Sister singers set for stripped-back act

MELBOURNE-raised duo Vika and Linda Bull will be coming to the region next week, performing intimate versions of classic and lesser-known songs.

Backed solely by grand piano, the performance is part of the duo’s current 25-date Australian tour with six additional shows announced early last month.

Set to play Civic Hall on Saturday 11 May, Vika said they’re looking forward to bringing their stripped-back performance to regional Victorian audiences.

“Linda and I love travelling, love a day trip, and we love visiting regional towns because of the theatres they have,” she said.

“Having this show which is very intimate and stripped-back, it’s the perfect environment for a show like this.

“The thing we love the most is checking out the country towns and meeting the locals. It’s what makes touring so much fun.”

Making a name for themselves as backing singers in The Black Sorrows from 1988, the pair departed the group in 1994 to release their debut album as a duo that same year.

For their latest tour, which started in March, Vika and Linda are joined on piano by their longtime collaborator, producer, and musical director Cameron Bruce.

“It creates space,” said Linda. “When you have a band, there’s a lot of instruments on stage and they all have a role to play and it takes up a lot of space.

“With this mode, the audience can hear what you’re doing pretty much at every breath, but also it gives us a little bit of time to stretch out notes and do things a little bit differently.”

Alongside the opportunity to road test a handful of new songs, Linda said the tour will see previously neglected tunes from their catalogue revived under a new light.

“The essence of the song comes out more with one instrument,” she said. “That’s how they mostly were presented to us in the beginning.

“They’re songs we skipped over because the treatment we gave them was maybe a little bit dated.

“We’ll play songs like The Blue Hour from our first album, You Touch Me Down In My Soul written by Paul Kelly, Love This Time, things like that which we’d kind of forgot.

“They’re coming out of the woodwork while we air our new songs in public.”

Tickets are $79 and can be booked at bit.ly/3UDb9cw.