So it's really cool, it’s like a tree that keeps growing.”

It’s not only in Australia where The Bamboos have earned a passionate following, years of trekking to foreign shores having built them a strong international following as well. 

“We kind of toured to the UK and Europe a fair bit early on and then there was a bit of a break and we went over about a year ago now,” Ferguson explains. “That was almost like a restart for us there because there'd been quite a gap between visits. 

“The challenge with our band is always that it's so big – if you’re taking nine people and then if you want to take your sound person as well, it's just kind of fiscally difficult where we're at. But there actually is a long-running and decent following in America and England and various parts of Europe, so it’s always great to get over there and play to those people. 

“And some of those people have been with us all along the way. I talk to people who bought our first single 24 or 25 years ago – that sometimes makes me feel very old, but it makes me feel good too.” 

For Ferguson, the realisation that his adventures with The Bamboos has found him living out his childhood dreams came quite early in the piece.

“25 years is a long time, obviously, and there’s just been so many highlights,” he says. “I think for me as a young musician coming up, I had this dream that if I could travel the world playing my own music – or in a band with their own music – I mean, that would be the ultimate. And I feel like we kind of did that early on in this band, like within the first five years or so. 

“I remember even at that time and that age being acutely aware of how lucky we were. I vividly remember one time when we were in Italy, we played this open air gig in Pisa in this kind of Roman amphitheatre as the sun went down – it was an absolutely amazing vista – and I remember sort of having the conscious thought, ‘Well, this is the dream!’ 

“It's just a small thing, and it’s nothing to do with money or anything, it was just, like, ‘Here we are playing our music and we're in Italy and this is incredible!’ I remember having that moment – I was just onstage and looking around me at this crazy place. That stands out for me. 

“Obviously there’s been a few moments and things like that, but I think overall, when I think of the band’s journey, the main joy has come from the people I’ve shared it with. A lot of musicians have come in and out of the band – but the core of the band as we've had it has really been pretty stable for probably the last 15 or 16 years – and I think the overriding great thing that I bring away from this is the feeling of family and the relationships. 

“It's a cliche, but The Bamboos are genuinely like a family of people that are great friends. And I'd like to think that the feeling of that comes across somehow in what we do by this point on- and off-stage. I don't know if it does, but I hope it does. That's how we all feel.”

There’s always been an all-pervading sense of communal joy at a Bamboos gig, one that should be amplified even more than usual as the band hits the road with the party in tow to celebrate their 25th anniversary milestone.

“It’s a smaller tour, but it's going to be a lot of fun,“ Ferguson grins. “Again, like I was talking about agonising over the tracklist of the compilation, there's a slight bit of trepidation about the set-list of the gigs, because I’m, like, ‘We need to leave this off, but we should play that and we have to play that!’

“I always think a shorter gig is a better gig, so I'm going to try and get all this in there and, you know, hopefully tick everyone's boxes of what they want to want to hear."

Is it essentially just about trying to get people to dance at the end of the day?

“Look, that certainly has been at the heart of the MO of The Bamboos,” the leader chuckles. “I think we're a band for people to forget about their worries and forget about everything and just come and have a good time, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That's certainly what I often look for in music. 

“But then I've had examples of people who've contacted me who’ve had certain songs resonate with them in terms of really heavy and serious things that have gone down in their life – illnesses and just dealing with pain and loss – and it always means so much when someone reaches out and says something you've made has helped them through a tough time. 

“So look, we do love to make people dance and feel good and and have a great time, but essentially I just want the people to feel something. I mean, it can be anything, but if you make someone else feel something, I think that's that's the goal.”

And while Ferguson may be rightly proud about what The Bamboos have been able to experience and achieve over the last quarter-century, he’s still got at least one eye set firmly on the future.

“It's kind of weird: I mean, 25 years is a long time when you think about it,” he puzzles. “I speak to some people who weren't even born when the band started, and it’s, like, ‘Oh, wow!’ But as I said before, if we have contributed something to the scene just by sort of doing what we do, then I’d be totally rapt.

“Early on when I was pressing up those seven-inch vinyl singles, people weren't really doing that and I think hopefully just via the act of doing that just maybe someone else sees you do it and it occurs to them, ‘I can do that too.’ So maybe if some of that stuff had an influence, I'm definitely grateful to have made a contribution. 

“But it's not over yet. We're going to keep going, in fact we're actually going to make a new album before the end of the year. We’re looking backwards for now, but there’s a fair bit of life in the old beast yet.”

The Bamboos’ new compilation, The Bamboos Best, is out now. Tickets to their upcoming shows are on sale now.

The Bamboos – 25 Years Tour

Thursday, September 11th – City Recital Hall, Sydney, NSW

Saturday, September 13th – Moorooka Block Party, Brisbane Festival, Brisbane, QLD

Saturday, September 20th – Northcote Theatre, Melbourne, VIC