Earlier this week at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre TOM’s very own Brendan Dousi caught up with Roger Thomas from Michael Bublé’s support act, a Capella group, Naturally Seven, in anticipation for their solo Brisbane Show at QPAC’s Concert Hall on Friday May 30th. TOM Magazine: How are you going? How are you enjoying Australia? Roger: Always enjoy Australia, it’s always a long distance to get here but we enjoy the people. It’s the place you feel the furthest away from home and somewhat still at home. Because of the English language and it’s still quite westernised here. It’s our fourth or fifth time here, actually. TOM Magazine: Do you have a favourite thing about the country? Roger: Besides, “How ya goin’?” – The honesty. I like the honesty of the people. We’ve had some people come to see us at the Michael Bublé show and they’ve said, “I gotta be honest with you, I was angry when you first came on but a few seconds later I was the happiest ever!” TOM Magazine: At least it ended postitively! So, I’d like to talk to you about your sound. You beatbox, you sing, you mimic instruments with your mouths. You call this ‘Vocal Play’. Where did you come up with the idea to do this, and how did you learn to do it? Roger: Ah, Vocal Play. We kind of gave birth to it; just trying to figure out from a Capella, being a traditional a Capella group, what can we do to be more. How can we find our place in the sun? Going back to our roots, Warren is my brother; he was basically already doing the drums from when we were kids. Just doing the beat boxing thing and actually doing beat boxing plus becoming more of a drum set; symbols, kick drum, snare, everything. In that time when you’re look at how you can be different we said, “You know what? Let’s pull on that talent.” Then, while we’re at it, instead of the bass just singing regular words, why not do what a bass guitar would do? Little by little you find that everyone had that talent to become a unique instrument. Then you go, “Why don’t we just do it like a whole Vocal Band?” Then we needed to give it a name and ‘Vocal Play’ came into play. TOM Magazine: Did you ever try and mimic an instrument but just couldn’t quite get it? Roger: Yeah, things like Piano and some of the acoustic instruments like that were not really possible so we stay away from those instruments. Piano, Acoustic Guitar, you’re not really going to do it and have someone go, “Oh wow, that sounds like a Piano!” It’s got to be something that’s a little bit more brassy and distorted. There are tons of instruments we cannot do. The voice is the most versatile instrument to become other instruments. TOM Magazine: Naturally Seven has been around since 1999 and you guys seem to be getting more and more popular as time goes on, would you say was the turning point for the group at all? Something that saw you launched into more popular territories? Roger: One turning point is definitely being on tour with Michael Bublé. It has probably put us in front of right now an estimated 8 or 9 million people. That’s a lot of people. So that’s 8 or 9 people who can’t say, “Oh, I’ve never heard of Naturally Seven.” Then there was the subway YouTube clip. When that went viral that was a big deal because that went ahead of us. So, before we would even get to South America or before we went to China for the first time people would have already seen us in some form; in that video. That’s a big point, also the success of certain songs. We didn’t realise how big the Quincy Jones Montreux DVD was, tons of people say to us, “Oh yeah, that’s where I first saw you.” We didn’t really think anything of this DVD, but it was the 75th Birthday Celebration. There are tons of people that say that was their first exposure to us. There are lots of different little things. It’s hard to pin-point which is the biggest. TOM Magazine: So, obviously, you’re opening for Bublé tonight. How long have you been working with him? Roger: Since the end of 2007. This is our third world tour with him. Most artists like himself would change the support act but I think we’ve just kind of become more than that. So, we do five songs in his set. He’s integrated us into his show. That’s actually the reason for keeping the marriage going. We sung four of those songs on his latest album. It’s a marriage that works, it works for us. It makes it really busy for us because we try to do all of our solo stuff in between and he’s running a serious world tour. So, to do anything in between is saying a lot. TOM Magazine: How did you manage to get to work with Bublé, did he approach you, did you audition? Roger: It was one of those things where the agent we had in Europe at the time and his agent were father and son. So, as soon as the word ‘a Capella’ came out in what they were looking for, the son said to the father, “I can give you Naturally Seven.” At first we were just supposed to do one leg of the tour. The rest is history. TOM Magazine: What can we expect from your show tonight with Bublé? Any song in particular that is your favourite? Roger: Yes, my favourite right now to perform is probably ‘Fix You’ by Coldplay. As many people that love that song, the important thing when doing a cover is you bring something new to the table. I think people think we serve the song well as far as they know the Coldplay piece and what we’ve brought to the table makes it worth hearing from us. In fact, it wasn’t going to be on our next album, we were saving it for a full covers album or something, but just too many people liked it. So, it was just crazy for it to not be on the album. It’s coming out on our next project. TOM Magazine: Your last album was released in 2012, sounds like you’ve got another one in the works? Roger: Yeah, we’ll release another one this year – this summer and ‘Fix You’ is a tune that’s on there. TOM Magazine: You must be travelling a lot opening for Bublé, how do you find the lifestyle? Do you find yourself getting homesick a lot or do you enjoy the travelling lifestyle? Roger: Both. I enjoy travelling but definitely there’s no place like home. The stage part of it to me is always beautiful; meeting with the fans is great too. Jumping from airport to airport? Not so fun. Or waiting on the tour bus, whatever it is. That part is not the most fun but it comes with the territory. The hardest part we have to do is missing our families. At this point in the interview Michael Bublé barged into the room proclaiming, “Do you guys want to get wasted before the show again…oh, I’m so sorry…I didn’t realise you were in an interview…” Cleary joking, well, maybe joking, he talked a little business with Roger before letting us get back to the interview. TOM Magazine: As you mentioned, you’re coming back to Brisbane and other cities to do a Solo show after Bublé jets off. What can audiences expect from these shows? Roger: Every show we do…I think the last time we were here was 2012. Every show we do, nearly all of our fans would agree with this, that if you haven’t seen us in two year, something if you haven’t seen us in one year, we’re pushing the envelope a little bit further. People always say, “The last show I saw was the best.” So for you to be better than that, that’s always the goal. Always pushing the sound barrier, the beauty of the songs and just for people to go through the gambit of emotions that makes a night worth being out. That’s it, the goal is to take you on a journey that’s not just… I mean, I’ve gone to things like Cirque du Soleil and I have to be honest, after 20 minutes I’ve had enough. It’s just too much. What we try to do is avoid those type of pitfalls, you’ve got to bring it down to something else. So people can fell throughout a show, 30 minutes in, “Oh, I haven’t experienced this before.” So we’re constantly doing that. People hear 4 or 5 songs they haven’t heard before and we learned that’s probably about right. Otherwise people complain you don’t do the favourites. So you throw in five songs they’ve never heard before and they’re ok with that as long as you keep the favourites in. Then they’re cool. TOM Magazine: Is it the same for your Solo show, will you be performing ‘Fix You’? Is that still your favourite song in your own show? Roger: Yes. In the solo show… ‘Fix You’ is a favourite of ours period. But I also like “Jericho”, that’s a favourite of mine. There’s a lot. There are a lot of favourites. When we come off microphone, the audience usually really likes that too. Again that’s the peaks and valleys, you’ve been hearing the microphones blasting all night long and we’ve kept you up, time to bring it down to a personal level. It’s like when I see a bunch of dancers on the stage, that’s great, but for me just bring it down to one person dancing. If it’s Janet Jackson, just one person, just you and the chair is good! It’s got to be big then small, medium… just take them on a journey. TOM Magazine: So, what’s next for Naturally Seven? What’s coming up in 2014? Roger: 2014 we’ve got the album release, it’s called “Hidden In Plain Sight”. Vox Maximus Volume One. We’ve got this latin thing going on because throughout the course of the album we have a classical, baroque type thing. We found that sounds really good with some of the urban stuff we have, adding some classical beats. We have that theme running through almost the entire album. It’s very very cool so we decided to give it a title that had a little latin theme going on too. That’s a big highlight. On that project we have a song with the band ‘Queen’. Now, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Queen; they never allowed anyone to use any samples of their music. It’s just not done. Doesn’t matter if it’s Jay-Z, Beyonce; no one has done it. So, we are the first to use Queen. So, we’re using Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s Naturally Seven featuring Queen. TOM Magazine: That’s impressive, how did you manage that? Roger: That’s a longer story. Haha. Our manager happens to be friends with Queen’s manager and he said, “You know what? For you I’ll do it- If I like the song”. So, we happened to deliver a song that they thought was pretty cool. We hope to be breaking some ground with that too. TOM Magazine: I’ve just got a couple of questions here I like to ask everyone at the end. Firstly, outside of everything and what you like to perform, what’s your favourite song of all time? Roger: Song? Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel. TOM Magazine. Who’s your favourite artist right now, who are you listening to? Roger: Listening to… Pharrell. TOM Magazine: Finally, I’m a big movie buff so I like to ask, what’s your favourite movie? Roger: Crimson Tide. Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman. Loved it. TOM Magazine: Thank you so much for your time, it’s been a pleasure. Roger: Thank you, appreciate that.
