Artist

Fat Freddy's Drop

The Freddy’s family of musicians evolved in Wellington through a multitude of musical incarnations, from funk jam bands, reggae sound systems and jazz improvisation cliques to live hi-tek dub-soul experiments.

Fitchie AKA Mu is Freddy’s technician, bandleader and ‘Master of Reality’.  Armed with an Akai MPC sampler Fitchie crafts bottom heavy beats, bass lines and sublime samples that kick off and touch down every musical journey, his sound is literally the heartbeat of the Freddy’s.

Fitchie picked up Best Producer and Most Outstanding Musician at the b-Net NZ Music Awards 2005, and Best Producer at the b-Nets in 2003.

Joe Dukie AKA Dallas Tamaira is Freddy’s lyricist and singing sensation. Gifted with a golden honey voice and the creator of conscious lyrics, Joe Dukie is regarded as one the best soul singers in the world today.

Awarded Best Vocalist at the b-Net NZ Music Awards 2005, Joe Dukie credits Bill Withers, D’Angelo and his mum as inspiration.  The stage name/alter ego is drawn from his father Joe, also a singer, and grandfather who was a musician nicknamed Dukie after Duke Ellington.

Freddy’s thunderous wall of sound and bootae shaking horn section is led by Tony Chang AKA Toby Laing on trumpet and flugel-horn, and Ho Pepa AKA Joe Lindsay on trombone, tuba and ‘Bad Ho Jelly Roll’ dance moves.  Notice to the ladies; Hopepa scored ‘Male Fox’ at the B-Net NZ Music Awards 2006.

The third founding horn player is Fulla Flash AKA Warryn Maxwell on tenor and alto sax.  Flash has gone undercover in 2007 and is currently focused on whanau and a new psychedelic blues band, Little Bushman. 

Scott Towers is the sub stepping up the plate on sax duties for Freddy’s live shows.  Scotty has subbed for Flash many times in the past including one of the first Freddy’s gigs in London at Cargo in 2003.  All Freddy’s horn players are graduates of Wellington Jazz School and also perform for the likes of Scribes of Ra, The Eggs, The Yoots, Opensouls and Tyra and the Tornadoes. 

Jetlag Johnson AKA Tehimana Kerr plays electric and acoustic guitar, breaking out the skank, roots and mind bending Jimi Hendrix riffs, while Dobie Blaze is the Freddy’s analog keyboard scientist and collector.  A founding member of Ebb and Bongmaster, Dobie’s analog synth lines provide the funkadelic backbone to the Freddy’s. 

Mystic Soul Connection
Fat Freddy’s Drop is first and foremost a live collective; no two Freddy’s gigs are ever the same.

With Joe Dukie’s soulful voice and lyrical prowess upfront, the Freddy’s musical palette shifts across a fusion of dub, soul, skank, jazz, funk and electronica vibes, enriched by the bros South Pacific Pacific roots.

Freddy’s unique boil up of bottom heavy beats, future funk and freaky sidesteps drops over two to three hour-long jams of sonic unity between band and audience.

Fitchie maintains “What's great about live performance is that it belongs to those in the audience on that night, it's a one off experience”.

Awarded Best Live Act at the b-Net NZ Music Awards 2004, Freddy’s play selected festivals and clubs nationwide, and since 2003 have embarked on an annual tour across the seven seas to Europe and UK and Australia.

The slow burn approach has culminated in 2007 with Freddy’s getting an invite from the Glastonbury Fesitval.  Freddy’s is the second ever band to represent Aotearoa/NZ and play the penultimate slot on the Jazz World Stage.

The Fantastic Voyages Summer 2007 Tour also features two sell out Freddy’s shows at Astoria London, an appearance at Garance Reggae Festival in Paris, and shows in Berlin, Bournemouth and Nottingham. 

Recent highlights across the ditch in Australia include Womad Festival in Adelaide and the East Coast Blues & Roots Festival in Byron Bay.

Stand out gigs in 2006: the pimped out sunset session at Algarve Summer Festival in Portugal, on the street in the heat for Sonar Festival, Barcelona where they got the only encore of the Festival, selling out the Brixton Music Academy in London, two smooth evenings at Caberet Sauvage, Paris and beaming live with two songs on Channel Plus TV, France. 

Back home, 2006 favourites include the RDU Cheap as Chips gig and the Red Bull Daylight Savings showcase, Grey Lynn Park, Auckland.

Standouts in 2005: Hammersmith Palais, London, Shed 6 in Wellington, Christchurch Town Hall, the BBC Worldwide Awards at Koko, Camden, Big Chill Festival, two sold out Freddy’s shows at Koko, a rawkus record release party at Café Moskau, Berlin and the Popkomm Festival at the Theaterkasse Berliner Staatsoper.

Discography

Based On A True Story
B.O.A.T.S was released in May 2005 on both CD and double gate-fold vinyl and has gained legendary status as the record that breaks records.

Upon its official release B.O.A.T.S shipped Gold on its first day, making history as the first independently distributed album to strike #1on the NZ Top Ten Album Charts. 

In total Based On A True Story held the top spot for a record breaking 11 weeks, and was the second Top Selling Album in Aotearoa NZ in 2005, and second again in 2006

In October 2005 Freddy’s garnered a stash of Tui Awards at the NZ Music Awards: official loot; Album of the Year, Best Aotearoa Roots Album, Best Group and direct from the peeps – the People’s Choice Award.

Freddy’s then traveled to London in December 05 to pick up the Worldwide Album Of The Year at the Radio 1 Gilles Peterson Worldwide Music Awards 2005, as voted by fans of the tastemakers show on the BBC.

Wandering Eye was released as a CD single off Based On A True Story and gained notoriety as the most-played song ever on New Zealand radio. 
The CD single also featured The Italian Reprise, a live recording of Wandering Eye in Locorotondo, Italy.

At the NZ Music Awards 2006, Freddy’s picked up three awards: Highest Selling Album for Based On A True Story; Best Video for Director Mark Williams aka Slave for Wandering Eye and the coveted, People’s Choice Award. 

Freddy’s won ‘Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence at the b-Net NZ Music Awards 2006 and the band was nominated for the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards 2006.

Two years after its release, B.O.A.T.S made history as the ‘longest charting local album in Aotearoa/NZ and after notching 107 consecutive weeks on the album chart became the 9th longest charting album release in Aotearoa/NZ, ever.

The album is on the verge of x8 Platinum status in the homeland having sold over 135,000 copies and is now available in Australia, UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Holland, Japan, and North America.

The band’s original under the radar release is Live at the Matterhorn capturing a jam session at Wellington’s den of iniquity.   The four songs span 80 minutes and the album struck Gold sales in Aotearoa/NZ purely through word of mouth. Midnight Marauders
Freddy’s international legacy began in 2002, when Midnight Marauders was released as an independent 12” vinyl under the guise of Joe Dukie & Fitchie.

Legend has it that Detroit born producer Recloose took a copy of Midnight Marauders to Berlin and played it to Sonar Kollektiv and Jazzanova.

Daniel Best’s imprint Best Seven re-released the track and Jazzanova DJ’s were soon dropping it in sets across Europe and the USA.  The rest is history.

Ben Watt in Dazed & Confused (March 2005) described Midnight Marauders as “the most delicate and deep dub record of recent times. Superb crisp production and aching vocal."

Hope For A Generation
Freddy’s official vinyl release in 2003 was a 10” vinyl featuring Hope a song that Dukie scribed to inspire ‘positivity, spirituality and creativity’ for a new generation.  The b-side dub trip was Bluey. 

Charlie Gillet, BBC described Hope as “an extraordinary epic, which moves from being a gentle lament supported by muted trumpet, into a more intense section with honking tenor sax, before floating away into space.  At nearly ten minutes, I think this is the longest track I have ever played on the radio.  A listener called to say it was the most remarkable thing he had heard in a long time.”

Midnight Marauders and the original HOPE both scaled to the number one spot on Gilles Peterson’s Top Twenty Worldwide picks in 2002 and 2003 respectively, and Worldwide helped champion the band to new audiences.

Freddy’s released a Hope re-print in 2006.

Waxing Lyrical
The vinyl vein runs deep in Freddy’s who consistently choose the old skool medium to showcase rare tracks and left-field remixes.

In 2006 Freddy’s released the first in an international remix series:
Part #1 featuring Cay's Crays remix by London’s Artificial Intelligence and Midnight Marauders remix by NZ’s Pylonz & Kinetix.

The Cay’s Crays remix was described by d’n’b maestros Fabio and Grooverider as "one of the biggest tunes of the summer".

Part # 2 includes Cay's Crays remix by Digital Mystikz (DMZ) the bass-heavy premier dub-step crew from South London, and MO Beats, a version from Manchester roots reggae connection Blood & Fire vs. Deep Sound and a club mix by Kalbata aka Ariel Tagar from Tel Aviv.

DJ Vadim and One Self put their unique spin on Cays Cray’s in an exclusive remix released on 7” vinyl.   The original cover artwork features the roadside crayfish caravan on the Kaikoura coast that belongs to Dukie’s own Aunty Cay.

Other vinyl releases include Wandering Eye remix by Auckland hip hop producer, Submariner, Flashback remix by Berlin’s Jazzanova and Roady remixed by The Nextmen from London.

Flashback was the first vinyl single to drop from the B.O.A.T.S album and the collectable 12” vinyl debuted at #1 on the New Zealand alt charts in early 2005.
The 12” b-side featured a stripped back version of Midnight Marauders recorded live by the Freddy’s at the BBC Maida Vale studios in 2004. 

Other tunes recorded at the BBC session were Hope and Willow Tree and it was nominated for Best Session at Gilles Petersons Worldwide Music Awards 2004. Gilles Peterson selected another session track This Room for his compilation The BBC Sessions Vol 1.

Keeping it real in 2006, Freddy’s scored a nomination for the b-Net New Zealand Awards for Downbeat/Dub Track of 2006 for Ray Ray, another single from the album.

At the beginning of 2007 Fat Freddy’s Drop was nominated for the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards for the Asia/Pacific region.

Fantastic Voyages
Jump on the tour bus, be a fly on the lid of the tequila bottle backstage and check what the Freddy’s get up to when they leave NZ without the whanau.  This is rock & roll after all…

In November 2006, Fat Freddy’s Drop proudly released their debut DVD, Fantastic Voyages Vol 1.

The self-produced DVD features Ten True Stories, stealthily filmed during Freddy’s 2006 World Cup Tour, with old and new tracks and inspired Freddy jams driving the soundtrack.

The Attack of the Killer Sea Monsters music video section features Ray Ray, a seven-minute train odyssey contemplating a world without soul, and Roady. as well as the award-winning Wandering Eye

The music video was filmed in a fish and chip shop in Grey Lynn and directed by Freddy’s cadet Mark Williams aka Slave

Dobie Blaze delivers his Shuk foodeo and the Hidden Gems features Midnight Marauders captured live in Portugal.

On the first week of release, Fantastic Voyages sailed straight to Number 1 on the Official New Zealand Music Charts Top 10 Music DVDs, another independent record breaker for Fat Freddy’s Drop.

Fantastic Voyages is now available in the UK.