NZ Musician June/July 2012 (Vol:17, No:1) By Martyn Pepperell
Iva Lamkum - The Eagle Has Landed
Iva Lamkum is hardly yet a household name, but with a particular dress sense and distinctive looks to match her striking voice, she is readily recognisable to anyone interested in the soul end of Kiwi popular music. Certainly she is an artist who, once seen performing live, remains etched in the audience consciousness – for all the right reasons. Sometimes being a recognisable face on our national live music circuit reminds the singer/guitarist of being a superhero, as she tells Martyn Pepperell.
Clad almost entirely in black, Iva Lamkum sits across from me in a secret soda bar in central Wellington, accompanied by her jovial bassist and musical director, Caleb Robinson. This isn’t the first time we’ve met, that occasion can be dated back to 2008, when with Robinson’s support and assistance, Lamkum released her self-titled debut EP.
A scorching collection of ’90s Philadelphia-style neo soul, between the strength of the songs and Lamkum’s fashion forward aesthetics, which recalled a young Aaliyah, Lamkum’s music, attitude and image impacted hard. Linking up with Andrew Spraggon and Sola Rosa in 2009, she recorded beatsy heavy soul single, Turn Around, which saw her stock rise in European musical circles, and led to increased touring opportunities both here and abroad.
Three years later, Lamkum and her small team are about return to the local market with ‘Black Eagle’, her first full album. Again produced by Robinson it is essentially a summary of her experiences over the last few years.
‘Black Eagle’ sees Lamkum folding the influence of hip hop, reggae, jazz, funk, rock and beyond into her oft ‘soul’-tagged palette. At the same time, it provided her with an opportunity to comment on the split personality disorder often forced upon outwardly successful local creatives as a result of their perceived success.
“I was going through a lot of stuff while we were recording the album,” she recalls. “I was dealing with things in my music, my life and my work, and I’d find myself randomly taking out my frustrations from one sphere of life in another.
“I have to have a day job, I need to pay the rent,” she says, before throwing in a joke, “… and buy a new iPhone.”
To illustrate what she is getting at she relates a story about realising a guy on the street was staring at her. In a reflex reaction, she told him, “I’m not your type,” only to have the guy reply, ‘Aren’t you Iva Lamkum?’
“People come up to me and are like, ‘Oh do you have a day job?’, and ‘You’re a musician right?’ I’m like come on! Give it a break! It’s Aotearoa. It is important be professional, but I’m just trying to be me.”
Reading the bible (as she does) one day, Lamkum came across a specific scripture, one relating to the black eagle of Asia, the bird which, as a result of her reading, would become the title of the album.
“It was just talking about the eagle, saying it’s the only bird that can fly above the storm, and it helps strengthen their wings. It’s the same thing with life, when you’re struggling [it can make you stronger]. For the last three years I’ve been trying to figure that out. So I’ve come from this dark place, that’s where the black comes from, but you somehow survive it, and that’s where the eagle comes from. All the songs in the album tally up what I’m about. It’s basically a symbol and a significant thing.”
The question does beg itself though, for an artist who emerged with such a strong initial release, why did it take so many years to follow on with the album?
“First of all, that was Iva’s first vocal thing to be released,” starts Robinson.
“From the beginning it wasn’t what I wanted to do,” the artist herself admits. “I kind’a just bumped into Caleb and some other musician mates and just fell into it. When we did that EP I was still finding who I was as a musician. It was kind’a like, ‘Throw me in the studio, and just sing nicely, it’ll be all okay’. Then we came out with the EP, and everyone was like, ‘That’s awesome, you’re amazing, let’s carry on from there.’
“I think because of that it’s built our reputation, it’s built a friendship, and it’s built more people wanting to know who we are. And then I’m like, ‘Shit, I’m Iva Lamkum, let’s do it’.”
“I was ringing people up and they were saying, ‘Oh you need a publicist,’ and I’m like, ‘What’s a publicist?’” laughs Robinson.
“That was all part of the learning process because I just used to gig. We didn’t have any funding to go into a nice studio either, so we had to work it out ourselves. I guess it’s a good thing, to just develop over time. Once we hit the studio and started tracking it didn’t take long. But it’s getting all the [other] stuff together, lining it all up, so you can continue on.”
Things really clicked for Lamkum and Robinson with the arrival of a management offer from Teresa Patterson of CRS Management.
“Things were really full on because we were managing heaps of stuff at the time,” Robinson admits. “I said to Iva straight up, ‘If we want to keep jamming and getting stuff happening, I can't keep managing at the same time’.”
He jokes about nights juggling playing bass with peering into the crowd and trying to count up the number of people in the venue to make sure they had broken even. With Patterson onboard, Lamkum, Robinson and their band found themselves hitting the festival circuits, peforming at Sounds Aotearoa, securing international opportunities, and locking in an arrangement with Sony NZ to release ‘Black Eagle’.
Recorded during 2011 between York Street Studios in Auckland, Trident Studios and The Surgery in Wellington and Robinson’s home studio, ‘Black Eagle’ saw them calling on their regular five-piece live band, as well as a talented selection of guest singers and musicians, including but not limited to, Mara TK, Bella Kalolo, Rio Hemopo, Ed Zuccollo and Aaradhna. Both completely happy with the results, they look at things in an even handed, realistic manner.
“The whole process for us for this record was not worrying about what other people thought,” Robinson says. “We were just writing music.”
“All in all, I think that just trying to make a name for myself and the journey is what I’ve enjoyed so far,” Lamkum finishes. “The end result is because of the journey, because of what we we’ve done. I think that is the importance of music, it’s all in the journey.”
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