Up to their necks in it for 30 years

CELEBRATED nineties funk band Skunkhour is commemorating the 30th anniversary of its seminal hit Up to Our Necks in It with a tour hitting the region next month.

For the eternally youthful-looking frontman, Aya Larkin, more than three decades in the business is not what makes him feel old.

“I’m completely reconciled to that – we’ve marked a couple of other anniversaries,” Larkin said.

“Having teenage kids is what’s freaking me out in terms of the passage of time. My 15-year-old boy just rocketed up to my height – he’s grown six inches in a year.

“I’m not freaked out that 30 years have gone by because I’ve been on the stage for that long, and it just goes incrementally and imperceptibly. It’s the kids!”

Emerging in the early 1990s, in an era marked by grunge, rave culture, and hip hop, Skunkhour blazed a trail by blending its eclectic influences with rap and brass sections and creating its fusion of hip hop, acid jazz, alternative rock, and funk.

The raw, jazzy, Up to Our Necks in It from the sophomore 1995 album, Feed, crossed markets and boundaries with radio play across commercial, community, and ABC radio, also featuring on triple j’s Hottest 100.

Still the band’s most popular track, its success helped seal the deal with the UK’s Acid Jazz label.

The origin story is one of legend. Guitarist Warwick Scott woke from a dream with the signature riff and chords in his head.

The band began jamming the melancholic, introspective tune, and the rest was history.

Despite disbanding, reforming, and repeated chart success, as well as the highs and lows of life as a professional musician, the band’s creative identity has survived and thrived.

Inspiration remains abundant for the singer who said his creative output remained as constant as ever.

“I woke up in the middle of last night and recorded a new idea using the voice notes on my phone,” Larkin said.

“I’ve got a home studio and I’m always putting together tracks. That’s just me. Some of them might be for a solo thing, and some might be for the band, if they’re feeling it.

“We’re still sharing ideas, and that creative dialogue is still happening.

“It’s a big undertaking to carve out the time and the focus to do four tracks when you’ve got separate lives going on, but we will record new music, hopefully sooner rather than later.”

While celebrating the song of the hour, Larkin said the tour would include more recent work.

“It’s our biggest song and has a bit of respect for what it represented when it came out,” he said.

“But we have a lot of music to pick from, and we did an EP in 2022 and released a couple of singles.

“We’re not one of those bands that’s going to force feed you music just because it’s new, but a few of the new ones have their own merits, and they go down really well live.”

For tickets, visit skunkhour.com.au/gigs