Burning Hot

While The Bamboos have long been Australia's leaders of funk and soul sound propagation, it wasn't really until last year's LP Medicine Man that the band has really struck gold, including Best Independent Release, Best Urban Album and Best Australian Live Act ARIA noms. The nugget largely responsible for this surge in popularity? I Got Burned, a song with Oz rock royalty Tim Rogers that almost didn't happen.

“I first met Tim when I was playing with my friend Megan Washington's band, called Washington, out on a Big Day Out tour,” describes Bamboos main man Lance Ferguson of the encounter that led to a whole new appreciative audience being conjured for the 13-year-old band. “I had started to write the Medicine Man album at that point and he was really interested in, or we were both really interested in, working on some music together but I didn't feel like at that point that I really had a song for him. And it was lucky as it turned out that I wrote a song at the last minute that was perfect for him. That wasn't even intentional, it was just that I wrote the song and I was like, 'Hang on, this is the one that Tim could really smash up'.

And smash it up Timmy most certainly did, the two jumping into the studio together and recording pretty much what you hear in the final version of I Got Burned in only a few demo-intended takes. The song also saw the You Am I legend revealing a different side to his vocals, the falsetto highs somewhat of a surprise to them both. “Because the demo was in a certain key, you know, I was a bit worried about where that would sit with his voice, but it worked out that it just sounded better if he sung it up in the key we were in. And that's kind of what made the song happen was that he was singing in a range that people weren't really used to hearing him in. But up in that range he just had this great, soulful, bluesy quality – some sort of fucked up mixture of Curtis Mayfield and I don't know what else, but it just really, really worked well.”

So super finely that the collab not only hit highs on triple j and community radio but gained rare commercial airplay for the two. Yet it wasn't the only song that saw The Bamboos' sound evolving, with a number of slightly more rock and pop-influenced songs on their fifth full-length. Still, the usual ingredients of Bamboos groove hadn't been fiddled with too much, the basic recipe not changed enough to wholly justify why this album has suddenly taken things to a whole new range of audiences. “Everyone talks about sort of the new sound or whatever, but I still kinda feel the way that you do; that yes there are some differences sonically with the way this record sounds, but it's not some incredible change from the previous albums,” Ferguson enthusiastically agrees. “There are some straight up pop songs on there but then there are songs that would have sat easily on the 4 album, which is the previous album. So, look, I'm not exactly sure how or why it connected more, but certainly I'm happy that it did.

“It's weird for me to go back and try to forensically sort of analyse why that is, I mean that was a song that wasn't even intended to be on the album at all, and was written at the eleventh hour,” Ferguson explains of I Got Burned. “Some people didn't really know it was Tim Rogers because he's singing up in the falsetto range. One of the kind of ploys when they took the song to radio was that they didn't tell anyone who the vocalist was and not that many people…going into the blindfold test could pick who it was.”

The latest run of dates is a celebration of this union, Tim Rogers joining The Bamboos for an expansive Australian tour. And you can expect a lot more than just one hit song from the two. “The regular Bamboos vocalists Kylie Audlist and Ella Thompson will also be on this tour and we'll be doing some Bamboos stuff and then Tim is gonna come out and do Burning, but he's also going to perform some Bamboos songs that have male vocals on them, which is gonna be fun. And also we're going to take some of his solo stuff and go back to some of the You Am I stuff and kind of put some Bamboos-styled arrangements on them, which I think is going to be a reeeeally interesting and fun thing to do. And hopefully, time permitting, we really want to work on some new material as well. And on top of that, we're going to pick out some brand new cover versions that we haven't done and arrange those for it as well. So it's almost gonna be like a variety show, but it's gonna be like some kind of bad-ass, dangerous variety show. That's something Tim Rogers can deliver,” Ferguson cheekily grins.

Tim Rogers certainly has a reputation as the lovable larrikin and swaggering scallywag of Australian rock, with the 11 or so members of The Bamboos seeming far more reserved and well behaved in comparison. So how are they going to keep bad boy Tim under control? “I think it is going to be dangerous and I welcome that danger! When Tim takes to the stage there's a certain unpredictability and a certain 'what is he going to do next' factor, which I think creates just such a wonderful air of expectation not only in the crowd but also actually with us on stage. So I think that's just going to be a great aspect.

“Tim is a very extroverted character and has the reputation of, you know, the rock dog or whatever you want to call it,” Ferguson adds cautiously, beaming reverence. “But he's also very, very respectful and very courteous and very mindful of what we're trying to do musically. I've spoken with him obviously many times about what we're doing with this upcoming tour and he's really interested in sort of taking up the challenge of nailing these cover versions and working on new arrangements and being really involved with that sort of thing. So it's not as if this guy just shows up and rocks out – he's really involved with all aspects and very interested in covering all the details of everything. So you know there's that side of him that everyone knows but there's also the side to him that he's very much a dedicated musician.”

Sounds like a bromance is brewing hard and, if the similarly cray busy Ferguson can find time also between his new upcoming Lanu album and his recent album-releasing jazz act Menagerie, a full collab album might just emerge. “Sure, I won't deny it and I certainly wouldn't rule it out either,” Ferguson thankfully confirms. “I think the idea of that sounds truly exciting to me, so there are no concrete plans for it but it's definitely something that we're all thinking about.”

The Bamboos will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 23 February - Perth International Arts Festival, Chevron Gardens, Perth WA
Thursday 28 February - Concert Hall, Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 2 March - Leongatha Memorial Hall, Leongatha VIC
Thursday 7 March - The Hi-Fi, Sydney NSW
Friday 8 March - Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle NSW
Saturday 9 March - Unibar, Wollongong NSW