ArtistLaunch Interview with Skoko & Bluebird

Caffeine Adrenaline

Suck On A Straw

Sugarbabe, Sugarbabe

First I want to talk style. There is a photo of you wearing nothing but a pair of dungarees holding a steel guitar and Skoko wields a 1930's haircut with a lace umbrella from colonial times and a pair of denim shorts… Explain.

Skoko: It’s an homage to the ’20s and ‘30s. We chose items from our time that are still connecting us with the past. We consider the tradition to be part of us and not a long gone stranger. The style in the pictures represent our musical influences in some way. Bluebird is a great fan of old blues, he’s dark skinned and looks like if he just left the fields, ready to sit under the porch and play some chords for his soul. Me, I’m a white lady with a passion for ’20s/’30s looks, voices and attitude – say, libertine. I think those are the times where women of a certain kind (very rich and very poor) were free minded, open for new experiences, passionate for life and enjoying themselves through music and vice (everything that was not “normal”). In another way, the picture represent a dynamic duality between black and white, man and woman, neat and naughty, devil and angel, bad and good, like our music. I could talk with you for long hours about it, sipping a cup of coffee on a sunny day...

There is another photo of you with a particularly nice looking tangerine Telecaster. You have some tasty guitars, care to list your trophies…

Bluebird: The Tel you see is actually one of the first Fender (still Fender) made in Japan. The color is, despite what the pic shows, red. It looks really great and sounds the same even thou I like to custom my guitars to get from 'em the groove I like.

I'm working on a couple of new custom Fender ones, one Tele and one Strat. Besides that I have a 1968 original Telecaster light blue, one beautiful black Guild Blue Bird semi-body and of this only 249 have been built if I ain't wrong. I have a Custom shop Fender Strat, a semi acoustic jazzy Epiphone I bought 15 years ago that sounds great respect to the same model they sell today; one acoustic Taylor, a great 1979 acoustic Guild (do you remember what Nick Drake was huggin on the cover of his album Bryter Layter?) an incredible 1929 Martin Ukulele, few other uke  included one original italian Uke made in the 50s and too many harmonicas (I love to search in old music stores those models you don't find on the market anymore). Ah! I have a great new custom amp which is a replica of the old Fender Bassman but more brilliant, assembled by a friend of mine.

Would you say your style is retro? Does this "harp back to more rustic times" show itself in your stage shows?

Skoko: We are not a retro band though we like to dress smart. Our music is a mix of personal influences, as it’s our wardrobe. We like to play with it with no etymological consistency. What comes from us is a melting magma where our cultural genes act wild and crazy. Sometimes it’s not a dress but an attitude that makes you think of old times. Still, these old times are part of us, of our culture despite the contemporary media would suggest people lost all their values, minds and bodies replaced with silicon. On stage we are genuinely sassy.

The production on 'trust your mojo, sista' is very raw, very live… Talk us through the studio process for the album. For example: did you record on digital or analogue? Most bands are digital nowadays, which is a shame for certain styles that lose the warmth of analogue. Did you consider this in pre-production for the album?

Skoko: Bluebird is the man for these talks, but let me just say we enjoyed making the songs and recording it. They’ve got life in them because we had much fun. Not everything was perfect and many stories could be told with microphones switched off. Sometimes things happen to come out just as you wanted them even from the most unlikely situation.

Bluebird: Yes you are right, the recording is more than raw, I’d say ...rough & dirty. We found a studio in Bali that recorded on analogue machines, I added few mics really up high, one kissin the other to have more ambient, an old-fashion ambient just like in the old times. We used only analog desk & old scratchy stuff. We bought from a major few old 1/2 inch tapes – 16 minute per tape – and recorded many of the songs live in studio with none of just a few overdubbing. We wanted to be real an honest to anyone who ever buy our album; no digital, no tricks.  At the end the sound we had was what we wanted, genuine and true but with that sort of something ...uhmmmmm sensual?

What are your plans for the future?

Bluebird: we are working on a new album and we’ll call a lot of old friends we have met during our musical journey. Not only blues people but great musicians from different genres. It’s gonna be a more experimental album and we are thinking to record it in New York.

Skoko: We’d love to become rich and famous, touring the world for the years to come. When we need a rest, live wherever we’re pleased. We love to be gypsy chic.