Australia's premier original reggae-roots band, King Tide are preparing to ship out for Island Vibe Festival on North Stradbroke Island.
The band are returning favourites for Island Vibe, and frontman Tony Hughes says the festival feels like a spiritual home. “We've played it before and we love it, this might be our third time playing Island Vibe over the years,” Tony says.
“It's such a great place and the festival is great to play because people are there for the music and the community. I love that atmosphere, it's a great island and they are our people.”
Tony says audiences for King Tide's show at Island Vibe will get to hear a stack of new material the band has been working on since releasing their last album 'Roots Pop Reggae' in 2009.
“It's been four or five years since we put out an album and I think what happens is that it's got to be good and you want people to see where you're at, but what happens is people go up their own arses and never get anything out,” he laughs.
Though King Tide have a bunch of new songs to show off, Tony says the biggest problem is deciding how best to release it in an age where he feels the album is losing its vitality as a format. “We basically scrapped an album and started again,” he laughs.
“Do people buy CDs anymore? Do people have CD players? We're in that dilemma where we have a stack of stuff we're working on and that's the thing: is the album dead? Do you just make music and put it out there now for people to consume?”
King Tide's 2009 album 'Roots Pop Reggae' was the band's third album and one that all but defined the selective sonic signature of the group in Tony's mind.
“As I always say, Jamaican music is our compass but it's not a weight around the neck. We try and bring everything in; we are a roots band, but we're also a pop band in that style of danceable, whistleable [sic] music,” he says.
“As an artist you've got to challenge yourself within a framework, but don't let that framework stop you from exploring. That's what has stopped us from putting out a whole lot of new music, because we've been struggling within that framework to make something that's original but still recognisable as ours.”
Since their 2006 debut album 'To Our Dearly Deported' King Tide have been one of the country's most acclaimed rock-steady reggae acts and remain some of the finest purveyors of reggae-based music outside the Caribbean.
“I like to call it 'Jamaican music' because there are so many styles within Jamaican music,” Tony says.
“Reggae is just such an umbrella; it can be bland and it can be fantastic as well, but it can be so easily played badly and be really dull.”
