Luke Thompson – Simplicity And Some Bad Jokes

By Ash London on March 20, 2013 in Arts

A year or two ago a mate sent me a YouTube video and told me to give it a watch. “You’ll love this song,” he said. Having lots of musician – and musician-loving – friends means that I get these emails quite often. As such, I forgot about the email. Then a week or two later as I was cleaning out my inbox I gave the link a click. The song was beautiful, and suddenly I was hooked on Luke Thompson, the unassuming, bad-joke-telling singer/songwriter from New Zealand who would quickly become one of my staples.

The good news? This month he’s hopping across the pond to play in our fair city – hooray. And the even better news? He’s giving his album away for free (details down below).

By the way, the song in question was ‘Water’ and you should go give it a listen. After you read my awesome interview with him below, of course…

New Zealand singer/songwriter Luke Thompson is… Quite wonderful.

My hometown is… Tauranga, New Zealand. It’s a special place. Beach, slow paced, mountains…

The most exciting thing about the local music scene is… Playing music, spending time with friends and making new ones all the time. Some New Zealand artists worth checking out are The Great North, Lydia Cole, Mali Mali, van der Wel and Joseph & Maia.

I’d like to think that my music is… Reflective of me.

My earliest music memory is… Singing church songs in the lounge from a hymn book, pretending I was the song leader at church. And that movie, La Bamba.

Growing up, my parents listened to… The Bee Gees, Elvis, Motown and Neil Diamond.

One song that makes me really nostalgic is… ‘Re: Stacks’ by Bon Iver or ‘After The Gold Rush’ by Neil Young. These are two songs that don’t make me remember anything in particular, it’s just more like you feel like you’ve known them forever, like you heard them long before you heard them. They are just packed full of nostalgia and they slow down time. I hope I can write a song like that.

There was this one time when I was starting out that… I made heaps of bad decisions and even some bad music.

If I could have written any song it would be… ‘Grown Ocean’ by Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes).

If you come and see me play you can expect… Simplicity and some bad jokes.

My dream gig… Would probably be supporting Ray LaMontagne, but other than that it’s just playing music with my good friends, and I get to do that all the time!

Playing in Australia is always… Really amazing; my favourite place to play (but don’t tell New Zealand).

I never want to get to the point where… I can’t write songs anymore.

I’ll know I’ve really made it when… I start relaxing.

You can catch Luke at The Newsagency in Marrickville on March 22. All the details can be found at www.lukethompsonmusic.com. You can also head there to download his new album for free – what a nice guy!