The Ferguson Rogers Process: 'Just Some Pure, Indulgent Fun'

If ever you have the chance to speak to Lance Ferguson and Tim Rogers together, the first thing you’ll notice is a deep sense of admiration and respect for each others’ music.

It’s easy to see why. After all, Rogers has spent more than 30 years as the charismatic frontman of alt-rock icons You Am I, and has also crafted a prolific solo career in addition to a semi-recent role as frontman of Sydney punk veterans the Hard-Ons.

Meanwhile, Ferguson has been a hard-working producer and musician, working as part of groups like Cookin’ On 3 Burners, Menagerie, and his headline affair, The Bamboos. With the likes of vocalist Kylie Auldist, bassist Yuri Pavlinov, drummer Graeme Pogson, and countless other members both past and present, The Bamboos showcase Ferguson’s cinematic and versatile vision, but not the blueprint of what an expected Ferguson/Rogers collaboration would sound like.

However, even fewer could have expected the pair to release a new record in 2024 under the Ferguson Rogers Process moniker, with the debut album Style And Or Substance arriving as a funky disco affair. As they explain though, anything is possible, but sometimes you just need to trust the process.

Ferguson and Rogers first properly met while serving as part of Megan Washington’s touring party more than a decade ago. While experiencing some downtime in the back of a van, Rogers and Ferguson began chatting, quickly discovering a number of similarities before the topic of collaboration came about.

“Every good thing in music happens while you're waiting around for somebody or something to happen, and you just start to spitball things,” Rogers explains over Zoom. “Lance works in a way that I really like in that there's not a lot of talk before it, or you can talk in with musical references and just get each other.

“We make music that's really fun, we enjoy making music together, and we're not labouring over a computer,” in the process. “It's pretty much getting into a room and spitballing ideas, and it works really well together.”

Those ideas soon turned into a fully formed song, with Ferguson admitting to having the “presumptive audacity” to write the song I Got Burned with Rogers in mind – despite the You Am I’s frontman reputation as “the great lyricist that he is”.

Taking on the task, Rogers laid down his vocals, and the rest was history. The song was included on The Bamboos’ Medicine Man album in 2012, charted in triple j’s Hottest 100, and even scored an APRA nomination for Song Of The Year.

Having clearly embarked upon something special, Ferguson, Rogers, and The Bamboos decided this time to collaborate on a full album. Titled The Rules Of Attraction, the record arrived in 2015 with Rogers credited as a featured artist. The album peaked at #26 on the ARIA chart and nabbed an ARIA Award nomination for Best Blues & Roots Album – their second of four to date.

“I feel like I’d been a lark's tongue stuck in aspic for the past 20 years where it's all about 1997, and it gets no interest in being stuck there either in memory or in reverence to that time,” Rogers eloquently admits. “So doing the initial Bamboos project was a real release from that.

“Working with The Bamboos, there was no, ‘Let’s Charli XCX it and live like it’s 1999’, and it felt really liberating because I wasn't beholden to being anything I've been in the past,” Rogers admits. “I was Lance's friend, I was Kylie's friend, I was Yuri's friend, and we said, ‘Let's make really fun, spirited, soulful music together’.”

By Ferguson’s own admission, the experience may very well not have come together had he been someone beholden to “the legend of Tim Rogers”.

“I know people, good friends of mine who I have dinner parties with, and the mere mention of Tim's name, these people give a thousand-yard stare, and there's a twinkle in their eye, and it takes them back,” he admits. “You Am I and Tim Rogers is their coming of age for so many people; Tim really was the soundtrack to their early adulthood.

“Because I was in such a different musical place in the ‘90s – I was listening to, I don't know, Miles Davis and drum and bass, amongst other things – I feel like I'm almost free of the baggage of the legend of Tim Rogers and You Am I,” he adds “If I did have that, I feel like I would be much more intimidated and self-conscious in working with Tim.”

The result was a collaborative process which allowed Ferguson to approach the music like he would with any other musician, instead of starting to “fan out” like he would with any of his other heroes. It was this connection and this mutual respect which gave birth to something really special.

“I'm not a fool; I know You Am I and Tim Rogers and what that actually means, but because it wasn't part of my actual DNA coming up at that age, I feel that enabled me to be less intimidated in this process,” Ferguson adds.

But how did the collaborative efforts of Ferguson and Rogers (which had thus far been largely related to the genres of funk and rock) take shape for their latest outing, and this time arrive as a funky disco affair? Like many of the great musical stories of recent years, it began in the midst of lockdown, which had already disrupted plans for the pair to work together.

“I was sitting around towards the tail end of lockdown in Melbourne like everyone else, of course, but I didn't create the eight concept double concept albums that I should have during that time,” Ferguson recalls. “But I certainly was making some music and thinking about music, and I was sitting around really missing the aspect of a bunch of people dancing around in a dark room late at night with reckless abandon.

“I've approached Tim; I think I might've sent him a drunken text or something saying ‘Let's do something’, and it really evolved from that.”

The drunk text soon found the pair leaning into a musical process, which had clearly worked for them. While Ferguson went away to sketch a bunch of grooves and rhythmic ideas, Rogers eagerly awaited the results to which he would lend his singular talent.

“I do that with other people I work with, but this was a really concentrated thing where I was thinking of Tim as my musical muse and going, ‘What are the ideas here that will really resonate with him?’” Ferguson says. “When you read interviews with some bands, and they're like, ‘We had 240 songs for the album, and we whittled it down’, we didn't have that many spare tunes. 

“There’s a few, but there's almost a performative aspect of this for me, where I'm waiting to unleash these ideas in some sort of presentation ceremony and go, ‘Here's what I've been working on, hope you like it’,” he adds. 

With 2015’s The Rules Of Attraction, Ferguson and Rogers had a more active collaborative style wherein the latter was actively involved in writing whole sections of the music. This time around, the result was much more immediate, with Ferguson adopting the approach of Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Reuben Nielsen and allowing himself to think he was making the demos while actually recording the final project. 

“I think it worked well in terms of the process, if you will,” he notes. “The process is just kind of easy.”

Of course, there is still a question about how the process lends itself to dance. While Ferguson’s side may make sense given how often funk and dance are intertwined, one might feel that Rogers’ rock stylings may be more in tune with folded arms and planted feet.

Rogers, however, will be the first to admit that he's a massive pop fan, and despite being raised on the likes of John Lee Hooker, he holds a massive flame for Aussie pop acts like Machinations, INXS, or Dropbears. In fact, only days before speaking to TheMusic, Rogers admits he sang INXS’ New Sensation in front of 1,500 people as part of a karaoke event.

“I don't know what it sounded like, but my God, it was fun,” Rogers admits. “I guess the limitations of what I can do with pop music is – and this isn't self-flagellation, it's just the truth – my voice is very limited, but my ideas and my enthusiasm aren't.

“I can't quite sing like someone like Kylie Auldist, who's one of the four greatest vocalists in music history and future, and she's my very dear friend; I can't sing like that,” he adds. “So when making music with Lance, I think, ‘Well, what can I bring apart from enthusiasm?’ Maybe it's just to be the best I can?”

For anyone who does have the pleasure of listening to the Ferguson Rogers Process’ debut album, you’ll notice that alongside typical Rogersisms (such as the use of verbose words like ‘lugubrious’), he’s once again a musical chameleon in which his approach to pop and dance is on par with some of the genre’s greats. “Tim could be co-writing with Sabrina Carpenter,” Ferguson asserts.

“I love a lot of pop music,” adds Rogers. “I haven't heard a lot of modern radio pop music that I love – it tends to sort of plod along on four chords – but occasionally I'll hear something that rips my sock off.

“It hasn't normally been on the radio, but if I'm out at a club or at someone's house and I work on something and a hook's a hook, I think it's undeniable when you hear something gorgeous and life-affirming.”

However, while it may seem a little surprising for external observers, Rogers says an excursion into the dance world is more natural than anyone would expect.

“We're coming full circle now, but Lance and I were in a van coming back from a Bamboos show, and we were both dancing to Teenage Dream by Katy Perry,” he remembers. “And it just seemed the most natural thing to do. 

“If you're going out with me, whether drinking or not, it'll involve dancing,” he adds. “I happen to be in a marriage with a dance choreographer, so dance is kind of all around me; it's just not what I've been known for in the past.”

So far, the vast majority of fans have only had the chance to experience the Ferguson Rogers Process via their recorded output. While the pair made their public live debut at The Night Cat in Melbourne back in August (another performance took place earlier that day as part of ABC’s Friday Revue), they’ve been gearing up to hit the road with their new tunes for some time now.

Of course, the very nature of the music means that it’s not solely going to be just the titular twosome up on stage by themselves. Rather, it sees Ferguson and Rogers joined by a larger band for an experience which is as loose and free as it is tight and structured.

“The Bamboos’ live thing is so structured, and that's kind of what we've been going for, even though it's not like some sort of jazz fusion band,” Ferguson explains. “But the sets are so highly engineered with segues, and we want the band to be tight and all that stuff.

“For me, there's a looseness in the Ferguson Rogers Process. Just in terms of the forms, it can get wild,” he adds. “If someone wants to play a six-minute guitar solo, it's going to be fine, and I'm really enjoying the freedom of that.”

“We've already started mucking around with the songs, stretching out some, tightening others; just some pure, indulgent fun,” Rogers adds. “It did remind me of the two Bamboo tours that I've done, which were life-threatening fun. 

“Friends that I've had for ages who saw our first show said that it was just joy watching people dance, ‘cause it doesn't happen often at You Am I shows, at Hard-Ons shows, and definitely not at Temperance Union or Twin Set shows,” he adds. “Playing something with dancing, you can just forget about the woes of this challenging world that continues to unfurl in challenging ways, and you're in a room with people and actually letting them just freak out for a bit.

“It's one of those times where you feel you're actually doing something completely worthwhile.”

Style And Or Substance is out now via Impressed Recordings—listen to it here.