Charismatic, gentlemanly, articulate and well dressed. These were my first impressions of Mr. Aloe Blacc as we sat down together ahead of his appearance at the Good Vibrations Festival in Sydney (of which he was a last minute addition). I was starved of sleep, and he was beaming with creative energy. This is a man who has been putting out music since he was roundabout fifteen – and he has no plans of stopping anytime soon. Much like Plan B, who I also interviewed recently, Aloe has made the jump from a hip hop base to a more dedicated soul influence. We talk about this, touring Australia, the record industry, and plenty more… read on!
I understand that when you came down to Australia last month for your tour (which included shows at Sydney Festival and around the country), the Good Vibes tour still wasn’t a definite thing. I also understand you’ve recently married an Australian – so this must have helped make that an easy decision.
Yeah, plus it’s also nice to come back when it’s cold in the Northern Hemisphere, and have fun while it’s still warm and sunny and do some shows.
Not that it’s been all that comfortable…
No! We performed with torrential downpours in Melbourne, and we missed out on the heatwave here (in Sydney) – but it was definitely hot up here the week before. We were at Bondi everyday, just trying to keep cool.
And how did that first part of the tour go?
It went great. It was my first time in New Zealand actually, and we played Auckland. We sold out the show, and I told the promoter to set up another one and I’ll come back again in a couple of week.
You never make it over, and now you get the opportunity to play twice in a month! That’s wonderful.
Yeah, it’s beautiful. I mean there are fans in a lot of these areas who just don’t get to see me perform. I went to Perth and I released an album in 2006, and there were fans over there who had been waiting since that album, who finally get to see it. So I’m glad to able to do it, and come back twice. I definitely want to take advantage of the time that I’m here.
When was your last tour down here?
I was last here at the top of 2010. I did a few shows at the Espy in Melbourne, and I was on tour at Big Day Out with Maya Jupiter – because I co-produced her album. And I think I did a couple of gigs in Sydney at the Beach Road Hotel and Melt Bar.
You sound like you’re becoming a local!
I like being a local! When I go to Europe, I’m in and out whenever I go there. Making Australia a second home is going to part of my life anyway, since my wife’s family is here (in Sydney).
You’re down here touring Good Things for the first time, your first solo outing in four years. As you worked on plenty of other projects in the interim, such as Maya’s album and Bee (Aloe Blacc & Cradle), how did the process for the new solo record get started?
The album is what I like to call brand new old soul. It’s got the feel of classic soul from the late 60s and early 70s, and it follows in the tradition of the political and social soul, Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway… that kind of stuff. The transition from what I was doing before, which was future soul hip hop, was kind of … it was more of a conscious decision than it was happenstance. I wanted to focus more on one genre. And I think that’s what I’m going to be doing as I go along in my career.
My first album was more of an experiment. I just complied a lot of songs that I was making. And I make music in every genre. Every time a song comes into my head it’s different. So when it comes to presenting it, I’ve got to be a bit more careful about how I package for my audience. I mean I don’t HAVE to be, but I want to be. I want to take my time to create a story, and present a story in a more digestible form. And that’s why I chose to do soul on this album.
I’m also working on another hip hop album though with my longtime DJ, Exile, which will come out in some form probably by the end of the year. But for now, I really like this. I think my voice fits best in Soul Music.
Especially live?
Yeah. I mean I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried salsa, dance hall and contemporary R&B, but I think my voice just fits best in soul music. I’m still learning too, so I think I can get away with a lot more if I’m making mistakes. You can just call it: soul! *laughs*
It’s the creative process! And it’s great that you have that freedom. You spoke a bit about ideas coming into your head of all different genres – when you’re producing records, are you able to take some of those ideas and embed it with the work or someone like Maya Jupiter? Do you have that freedom in the process?
Yeah absolutely. Any idea I have is open for anyone to sing. I had an idea about a year and a half ago – I just voice record all my ideas into my phone – and I was sitting in Germany with an artist who was looking for a new song, so I scrolled through, and I found one that worked perfectly for her. And so I completed the song, and was able to delivered it. So ideas, they come to me, and I don’t just wait for someone to come to me with a song. I might write it myself and then produce it, or I might produce something someone else has written…
That would be handy for the sort of material which mightn’t work for whatever you’re working on at the time…
Yeah, or it just fits for someone else even better… or it fits for them at this time. For sure.
You’re about to embark on the Good Vibes tour, which kicks off this weekend in Sydney and Melbourne. How will the tour compare to the one you just completed? Will it be the same production?
When I came down here first off, I didn’t have the horns or the keys fir the show, because the original tour I was on, the budget wasn’t big enough to bring everybody. But Good Vibes has allowed me the opportunity to bring my Keyboard player, and I have the chance to hire some local horns from Sydney. We’re rehearsing today again and it sounds great. It’s going to be a really good show I think.
Do you feel it’s any more difficult to connect with a festival crowd than it is a smaller more intimate event?
It’s all the same to me really, small audience, big audience. I’ve been performing for so long that I can figure out how to present when I hit the stage. I can see if something’s working. The core of the band and I have a telepathy that works really well. So if I want to change something, we know how to communicate to make it work, and really give it the proper show that the audience deserves.
How long have you been performing with the core group?
This band, about three years. And we’ve done a LOT of gigs. The more you do it, the more you develop a pattern, a structure and a confidence in changing things and knowing they’re going to follow right along. And the nest thing I want to do is get them to lead. Figure out how to get my drummer to lead a 15 minute portion of the show, and then my guitarist, then my bass player… so they all get an idea of what it is to be the star with their instrument, directing the direction of the show and being the captain of the ship for that moment.
If the Rolling Stones can do it, so can you!
I think that’s it – the more stars you have on the stage, the better the show.
I’d like to go back now to the start of it all – was it hip hop or soul that got you into writing music?
Hip Hop. I’ve been writing lyrics since I was nine years old, eventually in high school I met a DJ (Exile) who needed some vocals for his mix tape. So we started recording together. And I learned everything from the nuts and bolts of recording, producing, mixing to creating the artwork. Basically, everything that a record label does, I’ve done myself. That’s really where it started in high school. Recording and putting out cassettes, making multiple copies, manufacturing them and selling them at our own shows, or at festivals or wherever. That’s really where it all started, in hip hop.
And what were some of those earlier shows you played like? You grew up in Southern California?
Yeah I grew up in Southern California. I’d play in small cafes and at hip hop conventions, and small night clubs for all ages, and I was lucky because they were simpler times. In order for people to hear music they had to be there. They had to be there to get it on a cassette, or they had to get it from a friend. You have to spend an hour listening to it as you copied it. There was no immediacy, you had to be intimate with the music. And so I think I came up in the luckiest time, because that’s really where I developed my fan base, and learnt how music is made and what it takes to make it as an artist.
Nowadays you can have a hard drive full of 10,000 songs, and half of them you’ve never heard, and will probably never listen to – but that’s just because you can have it. You got it from a friend who has it, but he hasn’t listened to any of it. Transferring and sharing music, you don’t have to spend time with it anymore. You just listen to it, and then it’s gone. With cassettes and with vinyl, it’s a process. It’s not just pressing a button.
And it comes down to the difference between a “fan” and a “casual listener”. The majority are the latter nowadays, because as you said, they haven’t sat with it. You go to the gigs and people don’t know the words to most of the songs!
Yeah, very very casual. They don’t develop an identity from the artists anymore. They’re the iPod shuffle generation. It’s developed from a conglomerate of artists, rather than becoming a deep fan or one artist, or a small staple of artists. It’s not such a bad thing. It’s just a new way for us artists to navigate the worlds.
It’s moving so fast!
So fast. Not for me though, not too fast. For me, as long as I do my live shows well, I’ll continue to have that main sticking point: come see the live show. It’s better than the album!
