After 20 years of playing festivals here and everywhere, Fat Freddy’s have the drop on how to make the most of the occasion. Saxophonist Scott Towers shares his wisdom.

What are you looking forward to this festival season? I guess it’s just having the option to go out as often as possible or as often as you want. That’s the thing I am excited about. And also getting out and supporting promoters and the industry. I’m really conscious that business has been really tough for the last couple of years. Costs have spiralled out of control and promoters can’t really pass that on so they are wearing it. If we want there to be a music and arts scene in New Zealand we need to get out and support them. Electric Avenue will be cool because I’ve never seen Lorde live and I’m really looking forward to that. It’s really different hearing people on the radio or on record and seeing them in their live show, to see how they take something that in her case has been crafted in a studio and turn it into a live show. For Freddy’s it’s really the opposite – we take a live show and try to turn it into something in the studio. So I’m really intrigued to see what that looks like for her. Then further afield I’m really interested in a day party called Morningside Live Block Party up in Auckland. It’s a really cool little thing for us. We have programmed a bunch of artists we want to see get a wider audience. Lucky Lance of Team Dynamite and Christoph El Truento are on the bill. They released a really cool hip-hop record last year. It got a lot of kudos from critics and the like but I’d like to see them and the other acts get some more exposure. There’s a guy from Raglan, Reiki Ruawai, a young guy with a lot of talent. We’ve helped produce and record him. Freddy’s horns are on his record and Mu has been producing that. And DJs too. We have eyes on Benny Salvador. He’s the son of our trombone player, Joe Lindsay. We’ve been watching him since he was little. He does house and techno production at home and DJs as well. He’s been DJ’ing in Japan. Opportunities like Morningside are what launched our career. It was launched off the back of DJs overseas that supported our first records. Without that we wouldn’t have had 20 years of touring. If we can do the same now for others then we should.

What about New Year? I’ve got New Year’s Eve off this time – we’re only doing a few festivals over summer. So I’m looking forward to firing up the pizza oven at home.

After 20 years of gigging at them, what’s your No. 1 festival hack? One thing we’ve learned is to always go around the food vendors before the doors open or before it gets too busy and work out who’s got the good eats. You don’t want to get stuck without a good meal. So do your research on the kai front, don’t get stuck with the crappy leftovers. There’s a reason why there’s a queue in front of one food vendor and not in front of another. As an artist at a festival you do have a lot of time waiting. A backstage tip is we have a turntable and some speakers set up. We are always checking out the record stores wherever we go so we’ve got new music to listen to. So we set up the turntable and speakers and play music to each other during the day. When we first got started, we always made sure we had enough ice – a warm cocktail is a terrible cocktail.

Day or night – what’s your favourite time to take to the stage? Freddy’s love playing during that changeover from day to night. You see the energy levels come up a bit. The heat has gone out of the sun, people have emerged from their tents having recovered from the night before. You can see them transform in front of you.

Electric Avenue // Saturday 25 February, 2023 // Hagley Park
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