Back in the day, a group of young guys came together to put out feel-good jams.
Kulcha hit the scene way back in 1994 with their ARIA Award-nominated single 'Shaka Jam'.Now ex-member Jay Thomas, who penned the Samoan/ Maori group's chart hit 'Soul Feeling', is stepping out as a solo artist, ready to drop a reworked version of that song, which he wrote when he was just 17 years old.
"That was the first song I ever had released," Jay reminisces. "I was just a young 'un. It always stayed with me throughout my career.
"It was a popular song at its time, and over the years people have remembered that song as being a part of that era. I always had it in the back of my mind since then, that I would remake it, I just wasn’t sure when."
Now is finally the time. For the last decade, Jay has been involved with reggae band Paua, spending the last year really branching out into solo material and honing his craft as a performer.
"That's kind of what made now the time," Jay says. "Just the times that we're in, I just wanted to make something happy.
"['Soul Feeling'] is all about vibing and summer and love and friends, so I wanted to bring something like that out now."
Much of Jay's own material works with holistic, natural themes, like his song 'Mother Earth', which Jay dropped in 2019. "With my music, I try and do everything from the heart, from the soul," he says, chuckling at the unintentional pun. "The earth is a part of us, you know? It's a connection.
"Music is just such a huge part of my life, so it's naturally going to run through everything, every soul and myself."
Jay's new spin on 'Soul Feeling' has seen him rework everything bar the chorus and chord structure, though he has retained the feel-good vibes that evoke strong feelings of nostalgia.
Although Jay looks to his past on 'Soul Feeling', it won't be indicative of his methods when putting out future solo material. "To be honest, I thought about it over the last 20 years, redoing this somehow.
"When I started working on the new version, it was just spur of the moment, I was just jamming. That's how it came about."
Take a minute to check out the official music video for Kulcha's original 'Soul Feeling', because Jay does reference it in the forthcoming rendition. "There were a lot of amazing memories," Jay says about reviewing the source material.
"We were new to the Australian music industry, there hadn't really been anything like us up to that point.
"I was straight out of school. I left school in Brisbane on the first day of Year 12 and went to live in Sydney with two of the other boys and yeah, we stayed right in the heart of the city and it was like, 'wow, a whole new world'."
Jay's learnt a lot in the last 30 years that he continues to apply to his music today. "I was so young, I was sort of just going with the flow. [But] we learnt about professionalism, focus, creating music.
"The main was the work ethic. It’s one thing to create but then to take it to the next level means you’ve got to work well with other people.”
'Soul Feeling' is released 3 December. Stay tuned for more new tunes from Jay Thomas.
