Galapagos Duck are considered Australia’s best-known and most iconic jazz ensembles, yet band leader and bassist, John Conley freely admits he has no idea what keeps bringing people back to ‘The Duck’.
“I honestly can’t tell you why it’s happened except that we managed to keep getting work,” he says. “That’s the main thing, if you stop getting work then people move on and lose interest, but if you can keep getting some work then you can keep the enjoyment and enthusiasm going. It’s a tough one.”
Nevertheless, since forming in the 1960s Galapagos Duck have maintained a heavyweight presence on the jazz scene, both nationally and abroad. John puts this longevity down to a consistent output of music that has retained the essential sound and style of the band despite a series of line-up changes.
“I was doing a radio interview not that long ago and they had a whole bunch of songs from over the years and different albums, and I was surprised that even though the personnel are so different, the band has managed to maintain a similar sort of sound. I don’t know how that’s happened but it wasn’t intentional really.”
Galapagos Duck released their most recent record, ‘The Other Side Of The Mirror’, in early 2015, and this February they will grace the stage of the Brisbane Jazz Club to perform songs from the album, as well as a selection of original favourites and new material. “We’re going to be playing some songs from our latest album; we’ve got a whole lot of original songs on the album so we’ll play those, then we’ve got some of our favourites and then we’ve got some new material as well.
"We always love coming to Brisbane and the Brisbane Jazz Club is such a fantastic venue and run by such lovely people, who love jazz and it’s just a fantastic experience, we love it.”
Galapagos Duck’s performance at the Brisbane Jazz Club coincides nicely with the one-year anniversary of the release of ‘The Other Side Of The Mirror’. With this milestone approaching, John says it’s time for the band to get back in the studio for the next record. “When it gets to one-year-old, you know it’s time to start thinking about another one,” he laughs.
“We still keep writing and adding songs all the time, then generally get them together and see how they work, work on the arrangements and then record them.”
After half a century of writing and recording some of the world’s finest modern jazz and performing all over the globe, John is reticent to narrow down a single highlight of the band’s career, instead opting to live by that age-old industry adage: you’re only as good as your last show. “That is a tough question. There have been so many fantastic things. Singapore Jazz Festival was terrific… it’s hard to nail down just one; I think the best gig is often just the one you did last.”
Galapagos Duck perform at The Arts Centre Gold Coast 19 February and the Brisbane Jazz Club 20 February.
