Cape Town indie band return home after international success
|||With an album reflecting on the past, it’s fitting that Civil Twilight return home, writes Helen Herimbi
CAPE TOWN-born and American-based band, Civil Twilight, are coming back home. The indie-rock quartet are comprised of brothers Steven (bass, lead vocalist and songwriter) and Andrew McKellar (guitar) as well as Richard Wouters (drums) and Kevin Dailey (keyboard).
They will co-headline the inaugural Lush Festival in Clarens over the Easter weekend. They will also play the Parklife Gourmet Food and Music Festival on March 28. Both events will also feature the Australian multi-instrumentalist, Xavier Rudd.
Speaking from his home in Nashville, Steven McKellar told me the band were looking forward to playing alongside Rudd, but were even more excited to be playing at home.
“It’s wonderful,” he started, “I’m sure it’s going to be a very excited crowd. I’ve never been to Clarens, but I’ve heard it’s quite pretty.”
“We haven’t prepared anything yet, but we will probably throw in some B-sides,” he said of the set they’ll play.
“I’d love to get some guests in. My dream guests… Johnny Clegg would be amazing. I’m thinking of reaching out. Another one is either Arno Carstens or the trumpet player from Springbok Nude Girls, Adriaan Brand. I’m good mates with the Gangs of Ballet guys so it would be nice to do something with them.”
It’s a big deal to McKellar to be returning home to perform; their journey to becoming what is now an international band that is a main stage music festival mainstay has been a long one. In 2005, the band moved from the Mother City and lived in Los Angeles where they recorded Human. The song went on to be featured in TV shows like The Vampire Diaries, Alias and House.
But it wasn’t until the smash hit, Letters From the Sky, became a radio fave and was featured in just under 20 TV shows that the band really made it. The song appeared on Civil Twilight’s eponymous debut album in 2010. Seeing that the track still gets mentioned, even though the band released their third album in the middle of last year, I asked McKellar if they ever get tired of playing it in their set.
“Letters From the Sky never gets exhausting to play,” he excitedly told me. “It’s always incredibly fun. I think that’s got to do with that fact that we wrote that song with no other purpose than to have fun. And the fact that people enjoy it as much as they do is kind of exciting. It’s a nice little bonus.
“It’s a song we would’ve played whether it got the same exposure or not. Every time we play that song, it’s always fun and the energy we get from the audience when we play it is always worth it. We’ve played that song for thousands of people and to empty rooms for, like, eight years, so it never gets tiring.”
Civil Twilight’s latest album is called Story of an Immigrant and sees them reflect on life abroad in the title track. “That title song was the song that kicked things off for us,” McKellar shared.
“We took some time off to go and write and I remember I wrote in my bedroom on (music app) Garage Band and played it to the guys. We just felt that it had something in it that was leading the way.
“So we ran with that and a lot of the songs (on the album) came from that sense. It was one of those mysterious things where it calls your name rather than vice versa. That’s the path we knew we should take. The song was never intended to be about our personal story. It was actually something else.
“But we ended up going down that path of looking back at South Africa and growing up there and our journey to being here after all these years. We thought it was perfect to be the title of the album.”
Their single, When When, continues this common thread of looking back as it opens with the line: Late September, I heard myself on the radio/There’s a first time for everything.
I asked McKellar to elaborate on that time and he laughed. “I think that line was kind of just made up,” he said. “There was probably a time when I did hear myself on the radio in late September. Probably in 2010 or 2009. I think it’s a subconscious blurb of us looking back and that old-school thrill of when you hear yourself on the radio. It’s kind of strange to be hearing your voice and reacting to it.”
But he’ll be hearing a lot more of his voice if the band’s future plans are anything to go by.
“We’re going to do some festivals. That’s pretty much all we have planned for this year,” he told me.
“We’ll probably look at recording at the end of the year. But we’re all kind of doing our own thing right now. I just got back from spending two months in South Africa and my brother is about to go and spend a month-and-a-half there with his girl.
“I think we have this immense privilege to be able to do something like that. We always look forward to coming back to South Africa. Maybe I’ll come back and do some shows of my own. Maybe next year.”
Catch Civil Twilight at the Lush Festival in Clarens from March 24 to 27 and at Parklife Gourmet Food and Music Festival in Cape Town on March 28. Visit www.breakout.nutickets.co.za for tickets.