Music
13.08.2009 / Lucky Fonz III: The Lowlands’ King of Songs
Lucky Fonz III, a singer/songwriter from the Netherlands – known as Otto Wichers when off stage – has returned to South Africa after leaving as a bit of a legend at last year’s annual Oppikoppi Festival in August. According to Lucky Fonz, it is very good indeed to be back.
Speaking of his experience at Oppikoppi, he remarks, “I was so happy last year to play Oppikoppi – especially the big one where the crowd was so appreciative of it. And it went even crazier this year. I’m filled with joy. I’m pretty much ecstatic about it.”
Lucky Fonz III is currently on a two-week tour of South Africa alongside the Dutch rock band, Voisct. On Tuesday night (August 11), both acts played a post-Oppikoppi gig at Tings an’ Times and blew a fresh breeze into the capital city’s beloved live venue. [See below for videos].
Before it all went down, Acoustic Image caught up with the quirky and captivating singer/songwriter that is Lucky Fonz III – to talk a bit about his encounters in South Africa, and conversely, South Africa’s encounter with his music.
On Oppikoppi
Lucky Fonz III’s tours to South Africa were conceived when Misha Loots (Oppikoppi organiser) saw him play at a festival in the north of the Netherlands.
“Somebody from the Dutch Ministry of Culture invited Misha to come and see me. He was there to see Dutch bands, because traditionally, Dutch festivals and Oppikoppi have an exchange thing – we get South African bands and they get Dutch bands. So, after I came off stage, Misha asked me, ‘Hey, do you want to come and play at Oppikoppi?’ And I asked, ‘Oh alright, where is it?’ and he said, ‘South Africa.’ ‘OK, I’m coming!’ He invited me over to the Easter edition of Oppikoppi last year and it was so much fun that they invited me back for the August edition and that was so much fun that I came back this year.”
Lucky Fonz III has so far only been impressed by Oppikoppi.
“I must say it’s a really excellent festival. First of all, the location is really amazing – it’s beautiful, and I like the vibe very much. It gets pretty wild, but people still behave themselves very well – there’s hardly any trouble at all; that’s the amazing thing. And the atmosphere is very good. As an artist you get treated very well, but I can only speak for myself!” he says, laughing. “They take good care of me and everything is very well organised. It’s one of the best festivals in the world, I think. You know, I’ve played quite a few festivals. I like the line-up as well. The South African bands are very good. It’s a high quality festival. It’s just a lot of fun. There’s something special about the place.”
Encountering Gert Vlok Nel
When Lucky Fonz III played at Oppikoppi last year, he was billed shortly after Gert Vlok Nel and mentioned onstage how much he appreciates his music. Interestingly, Lucky Fonz became a fan of Gert Vlok Nel’s music prior to coming to South Africa.
He recalls this discovery: “Somebody gave me a copy of a CD once and said that it’s a songwriter from South Africa. I heard his name before, because in the Netherlands he was mostly known as a poet and some of his poetry was in this anthology of poetry by Gerrit Komrij – a famous anthologist in the Netherlands. When I heard his music, I loved it. It was very hard to find information on it, but then Walter Stokman made a Dutch documentary on it, called Beautiful in Beaufort-Wes – after the song. The strange thing is, up to that point, I’d never even thought of going to South Africa and never even expected to see Gert Vlok Nel play. Then, in 2007 somewhere, I got a phone call from someone asking if I could open for a South African songwriter called Gert Vlok Nel. And I thought, ‘Amazing! He’s playing in the Netherlands, and I get to open up for him!’ He’s become big in the Netherlands after the documentary. All of a sudden he played to sold out places in the Netherlands. There were much bigger crowds there than here [even though] he is almost like a cult figure here. Anyway, when I played at Oppikoppi last year and saw the line-up, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m playing after Gert Vlok Nel!’ – which was fun. And I met him and we talked a lot.”
South African folks
Amongst other South African artists and musicians he’s grown to love, he cites Riku Lätti, with whom he toured last year; the late great Johannes Kerkorrel and the Buckfever Underground. Interestingly, he says, “In the Netherlands I’m a DJ as well, so sometimes I DJ with another singer in a duo, called DJ-Duo de Rotjes. Do you know what a ‘rotje’ is? Well, it’s a fire-cracker. Sometimes I play this track called, I wanna die on a Tuesday afternoon, by the Buckfever Underground. They’re pretty awesome.”
With regards to South Africa’s rather small folk scene, he observes that “the scene might not be that big, but there’s a big tradition – with Koos Kombuis, and so on…”
The Amsterdam folk scene
Lucky Fonz is firmly rooted in Amsterdam’s singer-songwriter scene, which has blossomed in the last few years.
“It’s a self-organised underground and a lot of good performers have come out of it. It’s been going well,” he explains. “A few years ago, all of a sudden, in Amsterdam, the rules were tightened for the licences needed for bands to play in bars… but you didn’t need a live licence to play just guitar. So, all of a sudden, singer-songwriters were popping up!”
Lucky Fonz III also belongs to an initiative called the Amsterdam Songwriters’ Guild: “We try to give people shows at places like Tings 'n Times, but only, in Amsterdam!” he laughs. Like cafés and stuff. It’s quite an active scene.”
'Ik ben een idioot, maar ik spoor niet'
Living in a cosmopolitan city like Amsterdam means that the music scene has a “very international dimension,” he explains, which is also why he predominantly sings in English.
“We have a big market for Dutch-language music as well, and there are a lot of singers who sing in Dutch, but they tend to move outside of alternative circles and outside of music … Usually, when people sing in Dutch, it’s more in theatres.”
Upon returning to the Netherlands, Lucky Fonz will also be doing Dutch theatre shows: “For the first time in my life I’m going to sing in Dutch – which is my native language. The title of the show is, Ik ben een idioot, maar ik spoor niet – it means, ‘I’m an idiot, but I don’t make sense’,” he explains, laughing. There are no immediate plans to do an album version of this project: “It all depends on whether I’m satisfied with it,” he says.
Playful melancholy
Theatre shows are a natural progression for a performer of Lucky Fonz’ calibre, as he is notorious for his live performances. His shows are of a very interesting variety - while his first two albums (Lucky Fonz III and Life Is Short) have a melancholy atmosphere, there are also playful undertones that are amplified when he performs live.
Lucky Fonz explains his theory:
“A lot of my music is pretty dramatic, sombre and intense. I’ve always found that, somehow, when you do jokey stuff, it helps.”
He gives an example: “If you meet somebody, right, the moment the conversation gets going is usually the moment when a joke is made. It somehow breaks down an emotional barrier. So, if you can make somebody laugh, it’s going to be easier to make them cry as well. It is because you establish some kind of emotional bond. There’s also an artistic purpose to my trying to be funny up on stage, because I know it’s going to allow people to get with the melancholy as well. When you are melancholy all of the time, there’s an inflation of melancholy. It has to be balanced. That way the emotional dynamics come out better. So, it’s not just that I’m a clown – which is part of it as well – but it’s also an artistic device, to allow the dynamics of the whole show to breathe a bit. I also find it’s sometimes rather boring if somebody is on stage and it’s only one thing.”
Lucky Fonz prefers playing live, to everything else: “I’ve always felt that my albums never really seem to translate what I’m about, and that my recording only hints at that… But it’s a good thing – it’s either that or the other way around, right? Like, when your albums are brilliant, but you’re not much of a performer, then it would be an actual problem.”
A minimalist
So, Lucky Fonz prefers to play live – and he also prefers to do it alone. After having been in a band, he started to play on his own.
“All of a sudden things started to make sense,” he reflects. “I realised that I’ve always enjoyed solo performers, because I like the idea of stripped-down things. I basically like simple things in general – like in paintings as well. I like things that are sober and abstract, that really focus on the core, rather than the ornaments. So, in music, being solo on stage is a musical reflection of that aesthetic preference. And also, I have always enjoyed live recordings of my favourite solo performers, such as Neil Young and Bob Dylan and stuff. So that was one reason to do it…”
His minimalist stage set-up, which consists of him, an acoustic guitar and a piano, “also has to do with the practical side to things,” he says. “I just can’t be bothered to spend hours of my day listening to drums being set up. I sort of enjoy the fact that it makes everything much more practical and there’s not so much money and hassle involved. It allows me to tour as much as I do. And also, I think I’m a bit of a loner in terms of music. Music has always been a sort of private matter for me.”
On writing
Despite his deep appreciation for music, he does not imagine it becoming his only vocation. “It would be a lie to say that I can’t imagine myself doing something else, because I have been doing something else.”
Performing live is still relatively new to him, as he was first a student and then a teacher before he started his career in music a few years ago.
He adds, “I don’t think I will do this forever. I like to write literature and I want to try to do that as well. I sometimes also get bored with aspects of what I do now.”
The downside to being a musician is, ironically, performing so often. This is upsetting to Lucky Fonz, who feels the creative process is often neglected, since life on tour does not enable him to constantly write new music and produce new albums in the way “some writers can churn out a new book every year.”
Repetition is not in his repertoire, which is why he wants to write more: “I know if I’m going to take writing seriously, I’m going to have to quit music. Well, I could see myself taking half a year off and writing a novel. And I’ve already started to make different moves, because the theatre show that I’m going to do is not only going to be music; it’s going to be theatre as well. There are going to be monologues and even more comedy...”
Getting into character
The role-play involved in the “Lucky Fonz III” character, created for his live performances, hints at his capacity to act.
“There’s a lot of acting in what I do. I think that in my show and in my songs, I take on roles, and it might be inspired by things I experience myself... you know, the usual – life as a source of creativity. But that doesn’t mean that every aspect to what you do is completely autobiographical. I mean, in order to be creative, you need to use everything that you can get, basically. So, to give you an example: if you hear me sing a song, it could be about something I’ve experienced and that has meant a lot to me. It could also be some movie that I saw, and I thought, ‘oh, that could make a nice song’; or it could be something that I’ve made up – like a hypothetical situation in my head, you know – and you will never know, because where it comes from doesn’t really matter. What matters is whatever happens when the song is heard. But having said that, of course, I do use a lot of personal stuff in what I do. Because it’s what you know, right?”
The road ahead
His third album, A Family Like Yours*, has progressed from the ‘playful melancholy’ of his previous two albums, to happier, lively songs that are to an extent reminiscent of The Beatles.
And, rightly so: “Well, that can only make sense, because I love the Beatles!” he laughs.
Where will his music go from here? Lucky Fonz himself doesn’t know.
“You only find out afterwards. It’s like when you take a car and drive somewhere and only once you get there, you find out where you’ve been driving all along. With my last record, we took the more happy songs and we gave them an upbeat sound, because I’ve already made Life is Short, which is a very melancholy record. So, I figured, it would be good for me to balance out my repertoire. But, of course, the question is what I’m going to do now. I’m going to have to get a band together somehow. In the Netherlands, I’ve played just about everywhere with my guitar, and I feel I’m coming to the point where I have to somehow do something else. I don’t know what it is yet; maybe something with beats. It might sound strange, but I really enjoy house music, and I might want to get involved with it. So who knows? Only time will tell.” // End
*Copies of the album, A Family Like Yours, were sent to South Africa, but got lost in the mail. South Africans will therefore have to wait a little while longer to hear the full album. In the meantime, you can go listen to some tracks and check out his last few South African tour dates on myspace.com/luckyfonziii / luckyfonziii.com
Watch two videos from his show at Tings 'n Times (11/09/2009) below:
"All My Days" [full song]
"Leave Your Body" & "My Daughter" (featuring Tjeerd from Voicst)
Tags: Lucky Fonz III, Folk