Xavier Rudd

0:03Well Xavier, thank you. Thank you brother. Appreciate it. It's your back in Canada. Back in Canada. Again for another go-around what's this one? Again. Number 20. Yeah. How many times have you been across this country? It's been hard to be. Yeah. I'd like to know. I've been coming here for 10 years. Yeah. It's a... Then you came to Calgary. I've never had someone's son until we got to Calgary. And then snow and June. Yeah. It was like it was really nice in every place. And then yeah, Calgary was snowing. You couldn't believe it. Well you talked about weather changing on the record. Yeah. Tell me what are your thoughts? I mean you gotta be pretty pissed off about everything that's happening right now with BP and the oil spill and... Oh man it's just on and on.

0:50You know, it's just continuous but... Yeah, it's a hard one. Balancing the scales is difficult I think. It's nice to see more people rising up and wanting change over time. You know, like over 10 years I've seen organizations grow and things that were small become bigger and people connect and you know, and that's good but the balance of industry versus that is pretty... It's pretty hard just having... You know, sold you on because of it. Yeah well we need people like you preaching it to take people to learn what's going on. So the new record is not just you this time.

1:39Nah, it's with Isentaba which we named the bands I've been running Isentaba because I'm with the Onandi. I'm standing on a mountain, you know, such... In every way there's such amazing spirits, friends, such a strong connection. So yeah Isentaba is a Zulu with mountains but yeah I met him in Austria a few years ago. We had a sort of mirrored respect for each other and what we were doing and strong connection and then they

2:27came along last year and we were house... Once we were house we were just sold on it. Yeah it was just it was powerful. So yeah we're having a bowl. Did you write the songs with them in mind or did you write together? Like how does that help you? Yeah with them in mind I write them sort of brought into tea on Andy but their input, their influence is so strongly you know, they're such creative amazing players. I look forward to writing with them. I'd like to write more actually with them. Do they bring those I don't know what the word African chants maybe, I don't know what the word is for the sounds they're making. Yeah the harmonies, um the basically how it would work in most cases that I'd sort of sing a harmony that I was hearing and then talk about what the song was about

3:17Andy usually would take that away from all and just sort of work out how to sing it in Zulu, Casa or Suttu. So they sing in those three languages. Cool. Do you speak anything? Have you learned anything? No not yet. So difficult like Andy's name is Andy like um bizello. That's just for me. I took me introducing him on stage I had to pause like and just to get it right before I said he was last night for quite a while. The stage set how's the stage set? Are you still behind that massive kid of everything? Yeah I still do everything that I do but yeah they sort of just play around me so yeah I haven't really limited

4:05what I do. Took away a lot of the bass out of my guitar. Okay. You know really charge it. What is that set up? Because I mean we see it from the front and it must be very different looking at it from behind. So you got drums, you got a couple of didgey duds guitars. Yeah I got three you don't call them didgey duds though. You know you're ducky so I have three dakis in a stand in different keys and they can be changed you know. Um yeah drums I have a stomp box which is wooden box that I stomp my foot on which has a mic under it so it's like a kick drum. I have a different percussion. Basically it's become almost like a drum kit. Like I have high hats

5:03I have a snare. It must be hard to tour with everything. Little fire crack I think. To lug that huge thing around everywhere. Yeah I'm constantly getting encouraged to cut down lines cut down white. But you can't that's what you're known for. Yeah so I mean actually today I was looking at some of the stuff and I'm not really using some of that percussion stuff at the moment so I'm just talking about that when I maybe leave some of it behind for Europe but the core of what I've got there is I'm using. You're heading to Europe and South Africa too. Oh yeah. First time. Yeah. The surf's supposed to be amazing. You know some fun. Yeah totally. Cool.

5:49Talk about some of the new songs. Your songs on one. Well sings or talks on one kind of. Yeah yeah. How did that. Did you have him in mind for it? Or was it just like oh yeah. You come in and try this. No he was uh he's pretty interesting that little fellow. We were doing um we were sitting by fire singing and we were sitting by fire. We just did ceremony and the sun was going down. I started playing the riff from that song. And he was the first one to sing anything. He started singing that line over and over and over as I was playing that riff. So I basically wrote the song around that like about the verses of singing about it. Yeah so it was sort of like. You still carry your sock on to it? Yeah I do.

6:43It's a nice little ritual. Yeah. There's some hardships on the record though. I don't know if you want to talk about it or not but I mean you have some songs that must have been pretty hard to write this time around. Yeah it was an emotional record. Massive changes in the last year and a half. I don't know. I expected my marriage ended and um yeah definitely the hardest road I've walked to my life so far. But yeah and the record was good for it. It was good to have my music and I'm so blessed to have music. It's a good stage sometimes. Yeah and you know there's reflections there but it's all positive you know. It's sort of for me the record is positive and sacred and it

7:29marks a time of change, a time of letting go of things and what's right. Everything's sort of good now. I understand now you know and I feel good and I've got a whole new energy on stage. I'm so I was always respectful of my music but I'm more respectful now and I feel very blessed to have that and two beautiful kids and it's nice as Kundjam sounds a platform for that you know it's the

8:15beginning of that. Although yeah there was hard some hard times making it but it doesn't feel as strange to me. It feels like that. It feels light. I mean it is light. Well later in the last month at least it's more. Yeah I think that the last one was probably more about it was more the heaviness of the situation. You know I think sometimes, oh I think in general my spirits are ahead of me and a lot of the time my music's reflected through through that you know my music's ahead of me. It takes me a while to understand my views. That's cool. I think Dark Shades of Blue was maybe the storm that was coming.