[Republish] A Very Kiwi Interview With… The Raddlers

Just trying to be serious. The Raddlers, L-R: Chas Wakefield, Kevin Fernando, Liam Wahrlich, Baily Lelieveld and Jack Nolan.

First published on Welcome to the Gig on 1st June, 2021.

On a wet Saturday evening, we huddled around a piano ahead of The Raddlers first show as a full band in months at the University of Canterbury (UC) bar, The Foundry. I caught up with Baily Lelieveld, Chas Wakefield, Kevin Fernando, Jack Nolan and Liam Wahrlich who make up local five piece Christchurch-formed Indie band for a chat about how they came together to create masterpieces of music, how they formed through UCSA/TuneSoc, how they make it work with living in three different cities and what is next for the band.

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So I’m here with the guys from The Raddlers to do a wee interview for Welcome to the Gig, welcome guys!

Liam: Hello!
Baily: Thanks for having us, it’s going to be fun.

If you guys could introduce yourselves and what you do in the band, that would be awesome.

Jack: I’m Jack, I’m the drummer and apart from that, I live abroad. [This is where I need to mention that Jack was joking about living abroad]
Baily: I’m Baily, I do a bit of singing and yeah, general stuff.
Chas: I’m Chas. Hi guys, I’m Chas.

What do you do in the band, Chas?

Chas: I play a bit of guitar and help Baily sing sometimes.
Liam: My name is Liam and I play bass in the band.
Kevin: Hello, I’m Kevin and I do the guitar, the lead guitar, and some back up for Baily and Chas. I help Chas help Baily.

So, it all goes in a big circle, you need all the help you can get with a five person band!

Jack: Really big job!

A pyramid of Raddlers boys, pre-gig.

 How are you guys doing tonight, how are you feeling about the gig?

Liam: Feeling good. Feeling good. Spirits are high!
Chas: Excited actually. I’m keen to play in The Foundry. Been to like, open mic nights, but never done a proper gig, so I reckon it’s going to be packed.
Liam: It’s going to be packed.
Baily: It’s going to be packed like sardines. Intimate. Sweaty.
Jack: It’s going to be kind of cool to do like, the whole round thing, you know? Like we did lots of nights in the actual, what we consider the actual Foundry.
Chas: The old Foundry.

Oh, the one across the carpark, yeah.
Jack: Yeah, like, we’ve done the Ngaio Marsh [theatre in Haere-Ora, beside the new Foundry], but it’s not, it’s not really the same, it doesn’t have the same vibe. It’s cool to do the smaller venue.

It’s like more intimate as well and you get to chat to people, which is cool.

Kevin: It’s almost like inception as well, because one of our first gigs was opening for Lime Cordiale at The Foundry and that was like, August of 2018.
Baily: Way back in the day.
Jack: Say, like, if you wanted to include some music for this answer, you could do “Don’t Forget Your Roots” by Six60.

That’s great, yes! We will go with that, Jack.

Kevin: Now you have to cut scene.

You guys are hilarious! Alright, so how did The Raddlers come to be?

Baily: Uh, yeah, so through TuneSoc, the Universities music club. They host a whole lot of events throughout the year to support kind of local, upcoming musicians who maybe want to give it a go. There was a jam night over in the Ilam fields pavilion white shed, groove room uh, and we mostly really didn’t know each other and we ended up being in the same place, at the same time and we were the last ones standing because everyone else went home. Yeah, so we were playing ‘Lose My Mind’ [2018 single] and we were really excited because we were writing new music and we’d never really done that before.
Kevin: Yeah, so we still have a video of us, that was the first time jamming.
Chas: Actually, I came across it the other day and we all look very, very young.
Kevin: We were so nervous as well, we wanted to impress and be like “oh, do you like what I’m playing?”
Jack: Yeah, yeah. I remember, fucking shaking while playing.
Liam: You were amazing. I remember, you walked in and started playing and saying “this guy is incredibly good.”
Baily: I’ll be honest, I always felt a little intimidated by you guys because you’re all very talented musicians and I was like “oh my god.”

Now you guys need to compliment Baily back!

Baily: No, no, no, it’s cool because we like, uh, before we knew each other, like, we were learning to communicate through our music which was quite a cool thing because, you learn about your personalities afterwards. You write the songs first. Kind of a weird way to meet people.

No, but that’s a good way to meet people, because most of the time, it’s not like that. That’s a good thing.

Baily: Works really well for us.
Jack: It’s about the music, man!

So, TuneSoc was pretty beneficial for getting you guys together as a band, yeah.

Liam: It helped us a lot when we first started, helping with gigs and things.
Kevin: The UCSA as well, they helped us get [an opening for] Lime Cordiale and it was really good working with them.
Baily: You go from doing house parties like the other week at Lunar Intruder’s, the humble beginnings, and kind of go for every opportunity that comes after that.
Jack: Yeah, we’ve met some pretty cool bands through UCSA.
Baily: Bootleg Rascal.
Liam: Dolphin Friendly, Shag Rock.
Jack: So, yeah. We’re in a band, so we obviously like - [everyone laughs]

You don’t say!

Jack: Yeah, but we obviously like expressing ourselves and talking, so you might need to shut us up!

Oh, it’s all good, as long as you don’t miss your gig, it’s fine.

Jack: So basically to summarize: TuneSoc.
Baily: Yeah, TuneSoc.

So, you released your outstanding second EP, Aroha Nui, in October last year, what was the creative process like behind that EP?

Liam: Yeah, that was a lot.
Baily: Oh, ah… So, that was released 2020, so that was the pandemic year. I don’t know, we kind of wrote a lot of the songs -
Chas: We wrote the jist of most of the songs just before lockdown.
Baily: Yeah. In January/February, like we’d just come off the Shag Rock tour, we were basking in the after glow of just traveling the country you know, haha - [the guys start singing a song about after glow, me, being totally oblivious to what song this is]
Liam: It took a while for it to come around.
Chas: Yeah, it really did. Then recording it, we did Aroha Nui, the song, remotely during lockdown and that was a mission.
Liam: We did ‘A Little While’
Chas: Oh, was it ‘A Little While’?
Baily: So, just before lockdown, Jack was sitting in a shed and he recorded the drums for all the songs.
Liam: That was like a year.
Baily: We had to add it layer, by layer, by layer as people recorded their instruments and sent them to Chas to download them and then put them together.
Chas: Then I’d send them back and yeah.
Baily: So it was quite a huge process.
Kevin: It tested us for our relationship.

Oh wow, I didn’t realise it was like that, that’s crazy!

Baily: Yeah, it’s pretty fun. Pretty happy to have it live.
Jack: That’s when we think about making more music.

So, that kind of seg-ways into my next question, because you guys live in different cities, right?

Baily: Two of us.

Three of you guys are in Christchurch [Baily, Liam and Kevin] and two of you are up North [Chas is in Auckland and Jack is in Tauranga], so how does that work with practices and making new music and stuff?

Kevin: It doesn’t really work, in the sense of like, we obviously want to make it work, but like, you just have to live with the fact that we can’t be around each other as much.
Chas: We can’t do regular practices or anything.
Kevin: No, yeah. So, we’ve done shows, like when we were in Queenstown with Corduroy., we played the show without ever actually practising.
Chas: We hadn’t played together in like, two months and it actually went alright.
Baily: Was this Yonder?
Kevin: Yeah, two months. I found it awkward for me, anyway.
Baily: I loved it, I was watching the livestream, it was a lot of fun.

I watched that livestream and loved it. You wouldn’t have known you didn’t practice beforehand.

Kevin: We did it once before, playing for Shag Rock in Auckland, that was our first time playing for two months and we nailed it!
Baily: It’s kind of interesting, you take kind of a break and come back to it and it’s like “oh! So good.”
Jack: It’s like when you get caught up in the details, especially this band, we’re very picky, so sometimes we’ve got paralysis by analysis, we do quite well when we don’t worry as much, yeah.
Chas: At the moment, we just have to make it work where we can. When we come down, we have to line up a practice and yeah.
Baily: Book something months in advance and make sure you get the practice in. Even just the night before or early in the morning, then if not, yeah.

Jack: Take the red eye [flight].

Then be tired at your show!

Liam: I think that the tiredness goes away at the show.

That huge positive energy from being up there, yeah.

Liam: Have a few beers and you’re good to go.

What is the best tour story that you have? Have you had a crazy fan experiences or anything?

Kevin: I was asked to sign someone’s back. Someone’s Raddlers tee. The back.
Chas: I thought you meant just like they lifted up their t-shirt and you signed their back.
Kevin: I think our coolest tour story was when we played Soundsplash in Timaru and got back and had to sleep three hours because we had a flight to Wellington the next morning [for the Shag Rock tour].
Baily: I really liked Half Moon Baby in Wellington, as afterwards we had kick-ons for ages at the bar.
Chas: Oh yeah, a karaoke bar, with a group of 20 musicians, it was shocking.
Baily: Yeah, tour stories. They generally go according to plan.

Baily and Chas playing at Soundsplash Timaru, January 2020.

Okay, I might ask you guys individually this next question as your answers may differ from each others. If you could have written a song by a different artist, what would it be?

Chas: And call it our own song?
Jack: Like steal a song?
Kevin: That’s a tough question.
Chas: Probably something like ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon.
Kevin: I want to say ‘Politik’ by Coldplay or ‘A Rush of Blood to the Head’. Anything from that album.
Baily: Ah yeah, Coldplay.
Kevin: I want to write every song by Coldplay.
Chas: Mozart.
Jack: I think I’d look at the most played thing on Spotify.
Kevin: ‘Shape of You’ by Ed Sheeran.
Baily: Is it?
Chas: No, isn’t it um, Coldplay? What is the most played song?
Baily: Not Coldplay. Slight change to the question, I guess, favourite song at the moment that I would love to claim as my own is… I don’t know, ‘Getting Warmer’ by Mild Orange. I would like to claim any of their songs, that would be great.
Liam: I would probably do, you know The Strokes? I’m going through a massive phase of them, total fanboy right now, so probably ‘Hard to Explain’ by The Strokes. For sure.

All good songs.

Baily: Pink Floyd.
Chas: ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond.’
Kevin: Oh yeah, that’s a good one!
Baily: Yeah, claim that one.
Jack: ‘Miss Independent’ by Ne-Yo.

Alright, Baily and Liam…

Liam: Hello.

You guys have just started the LAB Music Show, right? [The Liam and Baily Music Show]. So, tell me about that? How’s that going?

Liam: So, basically, I was staying at a friends place and they had a person kind of staying with them and she was, I can’t remember what she does, she works at Plains FM, I think she organises people that have radio shows and, so I was talking to her about the band and she was like “oh, would you be keen to start a radio show and talk about the youth in Christchurch?” and I was like “yeah, that sounds perfect! I know a perfect guy [to co-host] who would love to do that, which happens to be Baily. It helps that we live together so that we can kind of plan things.
Baily: Got a band together as well, kind of got a bit of history together, it was quite interesting.
Chas: Bit of a history, huh?
Jack: That’s a good song. By One Direction. History. Fucking love that jam.
Liam: But no, it helps that we know a couple of bands, so we can kind of get people in and talk about it. We had Lunar Intruder, two of the boys in from Lunar Intruder last Tuesday, talked to them about it.
Jack: Boys. Men. Whatever you want to call them.
Baily: Yeah, because we kind of started with 20 minute sessions and that was like, testing the waters as we’ve never done this before, we don’t know how to run a radio show - all the previous episodes were pre-recorded and edited because we didn’t trust ourselves to do it live. But, eventually we did our first live show and now we’re doing hour slots because we’re so good at it [laughs].

I’ve listened to it, it’s great and I love it, you guys are naturals!

Liam: Thank you!
Baily: Yeah, no, it’s a lot of fun.
Liam: We love incorporating the awkwardness. Like - if there is a weird awkward silence, we like to keep that in. Bad jokes.
Baily: Bad jokes, yeah.

Nice! I have another question for you - will there be a Raddlers album one day?

Baily: Hope so.
Liam: We’ve got so much material, we could do it.
Baily: Yeah, we would just need to set aside enough time to just get it done. That’s the hardest thing.
Chas: Yeah, it’s entirely a possibility.
Jack: I mean, yeah, there’s a chance.
Baily: There’s a fair bit of logistics to work out.
Jack: It would be desirable, but unlikely.

That’s sad. Well, your fans will be very sad to hear that, I’m very sad to hear that.

Jack: Under promise, overdeliver, you know?
Baily: But I also think, we’ve been doing this for three years now and I think it’s quite a huge part of most of our lives. I don’t know, it’s going to keep going, you know.
Liam: We’ve all grown to love it and we love doing music.

Well, you guys are doing amazing and it’s great you’re still around three years later, even if you just keep releasing EPs and not an album, people will still keep listening.

Baily: I feel like EPs are better than albums in some regards.
Liam: Short and sweet.

Most NZ bands are releasing EPs rather than albums at the moment, I’ve noticed, so that’s quite interesting.

Kevin: Yeah. [So we] try and take it one step at a time, I think. Try and smash out a single by the year. We’ve got a new one which we’ve been working on, so hopefully we will get that one out and then see how that takes us in terms of playing shows and what not and go from there, really.
Chas: Debuting that single tonight.

That’s exciting! Do we get to know the name?

Chas: Yeah, do we get to know the name of what it is?

Oh, so you guys don’t know the name either?

Chas: Do you want to choose the name?

Oh yeah! Once I hear it, I’ll definitely want to choose the name.

Liam: We played it during soundcheck. It goes “bum bum bum, bababa da ba bum bum”
Chas: It’s going to translate really well to the blog, make sure you get enough “bums”

What was the inspiration behind your latest single, ‘A Little While’?

Baily to Kevin: That was your baby.
Kevin: Yeah, I got bored in my room once, I was procrastinating from ironing my shirts for work, I think it was and then I set up Chas’ loop that I got to borrow and then I sort of wrote the riff, then wrote the bass line as well, put it to the boys and then yeah. It all seemed to click and then we met up. Lyrics-wise, it took a bit longer, but, it took ‘A Little While’. It had a fair bit to do with isolation and stuff, so if you look at the album artwork, it’s actually like this guy floating and while he may be moving, whilst floating, he is also stagnant.
Baily: It was also a lockdown song, eh?
Kevin: Yeah, because we produced that during lockdown.
Jack: Yeah, it was literally in lockdown eh.
Kevin: Yeah, level 4.

Well, it’s one of the fan favourites, it’s such a good song.

Kevin: This is a fangirl moment for us, as George Berry from The Butlers really likes the song and he’s always getting in touch with us going like “oooh, love ‘A Little While!’” So my dream, or our dream, would be to have George Berry sing with us.

Pre-pandemic gigs. January, 2020.

Would you go back in time and change anything about your previous music?

Baily: Just the musicians.
Chas: Like our recorded music, because we’ve produced it all ourselves, there’s so much that I would change and I know Baily would change. It’s uh, a constant battle for it to sound how you want it to sound and then to be happy with the finished product.
Jack: The only one I’ve been happy with is ‘A Little While’ in terms of the quality, the production… But that doesn’t mean the people [Chas and Baily] haven’t done an amazing job.
Chas: Yeah and it’s kind of not anything major in the songs, it’ll be one tiny little sound or tone or something, tiny little bits, yeah that stick out, but then after a while, you forget about it all.
Kevin: It’s a special thing, it’s us in that moment in time, right? The 2019 EP [Tesky], it just like, takes us back to very cold evenings in Chas’ bedroom, just huddled up, just chatting, deliberating and disagreeing and stuff, but it’s a special moment.
Jack: And that bloody garage! We practiced in Chas’ flats garage last year and it was very drafty and it had like, holes and it was just gib board and frame and no insulation, it was like practicing outside.
Kevin: It wasn’t safe.
Liam: I found that personally from a lot of the recordings from Aroha Nui, I kind of came up with them on the spot while recording them. If I could go back and change that, I would change that actually and take some time into putting something better together.

You’ve opened for bands such as Mako Road and Dolphin Friendly… Who would you guys like to open for next, or go on tour with?

Chas: Coldplay.
Baily: I really want to meet those guys.
Kevin: Mako Road as well, I genuinely think that would be so cool.

I mean, you guys did in 2019 right? That was cool.

Kevin: Yeah, we did. It was three days after I had surgery as well. I wasn’t supposed to play, but we couldn’t turn it down. It was like, as long as I don’t dance or move around much on stage, I’ll be good and I just like, stayed in one place and played everything.

Kevin, Liam and Chas playing at Rollickin’ in April 2021.

Last question! You guys recently played at Rollickin’ (gelato shop), or some of you did, how did you find that?

Liam: Scary! I loved it, but it was scary because it was very open and intimate, people were like at your feet and the lighting was well lit and people could see you, really focused.
Chas: It was fun though.
Kevin: People wanted to hear us talk about stuff as well, they weren’t there to just be like “ah, give us bangers” like, we want to hear how you’re going.

It was all acoustic, wasn’t it? It was quite cool. I thought you guys nailed it.
Was funny to see you guys swapping through the two doors as there were so many people you couldn’t get past them!

Baily: It’s just very different to what we’re used to. So, it was like, oh shit.

Would you do it again?

Baily: Oh absolutely!
Liam: 100%!
Baily: Get another ice cream flavour.

Awesome, well thanks guys, that was cool!

Baily: Thanks for being with us every step of the way. You’re like part of the band.

I will happily come on tour with you guys, any time!

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A very special thank you to Baily, Liam, Chas, Kevin and Jack for taking the time out of their evening to let me do this interview with them, it was a lot of fun!

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Catch the guys at their next gig at the Go Live! event at the Christchurch Town Hall, 24th July from 7:30pm - details here.

Find The Raddlers on their socials and Spotify, all linked below -

Facebook: The Raddlers
Instagram: @theraddlers
Spotify: The Raddlers
The LAB Music Show

Do you need a sixth member of the band, boys? I volunteer!

Far too much fun catching up!

The Raddlers rocking out The Foundry, 29th May 2021. What a gig! What a vibe! The crowd was loving every second.