Interview: Tami Neilson Talks Touring With Her Brother and Chickaboom!

There’s been big news out of the Tami Neilson camp.

Last Friday Tami released Hey, Bus Driver, the first single from her next album, Chickaboom! due out next Valentines Day.

And…Tami announced a special NZ tour in October, an intimate evening with just her and her brother Jay, who has co-written many of Tami’s biggest hits.

With all this happening, The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda thought it might be wise to give Tami a call and find out more details.

So, listen in, as Tami and Marty discuss the new tour and the new album:

Or, read a transcription of the interview here:

M: So you’ve got a tour and album coming up?

T: Yes, no rest for the wicked aye?

M: Yeah apparently not. So the tour is happening in October.

T: Yes

M: And you’re gonna be with your brother Jay?

T: I am

M: So is it just the two of you or is there a band? How is it working?

T: It’s just the two of us and our guitars and a little percussion and bits and pieces. But yeah it’s just us singing our songs as we’ve written them and doing a mix of the new songs, kind of previewing the new songs for the first time in New Zealand. We’ve been performing them as a band internationally kind of trying them out on the guinea pig audiences, but for New Zealand I always try to do something different that I’m not doing anywhere else because New Zealand, they’re my people, so you’ve gotta try and have something special, especially for bands here because when they come to my shows each year or every other tour, you want to present something different and exciting and not just ‘Oh here’s Tami and her band again.’ So I really wanted to create something that was special, because fans haven’t seen me perform with just a guitar for a very, very long time and have never seen me perform with my brother who maybe unbeknownst to them possibly, has written most of the songs that they know and love of mine. So y’know just things like when Walk Back To Your Arms won Silver Scroll and they were like oh Tami and Joshua Neilson, y’know who’s this Joshua Neilson guy? And even Jay was like who’s Joshua Neilson? Cause nobody called him Joshua. So yeah, we’re kind of doing a mix of previewing the new songs but also diving into the back catalogue of a lot of the songs that we’ve written together that they will know, as well as diving even farther back to songs we performed in our family band and stories of growing up together on the road. There’s kind of something really special about being on stage with someone that you can pretty much communicate with a look. First of all when they’re a sibling but also any musician who you’ve been sharing a stage with for over thirty years, there’s something pretty special about that and that communication that goes on and nothing beats blood harmonies.

M: That’s true

T: There’s nobody on this planet that can blend with my voice like my own brother.

M: That sounds exciting. So how do you guys prepare for such a thing? Do you spend quite a bit of time discussing the tunes you’re gonna do and what you’re gonna talk about or do you kind of hope that it all happens by magic?

T: Yeah, most of it has been discussions in hotel rooms on tour overseas. It’s like, ‘ok what do we do, let’s talk about the New Zealand’. I know we’re in the middle of a European tour, but let’s just think farther ahead, so a lot of the prep work is happening on tour overseas when we have these windows and some time together. And a lot of the songs as I said we’re already performing as a trio overseas. So a lot of it is that ground work is laid. Its kind of more I think the older stuff that we’re deciding y’know, what are we gonna do? Like the new album, we’ve got that nailed down, the songs that I already perform, we’ve been performing them but, kind of deciding on what songs we dig out from the archives of the Neilson family and which stories we tell and which ones we don’t want anyone to know.

M: I can imagine

T: Skeletons in the closet

M: Folks who have seen you probably feel like they know an awful lot about you already, you seem to kind of put it all out there on stage anyway.

T: And that’s why I thought it’s really cool and a little bit strange that somebody who is such an integral part of my music and my history, has never met my New Zealand audiences. It’s really strange to me to think ‘Oh wow, this is like having a best friend for thirty years that has never met your parents,’ you’re like hold on, you guys should really meet.

M: How have the songs been going overseas? Any surprises?

T: Yeah it’s always great getting to test drive new songs in front of audiences and find out which ones really connect and you’re like oh wow I didn’t know that they would react this way because it’s such an isolated it’s kind of created in this bubble and then when you kind of put out there to connect with people, it’s usually pleasantly surprising to find out what ones they really, really connect with. That might be a bit of a surprise. So yeah it’s been really, really rewarding to get to test drive them and see what songs really connect with people.

M: So let’s talk about the new album a little bit. It’s all recorded is it?

T: It’s all recorded and it’s all ready to roll so the first single comes out of the sixth of September.

M: Very exciting. And does the album have a title yet?

T: It does. When will this go to print? Will this be after that?

M: After the sixth?

T: Yeah

M: Probably around the sixth I would guess.

T: OK that’s fine. I think as long as it’s that week or after then I can share it. The album is called Chickaboom! And it’s got an exclamation point as in the tradition of dynamite. I like my exclamation points.

M: So is it a full band thing, is it just you and Jay? How is it sounding?

T: I wanted to create a project that was very much what I’ve been touring live overseas and kind of getting back to those family roots and that family band thing. I guess it was born out of really gravitating to, when I’ve been playing festivals over the last two years, I always seem to gravitate towards to these acts that perform with family like Kasey Chambers and The Secret Sisters, Brandi Carlile, they all have this family connection and Mavis Staples obviously, and I kind of noticed a theme like I was missing this and I kind of re-evaluated at the end of last year it was summer holidays with the boys which I always try to take off from touring and be home for school holidays and it’s a good time to jump off the treadmill and go ok let’s look at this from a distance, like what’s working, what’s not. I was just finishing that flying my entire band from New Zealand every time I did was tour was becoming unsustainable financially to be travelling five people and ten thousand dollars before you even sing a note just in flights alone. So I’m like ok that’s not really sustainable at the moment on my career, like it would be great if it gets to a point in my career where it is but overseas I’m still building my profile. Then I kind of also looked at the way I was touring. The touring model is definitely you get out there, you cram in as many shows as you can in five or six weeks while you’re over there to keep cost down and then you get back home. And I thought those five or six weeks apart from my kids were really, really challenging in itself being apart from them, but I also started to find for my mental health, not only was it those five or six weeks I was apart from them, it was the six months before as soon as it was booked ….impending doom like oh my God it’s only this many more months, oh it’s this many more months until I have to leave. And I realised that the touring model was very much created for a young single male, these rock stars y’know a different era. I just thought actually what would touring look like for me, a forty year old mother that lives on the other side of the world? How do I make this work in a way I can sustain emotionally and financially and so just did a real re-calibration on how I was doing things and I was like ‘I need to tour smarter and not harder.’ And I spoke to my manager overseas and said ‘I’m not really keen on like I know everyone has to pay their dues but the little club dates to 100 people a night, I don’t think are as effective as hitting one festival for 10,000 people and getting back home to my kids.’

M: That makes sense, and you have been paying your dues for a while.

T: And there’s dues, oh my God, I own the company dues.

M: Definitely

T:  If there’s like a pay your dues in the dictionary my picture is next to it. So I kind of went. ‘Ok let’s just try doing this but differently this year’. So me and my husband talked about it, the plan cause when you’ve got kids you’ve got to plan everything and my other band members have been really busy with other bands as well so I didn’t feel like I was leaving them in the lurch. They were becoming more and more unavailable busy with other projects which is awesome and so I felt free to go. ‘Ok let’s try this, let’s try it this way’. And so now I fly in and out by myself, it’s one flight from New Zealand and overseas my brother Jay joins my for all international shows.

M: He’s still based in Canada is he?

T: He’s in Canada yeah and then I use a Canadian drummer, I have a couple that I use so there’s Nathaniel Rustenburg is a Canadian drummer there and then Mike Belitsky from The Sadies.

M: Oh great

T: Yeah, so I have a couple of people that I can call on and I’ve downsized to a trio and so I really wanted to write an album that was y’know, I wanted it to be songs that were really punchy and strong with just a trio or whether it was just percussion and a guitar and a voice or harmonies and really showcase those family harmonies. I guess kind of getting back to that real distilled and succinct sound of Johnny Cash y’know his trio or Wanda Jackson, that kind of real essence of rockabilly and country music. So that was kind of the idea behind Chickaboom!

M: And speaking of Johnny Cash and Wanda Jackson and Rockabilly and all that, you’re last couple of albums have wandered away from that sound into more soul and r&b and all that which is great, I’m just wondering if you made a conscious decision to head back in to the country realm for a little bit.

T: I think that the album still definitely, I mean I guess I’ve always had a mix of the two, of country and of soul and rockabilly, and there’s still definitely that on the new album. But I guess when you’re stripping it back to three people or two instruments and a voice, I think that it leaves a lot more space for people to judge what kind of style is this. It kind of strips that away, like it did with all of those artists like Elvis or anyone who had those real raw trios. Anything you hear, the way you produce it, the way you play it the way you sing it vocally, can kind of determine what category it lands in. So I think there are still soul songs on it, there are still country songs, there are still rockabilly songs but there’s a lot of space and room for a little bit more interpretation and I guess not as clear lines drawn.

M: And I guess the way you sing these songs is going to be affected by the instrumentation and the fact that it’s stripped back a little bit so it’s not going to be that kind of big brassy sound that you had on the last couple of albums.

T: Right and although it’s funny because I was talking about this with my vocal coach actually and after touring extensively with the full band for a few years she’s like ‘You realise you’re singing way harder than you’ve ever had to before, you’re singing on top of a full band.’ And just even little things like I don’t play guitar as much so I walk around the stage a lot, I run around and dance around and none of my band members ever have my vocal in their monitor ever because it’s too loud. And so when I leave my monitor, I’m walking across the stage and standing in front of Bret or Mike Hall or whoever, I no longer hear my voice and so all I’m hearing is front of house so what do I do? I just sing louder so I can hear myself. And I was starting to, my voice I was getting a lot of vocal fatigue. So even in a physical sense, trying something different which I think you do artistically anyway you want to try different things. But I can now songs, I mean I still have the same voice and I still sing with a lot of power and blast those vocals out but you can actually hear it now really clearly. I think there’s also strength in having a little bit more space really brings that vocal power to the forefront.

M: Song wise, is there any overarching theme to what you’re writing about these days or anything to tie them all together?

T: I don’t think that there was a theme as strongly as there was on Sassafrass! I guess for most of my albums the dominating theme is I write what I know and so most of my albums and my songs have an underlying theme of family and relationships. Even on Sassafrass! songs like Diamond Ring is about my mum or Good Man is about my husband so I guess that’s always the overarching theme is writing from the perspective of a mum and a wife and a daughter and a sister. If I had to choose a theme, that would probably be the continuing theme.

M: And you recorded it here in Auckland?

T: Yes at The Lab.

M: That seems to be the happening place these days.

T: Yeah, that was a first. Normally I’m down at The Sitting Room with Ben but again it was one of those things that it was recorded over a week in summer. I flew Jay over from Canada and we recorded it at The Lab because I had to be home every night with my kids sit was kind of due to geography this time. Because I’m touring so much, kind of doing the in and out thing and going back and forth rather than the big chunks of time means I’m away every month but I’m also home every month. So just trying to minimise the time away from them for sure and I had done Big Boss Mama with Joel, we got thrown together at Songhub when we wrote that song together so that was my first time working with Joel so because I’d done that I thought of him right away when I’m like well it needs to be in Auckland, who do I work with? And it just was naturally that and Delaney co-produced this album with me, I flew him up from Lyttelton and it was like the five year anniversary of Dynamite!.

M: Crikey has it been that long?

T: It’s been that long so I’m like, ‘Let’s celebrate this anniversary and create something together again’.

Click here for Tami Neilson tour dates and tickets.