ANDREW CHRISTIANSEN of TRiPS: Clipping The Ticket
An interview by Tim Gruar.
TRiPS is a new collaboration project from Andrew Christiansen and Barnaby Weir, featuring contributions from a host of co-conspirators including from Black Seeds’ Daniel Weetman, Paslode’s Elan Van-Mills, Iris Little (Deva Mahal, Bret McKenzie, ONONO) and longtime-Seeds producer (Dr) Lee Prebble and his magical Surgery Studios.
In a moment of life imitating art imitating life, I headed just around the corner to my daughter’s music school to find myself in the ‘Principal’s’ office having a chat to Christiansen about running a music school, life after stage and creating a new set of memorable audio journeys.
It’s 12 O’clock. Lunchtime. And I’m sitting in former Black Seeds-turned-music educator Andrew Christiansen’s office at the Goodtime Music Academy in Alicetown, just a stone’s throw from the mighty Awa Kairangi that flows into Te Whanganui-a-Tara and out into Cook Strait. Goodtime Music is a staple now in most of the schools around the Hutt Valley and up the Kapiti Coast. With a fleet of small buses kitted out as portable music rooms, they arrive during class time ready to go. Our tamariki love it, Christian says. “The bus arrives and they are onboard and raring to go. It meets a real need. We originally wanted to come to schools, set up in a hall or classroom. But so many schools are so full, all the rooms, even the libraries, are being used for teaching. There was no room. So, we thought we’d just take the classrooms to them, with the instruments, seating, everything.”
Running a music school is a far cry from touring on the road with one of Aotearoa’s most popular festival acts. But, as Christiansen explains, life has moved on for most of the band and many members have scattered to the four winds. “(Drummer) Jarney is up the Coast… Barnaby’s in New Plymouth. The bass player’s in the BOP. Trumpet player’s in Christchurch. They’re all spread out now. Oh, and Ryan Prebble (The Nudge) has joined the band.”
A truly ‘cross-motu’ band.
“Yeah. Yeah. Well, with technology, you can just catch up anytime. Trade tracks and record remotely, everything. But, it’s not like we really every played in one play. It’s like we did one or two gigs in Pōneke and the rest, well, just go to the airport and we’re off overseas to carry on touring. Doesn’t really matter where we are, we are the band in the place at the time.”
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Christiansen and Barnaby Weir first met each other over 20 years ago. It was while playing in the Cuba Dupa Batacada percussion group that he came to the attention of the band’s leader Daryn Sigley, who had just worked with Barnaby Weir on the original Fly My Pretties project (and the album ‘Live at Bats’ 2005). Sigley went on to recommend Christiansen as a stand-in player for Seed’s trumpet player, Mike Taylor, who was unavailable for and upcoming Aussie tour. “At the time, I’d just turned 18. So this was massive! It was a bit of a baptism of fire. A couple of Gigs at San Fran and then off to Aussie for ten dates. Then two years later, Mike went to America and the Seeds called me back and I was asked to go on a European tour for two months. The whole time they were asking me to join officially…. And the rest is history.” Or ‘their-story’. Ta dah!
Christiansen left in 2012 and went of to take on all sorts of ‘odds and ends’ – “Study, painting houses, mowing lawns, you name it!” It was while He finished a business degree that Elan Van-Mills called him up (He’d “bought the ‘bones’ of a music school”) and invited him to collaborate in a Kapiti-based venture (re-branded as ‘House Of Sound Music Academy’) which became an early proto-type for Goodtime. “I was involved until about 2020. At the time I was doing a lot of teaching and I felt I wanted to do something else. Around then, I got a call from Johnny, who owned this school and was I interested in buying it?” Christiansen agreed, starting from the 1st of January 2020, only a few months before Covid and the National Lockdowns began.
“Great timing! Bet you’ve heard this story a million times? I know a travel agency of 30 years, sold only weeks before, with the best of intentions. Then ‘bang!’, Covid! And on and on!” This must have been a blow to a music school that has such a community reach, into schools with ready to go classrooms. It was hard, he says. But is thankful of his client support and considers himself lucky that even during the current economic turndown there’s still enough discretionary spend to support his business.
“It’s a reaction. We told the schools about our amazing programme. We just needed a teaching space. But they’d say “We haven’t got any. We’re using the hall as a classroom at the moment. There’s nowhere.” Space is a premium. But it’s evolved. The kids are excited to see them – the buses – they’ve become like a character in the story of Goodtime. They are cool, neat features.”
And there’s a connection here, too. The ‘magic music bus for the kids’ connects with Christiansen’s own history with touring buses. “It takes it full circle with the travelling idea. Like a ‘Thomas the Tank Engine thing’. It has a kind of wonder about it. But for us, being in a band, touring around, is just part of being in a band, it’s old hat – over time we lose the wonder. Lose the novelty. But for them, they get to come in the Good Time Bus, make them cool, it has neat features. So, it’s great to bring that back again through the music school. It’s as big a part of the story as the lessons. And the tour bus wonder has come full circle,”
But, Christensen is not just a teacher. He’s an artist, too. “I had a band called About The Deadlines, with Jarney, Dan (Weetman), and Dale (Jellyman), which I formed after leaving the Seeds. We did an e.p., which was a lot of fun. But through different circumstances it was hard to keep going (Dayle went to NYC for a year, Dan moved to Auckland, I did a business degree). But we were still writing, trading ideas.” The band reformed with a slight lineup change to support a couple of big overseas acts – Eagles of Death Metal and Killing Joke and a number of gigs at Wellington’s Mighty Mighty bar. “And I had these songs I’d written, but they weren’t really suitable for that band. My partner at the time was pregnant with out first child, parenthood was calling, and I was itching to get this material down on tape before I lost momentum. But I didn’t have a ‘home’ for them or anything.”
So, he went in to Surgery Studios with Lee Prebble and with the help of a couple of musicians, along with some vocals from Dan Weetman, to put the foundations down for a few songs – including the jazzy ‘Beforehand’ (recorded with a “‘bunch of mates’. We were going all enthusiastically with them. And then, nothing. They just sat in this Drop Box for ages, unmixed, unfinished, untouched.”
Then in 2021 Barnaby Weir moved to the Kapiti Coast, where Christensen lives, and the two of them started hanging out again. Both their partners were expecting and became good friends. “And I hired a house for my birthday in Greytown and we invited them over for a night to hang out, kids free. And… a few libations later we were sitting their talking about Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and rock radio. And it was this thing were he was keen to do some music and I was keen. But you almost don’t want to say, in case it’s not the case. “You go – no you go!” That sort of thing. But I picked up the guitar and, honestly in about an hour we had about six foundations for songs (including Way of My Flow and ‘Let’s Go Out’)”
That led to more studio time and very soon they had an album of new material and reworked material from the long-neglected Dropbox (‘Wishes’, ‘Beat The Horse’, ‘Afterwards’, ‘Modern Thinking’, ‘That Is Wai’ and ‘Beforehand’) – “They were all part of the original batch. But there’s a who bunch more to be released for a new album later”.
Weir played a strong part in the production of the album, its concepts and overall vision as well as lead vocals on the first three tracks.
The lyrics for ‘Wishes’ came very quickly in the studio, triggered by random phrases cut out of a magazine. Lyrically, it’s a story of a person wanting to go down the road of love but unable to handle the ride.
‘Afterwards’ features the vocals of Iris Little who used to work at Goodtime. “I wanted a sort of lullaby for my kids. She obliged and came back with a really awesome vocal. I thought ‘sheesh, we’d better record this.” It started as a lullaby but ends in a conversation with the inner child, offering a sense of peace in an ever-changing world.
‘Beat The Horse’ is an early piece written with Elan Van Mills about trying to give up destructive behaviors and holding onto addictions as if they are true friends.
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Billed as a crash up of The Cars, The Beach boys and 7’s FM radio ‘Way Of My Flow’ is a ‘musical potluck fondue at Queen’s hose’. It comes rushing out of the stable, especially with its heavy ‘Jerry Lewis’ style piano current. And then the switch to Brian May guitar twinges and Springsteen exuberance. Was this a deliberate attempt at an overstuffed influence sandwich, I ask. “Definitely. I am a music teacher. So, why not? I really like truth in music. So, whatever’s on the album is what came out on that day. So, that was what I was listening to. And that’s what you get.” As their blurb claims: ’No rules, no shoes and no blues. This trip has departed.’
He talks about how genre-bending this collection is. “To me, its my favourite part of the project. A kind of a tip of the hat to everything been through musically in my career from big band trumpet playing to jazz ensemble to Cuban music to Black Seeds’ reggae and funk to Rock heavy. Everything, you know what I mean? It’s all in there.”
Speaking of Springsteen, ‘I’m On Fire’ appears, but in a very different rockier arrangement, with all guitar work, bass and drums by Christensen. That song, I’d just done a covers gig, and I was drumming. It was five minutes of that tick-tock tempo. “I was like, my arms going to fall off!. So, Barnaby and I were chatting and we thought about how we could get some inspiration from that song. And Barnaby said “Why don’t we just do it as a cover?”
As the publicity blurb promises: “the rules are set aside without boundaries of a usual band existence and the fresh air is impossible to ignore. Hats are tipped – or tripped – towards the roots of rock’n’roll with hand shakes from the 70’s tape heavy quality in sound and hi-fives with toes from the future.” Listening through the album you’ll hear Santana and Mogadishu Orchestra and many other musician favourites. “I didn’t hold back on anything. The inspiration for ‘Beforehand’ was Billy Coben and Miles Davis with their Electric Band era stylings. And ‘Cobb And Co.’ was me coming to the studio thinking that the album wasn’t heavy enough. And I was having breakfast and me and Lee just wrote it on the spot, and that’s me playing everything again.”
“We’re both parents. So, ‘Let’s Go Out’ was a pretty obvious one. It’s about rekindling relationships after the kids have finally gone to bed. How to read the smoke signals rising from the din of domestic days.’
The MO on ‘That is wai’ was from Matt Benton and Ria Simmons was sparked from the conversation that fades out the previous track ‘Modern Thinking’ (a song about always wanting better faster, bigger – but at what cost?). That’s this pregnant person wanting all these ridiculous things. So, they are arguing about this. I just found it funny all the jokes around people’s crazy cravings – like ice cream with a whole jar of gherkins. So, I asked them to create an argument wanting all these irrational things. I’d got the idea from something similar from Jack White’s ‘Boarding House Reach’ album which has what sounds like Woody Harrelson doing some spoken word thing.”
“And for ‘Wai’, I’d said create this conversation with big, complicated words that sounds legitimate and important but all wraps up to something pointless and we’ll put some improvised music under it. We did it all live. Helps set the scene for the last song, too.”
“There’s so much of Lee in this album. He helped us produce it and written it – so shout out to him! The studio is his instrument. All of his toys, everything. He essential. And it goes right back. Especially him and Barnaby, to the Dojo days and before.”
“His attention to the tracking and mixing process played out like a sculptor of tone.”
So, the ‘TRiPS’ moniker for this project is because of the different directions you are taking?
“I guess it’s the never-ending journey we have been on and continue to go on. I guess it’s to give it openness and also we like ‘trippy’ tones and production techniques, delays and all that. But It’s a journey that will continue as we explore sounds in all their forms. We want everyone to listen and love it. And to look out for more music soon!”
TRiPS’ self-titled debut album is out today via all good streaming services.
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