Culture

With a vibrancy befitting his cartoon alter ego, Hopepa warmed up the small alcove we were forced under by the rain in a way only someone living their dream can. Having been drawn into the fold of Fat Freddy's Drop only months after their inception, his bad ho jelly-roll dance moves and loose maneuvres on the trombone have become one of the defining characteristics of the Freddy's experience.

His inclusion into the group occurred with ease – “I would turn up to their gigs, and was really excited by what they were doing. I thought 'I could do that,' so I brought my horn and waited for them to invite me on stage. I'd wait to catch Warren [Maxwell] or Mu's eye to get invited up to play a solo. Toby [Laing] was busy with the Black Seeds often, and Warren was busy with Trinity Roots, and so I'd get the call from Mu to play. After a while I was doing so many gigs that they thought I better get signed up – persistence pays off in that regard.”
After the travails of their debut Based On A True Story – an “onerous, drawn-out, painful process” according to Hopepa – the band became a national success story, and received international accolades as well. Their underground nature almost resulted in the exclusion of their key single, ‘Wandering Eye’, a tune thought of as 'too obvious' – “It's been a blessing and a curse,” explains Hopepa, “it's brought a lot of attention and success from the mainstream, but it's not really who we are in terms of how we make music. We're almost trying to rejoin the underground in a way.”
The nationalistic fervour surrounding Fat Freddy's success would seem to make that rejoining a tricky procedure. “It's good to be appreciated by as many people as possible, and I'm not trying to be elitist, but you don't want to be caught dumbing your shit down because you want to make some sales. I don't feel we think about that shit too much in a way. It's more – this is the song, this is how we think it should go, and keep true to that.”
And the band are still keeping it live, and creating new music every time they perform, as attendees of The Freddy's Show in Dunedin on June 6 will be able to attest. “We try to keep it live and improvise. I love that fear of fucking shit up, it's really good. It's really liberating and stimulating. I love it when we fuck up. Sometimes when you come up with your best shit is when you're doing something wrong, and I'm doing shit wrong all the time.”
 
The Freddy's Show
Sunday 6th June, The Regent Theatre, Dunedin. Tickets from Ticket Direct and Amplifier.