Bright futures for funky young musicians

ALTHOUGH their slot at Funk N Fest fell through with the festival’s cancellation, nine-piece band Butterfunked are looking forward to releasing their upcoming EP.

With a tour lined up and talks of overseas shows, lead vocalist of the musical group Anna Wright said that last year’s cancellations were devastating for the band.

“It was pretty soul crushing because we were booked out for like three months, we had a shortlist for the Byron Bay Bluesfest and were set to support artists like the Sweethearts, then everything got cancelled,” she said.

“We’ve only just started booking a couple more gigs, a community festival in Werribee as well as being the only band representing Ballarat at the Aireys Inlet Open Mic Festival.

“After lockdown, it really showed us that we do need to get stuff out there and we’re focusing on releasing music.”

With the band’s emphasis having shifted towards recording and producing music, the group are excited to launch their upcoming EP over the next couple of months.

Predominantly a collection of tracks they’ve played at gigs for years, Wright said everyone’s really excited to get the songs out there in a professional sense.

“It’s really fun and collaborative which is the best part because we recorded it at Kindred Studios which is to do with Vic Uni in Yarraville,” she said.

“The day we recorded it, we got all the uni students who were there that day and this group of year 11 and 12 students to come and yell on one of our tracks,

“I’m really excited to release a lot of these tracks, one in particular called Its Sensitivity which is about growing up with my grandmother’s influence, she’s a Jewish refugee from the holocaust, and it’s the first time I’ve written about that so it’s really cool to release.”

Forming the band years earlier while studying in high school, Wright said the music scene in Ballarat was the reason they all found each other.

“Although, the original members are only me, Bevan and Connor and then we met everyone else through gigging and friends, it’s a pretty diverse band in terms of all of our backgrounds,” she said.

“Karova had a big part to do with us all meeting as well.

“We’re all early twenties, our youngest is turning 20 this year, but we’ve been together for four years to started when we were all 17.”

From writing lyrics to producing the tracks, the nine young members of Butterfunked do it completely independently, a system which drums player Matt Murray said works best.

“For the amount that we record and level of detail we like to go into the production, I think it’s best that we do it all ourselves,” he said.

“A lot of members in the band have outside influences as well that are completely different to the actual genre and you can hear a bit of that come through in certain songs.

“There’s a couple of songs on the EP that’s coming out in a few months that have a big psychedelic influence, a bit spacey and weird, but also ties into the band’s sound anyway.”