Project Description

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Interview with
MAKO ROAD

(16th December, 2020)

Interviewer – Vicky Hebbs

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How long have you been making music together?
4 years.

How would you describe your sound?
Sticky Fingers cover, band/Sunlight disco music

For anyone who has yet to enjoy the sounds of Mako Road, which song would you suggest they listened to first?
Helicopter, it’s our latest!

How has life changed since the release of your first single back in 2017?
A whole lot has changed. We managed to rescue poor Wardy from an accounting job. Connor’s still learning to read and write. We’ve tried to get him to quit, but his mum says she’d kill him, and us, if he did. Godspeed Connor. He’d probably get angry at us for putting that in. But he can’t read, so. Music has become much more of a full time thing. There’s been a lot more admin to suss than we thought there would be. We’ve also been recognised at the supermarket at least twice.

How long have you been working on your latest music release? Did the craziness of 2020 and COVID-19 impact the creative process in any way?
Mainly this year with the first bout of writing taking place in the first lockdown. We went in with the goal of having a finished album at the end of it, but it was pretty difficult to stay creative and inspired with all the not leaving the house stuff so we eventually gave up and just drank and played cards. After lockdown we booked a romantic 2 week getaway to a batch on the shores of Lake Taupo and got the bulk of the writing of the album done.

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Can you share the origins or inspiration behind the latest release?
The original title for this song was “This Helicopter is going nowhere, fast.” We like to think of it as a metaphor for the band and how we operate. We’re pretty chaotic, and we think we are going somewhere. Just don’t know where that is. All we know is we are going there fast.

How has your music or dynamic as a band shifted since you started out in 2017?
I guess we’ve learnt from playing our own music at a lot of gigs which songs go well and are fun to play, and which aren’t so much, which has definitely helped us figure out our sound. It feels like each time we do a new release we get closer to the kind of music we want to be known for. The process of discovering our own sound isn’t one we’d like to have finished though. Ideally we’d like to cover a range of different genres over time to keep things interesting for us and our listeners.
We’ve also gone from recording everything ourselves in our garage, to recording in studios, to doing a bit of both which gives us a bit more time while not sounding too shit.

Will you be touring this year or early 2021?
We’re doing a fair few shows around NZ this summer which we are very lucky to be able to play at! No clue when we can get to anywhere else at this stage. Keen to get to Aus asap!

What can fans expect at one of your live performances?
4 mates on stage having a decent go at it with guitars and stuff. And maybe a backflip. Or a shoey. And Connor’s poor attempts at chat.

Having started out as a uni cover band, what is one song you would love to cover? How would it be reinterpreted by you?
Loved to get around Killing In the Name Of. You’d see the mosh become devoid of girls and full of very very very drunk boys. And it got messy 60% of the time, every time. We played it in typical Mako fashion – not very well.

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Do you have any longer-term goals or aspirations as musicians?
We are trying to get to a place in our music where we can play to any crowd anywhere regardless of them knowing what we’re about and still being able to provide a mint time. The goal is to keep touring new places and repping NZ music overseas. It’s a mean way to explore the world and would love to try South America as we get a lot of “COME TO BRASIILLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!” as I’m sure a lot of bands do.

You’ve shared stages with a who’s who of artists, from Shapeshifter, L.A.B., Rudimental, Leisure and Ziggy Alberts. Any highlights, lessons learned or stories to share?
As an opening act you’ve got to try and be as easy to deal with as possible – punctual and efficient. These are traits I wouldn’t really associate with Mako Road and something we are still learning *band laughs in unison and looks at the ground*. We were very much thrown in the deep end with a lot of these but playing with vets Shapeshifter and Leisure in Matakana was whack. I suppose the biggest lesson of all is of course practise practise practise. Will end with a quote from anonymous – “The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory”.

What’s your favourite festival to play and why? Any festivals you haven’t played yet that you’re dying to play?
Rhythm and Vines was an absolute cracker last year. Pumped to have another go at it this year! We were stoked to be included on the 2020 line-up for Splendor in the Grass but the old pandemic changed our plans a bit! Hopefully we get the chance to do it sometime in the future.

What’s your go-to music soundtrack on the road between shows?
Oooooh gotta be a mixture of the Black Keys, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Gorillaz, Khurangbin and Hans Pucket. Some extra deep house doesn’t go amiss on the road either! There was a few 10 hour drives in Aus a while back whoever was driving was stuck in a deep house trance to pass the time (yes this is safe, recommend).

Favourite albums of 2020 and why?
Gotta be Benee’s “Hey u x”. Rob is her number one fan girl. Yellow Days released an epic new album. He’s got some slick tunes, highly recommend a listen. Our mates O and Mo have a gorgeous new album mixed by CJ, Honey is a really awesome track.

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Got any advice for fellow musicians?
There doesn’t seem to be any one way of doing things when trying make noise (haha) in the music scene. Any advice we could give to any aspiring musicians would be to write and play, and write and play some more. Find a sound that is true to yourself and be hesitant to compromise your music and identity. Help from the industry is of course useful! But take everything with a grain of salt (including this yarn whoops).

What is the best thing about performing to a live audience? What’s been the career highlight so far?
We try to write music that is fun for a live audience. Within this we want to make it challenging for ourselves so that when we play live it’s balls to the wall for an hour trying to replicate the record with just the four of us and our instruments. This becomes the beautiful cycle of writing music so you can tour it so that you can write more music to tour it so you can write more music and so on.

Where do you see yourselves in a year’s time?
Hopefully overseas, cramped into a stuffy tour van, halfway through a 3 month overseas tour, playing 40 person pub gigs in Europe.

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Follow MAKO ROAD
Website – Facebook – YouTube – Instagram

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Press Release December 11th, 2020 HERE

MAKO ROAD
release epic new single and video
‘HELICOPTER’
today

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AMNPLIFY – DB