Tuka

When the City Hub recently spoke with Tuka, he really opened up to us about the philosophy and mindset which led him to reinterpret his successful solo album as a new live acoustic EP. “I think there is a huge authenticity watching a performer play songs live…you have to really bare it all when you do a live performance,” he said.

The seeds of the idea for this new EP were originally planted in 2012, when he started making short Youtube clips of acoustic versions of tracks, which fans went wild for and begun requesting more and more. Unfortunately time constraints, due to simultaneously working on his solo project and with the Thundamentals, meant Tuka was unable to reinterpret the entire album live. Instead he chose to intensely work on an EP – “We recorded the six songs in one day,” Tuka explained.

Juggling the projects has been difficult for Tuka simply because of the time required, but he feels they certainly feed off each other and have made him a better songwriter all round. “I don’t think I could have written such good songs for Thundamentals if I hadn’t done the solo thing and vice versa, because they’re both so different and keep me open minded.”

For this record Tuka looked to the path society is taking with social media and technology, and sought to write with a different approach to better connect with his audience. “These days people are sitting by their computers and it’s become a very narcissistic culture, it’s all about posting something then searching for recognition with likes,” he said. “I didn’t want that, I wanted to talk to the people behind the computer. So instead of saying ‘me’ or ‘I’, I always said ‘you’ or ‘we’.”

While he is still unsure whether the new writing technique worked, Tuka says he gets “a lot of people I’ve never met sending me these beautiful messages about what the music meant to them or what they got out of it [every day]”.

Ahead of tomorrow night, Tuka told us why he was so excited for these shows: “I’m pumped because this will be the last opportunity I have for a while to connect with people that follow the Tuka journey, because the next Thundamentals record is going to be huge and take up a lot of my time. So I’d love to see people out.” (JA)

Apr 8, 8pm. Manning Bar, Manning Rd, Camperdown. $30+b.f. Tickets & info: manningbar.com

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