Award-winning musician Troy Kingi set himself a challenge to release 10 albums in 10 genres in 10 years. A documentary revealing his journey to Joshua Tree National Park in the US in search of inspiration for his eighth album has just dropped on TVNZ+. He sat down with Te Karere’s Lineni Tuitupou to talk about the trip where he embarked on a spiritual desert hīkoi that led to his latest offering.
Lineni Tuitupou: The mission you’re on wanting to put out 10 albums in 10 genres in 10 years – how’s that going?
Troy Kingi: This trip over to America was to work on the eighth album, and the documentary that’s just came out – Troy Kingi’s Desert Hīkoi – I think it touches on my creative block.
The last couple of albums have felt like mahi, they haven’t flowed like earlier albums, so I’ve really had to work hard at them. So, this trip, I was hoping to rekindle the flow that I had in earlier albums, reconnect with what brought me into the music industry in the very beginning.
I’ll just say, I went over there with three half-pai songs and we came back with 17. So something happened over there!
You spoke about the Joshua Tree [National Park], and the thing about us Māori, we’re very spiritual with whenua, awa – did you have a similar experience of connection while in the desert (why you came up with 17 songs from that place)?
One thing that was important to me was, you know, whenever we as Māori go anywhere new, we’re waewae tapu, so trying to find tangata whenua from that iwi, from that clan and Joshua Tree [to link up with].
We were able to find a doctor from the Kawiya tribe and he ended up taking us right into the Old Woman Mountains which was like four hours, middle-of-nowhere, off-road – we didn’t even know where he was taking us. We had no reception, and by the time we got there it was getting dark. Then he ended up taking us into this cave which he said was a portal into another realm.
You could only go in three at a time because it was such a small square. So we crawled in, and once you got in, it would open up and there was this big 40-foot drop into a bigger cave system.
Then he just started doing, I think it was a hummingbird song, which was like [starts to vocalise], with a shaker, and you just sat there in silence.
Then he asked me if I wanted to offer anything up and the first waiata that come to my head was Te Aomuhurangi so I was just like, ‘Kāore te…’ and I just sung that, and everyone who was waiting outside said it just went completely silent.
Even though it was a quiet day anyway, it was just dead still, the insects stopped, and as soon as I finished singing this big gust of wind just blew straight through the cave and I was just like, woah.
The doctor was just like, ‘that’s our ancestors coming through’ and I was like, yeah, I believe that, that’s what it felt like.
I feel like that played a big part in the outcome of what we went over there to achieve. Yeah, it was life changing, it was crazy.
Was it a first-time experience for you having a spiritual moment like that?
I’ve had moments like that before, but I feel like overseas, that’s the first time I’ve felt that experience overseas. Apart from going to Raiatea in Tahiti, it’s the first time I’ve actually felt connected to the place.
Even though you think of America as westernised, you know, all of that thing, it was the first I’ve actually felt connected to that whenua and the people of that whenua.
So yeah, I think that played a big part in me feeling tau, feeling grounded, and if I hadn’t done that, I don’t know what would happen, whether the album would have even gotten finished or what. I’m glad we got to do that.
You also had a long day travelling so your body must’ve been exhausted, and sometimes when our bodies are exhausted that’s when we usually feel more vulnerable so that probably played a part too to feel more spiritually open?
Yeah, it was so hot over there, and yeah, like you said, probably the exhaustion of getting out there, the heat of the summer day.
But it’s similar to [what] they call this ‘golden hour’ which is about 2am in the morning for writers.
Whether you’re writing scripts or you’re writing songs, the golden hour is the time where the realm opens to the other side, or to your ancestors, and I feel like it’s just that point where you’re just so tired but you’re on the brink where you have no more filter, you’re open to whatever comes, so whatever happens happens, and that was definitely one of those moments.
Yeah, I’ve done this golden hour thing a few times; wake up the next day, and there’s this song that I can’t remember writing. It was similar to that sort of thing.
Thank you for sharing that. What other things did you learn about yourself when you were writing music there, especially being away from home?
I feel like the biggest thing I learned was trusting myself and trusting my instincts.
We went over there trying to replicate or find this desert rock sound that for me is like, that’s the taumata for me, like where we recorded, Rancho de la Luna, is my holy place. My favourite album of all time, Songs for the Deaf [by American rock band Queens of the Stone Age] was recorded there.
So we were trying to capture some of that magic. In the end, we didn’t have to try anything but be ourselves and let our experiences and the environment just work into the songs. We didn’t have to sound like we were in some dirty, dusty, middle-of-the-desert – it just works its way [in], it just seeps into your music. You just gotta let it happen.
And people listen to the album, people that have listened to some of the songs are just like, ‘this feels like the desert’, and we weren’t even trying to do the desert, we were just in the desert and that’s what it sounds like.
Your upcoming album is a rock album – has rock always been a passion for you?
I feel like rock is kind of my origin story, so coming through Te Aute College way back in the days, we only listened to RnB and hip hop.
And moving to a predominantly white town like Kerikeri in the early 2000s, all they listened to was rock and alternative rock, and metal, so it was a culture shock, but also exciting and that’s probably where that style of music became my thing.
[When] you listen to my very first album Guitar Party there’s definitely little specks of that coming through that album, but this one was kind of a homecoming going back to that thing that got me excited in the first place.
Even for our drummer Treye [Liu], he’s been with me since the first album, and I found him as a rock drummer. Since then we’ve done a folk album, funk, soul, reggae, and this one just felt like him, like it’s the best drums he’s played. It was him returning back to himself, so I’m excited for people to hear this one, it’s good.
Like what you said, a lot of our people are into RnB and reggae, so what kind of things can they expect from this album?
Expect the unexpected, and I feel like early on in my career when I was [around] album one to three, I was worried about alienating my fanbase. They might love my soul album and then think that’s the vibe and then the next one they’re like, ‘what the hell?’
But I’ve got such an amazing fanbase, they’re like ‘what are you doing next, are you doing a techno album?’ And then they hear that I’m going to the desert – ‘Is it going to be some desert rock stuff? Oh man!’
There’s one mean example: When I was doing the folk tour, which is my fifth album, and it was a seated one in theatres, we had a whole lot of these Māori come in [and] I’m thinking, oh, they’ve come for the Holy Colony [Burning Acres] reggae vibes. Then they sit down and me and Delaney [Davidson] are doing this weird thing with a screen projecting weird stuff, and then afterwards they come up like ‘it’s the best thing I’ve seen in my life’.
I feel like I’m putting a style of music on to people that would probably never listen to that style of music so that’s always cool. When people hear something they probably never would have heard before and start listening to that style of music, you know?
I knew stuff-all about folk before I went into that one so I’m learning as well, as I go.
It sounds like the first album was more related to what our people would listen to, so as you’ve progressed with each album, is it now feeling like you’re in a music space where you’ve always wanted to be producing music that you’ve always wanted to put out?
I know that this one that we did in the desert [has] always been one that I’ve been excited to do.
I didn’t think it was going to be the eighth, I thought it was going to be a bit earlier on, but it’s just the way that it’s panned out. I also feel like with experience comes wisdom. The more I write the more I can hone my craft the better I can put a song together or an album together.
A lot of things come into play, but this one in particular I have been waiting a long time to do this one. Yeah.
When are you going to release the album and what particular songs do you want people to listen to?
Well, on our media release it says August the 21st which is a long way away, but we’re hoping to bring it closer to the start of July.
So just under two months hopefully but, in saying that, we’ve got a single coming out this month called Oh Sally which is about sharks. That’s all I’m going to say about that song.
There is one song that I want people to listen to, probably Ride the Rhino which I feel like encapsulates the freedom that I had in the desert where I had no filters, it just happened. That was the most flowy song and for me, it’s the song that bangs the hardest as well.
Parts of this interview has been edited for brevity.
Troy Kingi’s 10:10:10 challenge timeline
2024 – [yet to be released]
2023 – Time Wasters: Soundtrack to Current Day Meanderings (Instrumental) – The Room Service
2022 – Year of the Ratbags and Their Musty Theme Songs (80s) – The Promises
2021 – Black Sea Golden Ladder (Folk) – The Senses
2020 – The Ghost of Freddie Cesar (Funk) – The Clutch
2019 – Holy Colony Burning Acres (Deep Roots) – The Upperclass
2017 – Shake That Skinny Ass All the Way to Zygerton (Psychedelic Soul) – The Galactic Chiropractors
2016 – Guitar Party at Uncle’s Bach (Dirt Blues/Soul/Rock) – The Electric Haka Boogie
Glossary
hīkoi – walk, journey
mahi – work
half-pai – incomplete, half done, “half-baked”
whenua – land, ground, country
awa – river
waewae tapu – newcomer, rare visitor
tangata whenua – local, indigenous people
iwi – tribe
waiata – song
Te Aomuhurangi – an action song performed by Te Kapa Haka o Te Whānau a Apanui in 1998 at the Aotearoa Traditional Māori Performing Arts Festival (now known as Te Matatini) in Wellington
tau – settle
taumata – pinnacle
