Tinderbox is a musical collective that, began as the the brain / love cild of Uma Vernau aka Umalicious, who broke onto the music scene in 2004 as a straight shooting rap goddess, fronting the now infamous band “The Bumble Bees”.
Tinderbox grew out of a mobile cafe / performance space that Uma created in 2006 which would tour nationally and was to feature in some of the biggest festivals in Australia, such as Earthcore, Big Day Our and Rainbow Serpent just to name a few. Uma’s space would bring together Internationally successful and renowned underground artists, hosting collaborative performances that would rock through the night. Through these spontaneous performances a myriad of eclectic, electric and amazing songs were written by the inspiration of a collective of artists. from both Australia and abroad.
Umalicious collated the material written over a 10 year period and enlisted the production, writing and arranging skills of Gumpy G Savidas. who was renowned for fronting the Hip Hop band Mighty Big Crime (Who were the first signed hip hop act in Australia) and was working in New York as a music producer.
Gumpy set to work wrangling the peak of the super stars who had graced the hollowed tent of the Umalicious performance space with their musical genius and recording the myriad of material.
The Tinderbox mission is to bring together artists from all genres, walks of life and all cultural back grounds to create music that is not only conscious and waking the human spirit, but also funky as shit.
NQ Music Press fired a few questions at Gumpy G Savidas..
Where did the name Tinderboxcome from.
It’s actually the name of a road in the Northern Rivers that we used to drive past on the way home from rehearsal, and it we would remark that there was so much explosive creative frequency flying round we really needed a Tinderbox (a box containing a thing that is readily ignited.)
to contain this creative volcano that we were dancing within. And yeah it stuck.
Tinderbox seem to be an extension of your other act Savidas, so where does Savidas end and Tinderbox begin?
Savidas is in form and music very traditional, and attributes it’s songs to giving homage to music that is the pillars and past of music, such as Reggae, flamenco, folk, rock etc. Where as Tinderbox is musically reactive, and almost a reaction to music and most of all to modern music, though often sharing the styles and themes that Savidas may touch upon. Tinderbox is delving into the more volatile areas of modern music.
Tell us about your favourite Tinderbox gig so far..
I guess the most fav gig of ours so far would prob be a the latest show we did at The EleMental Art Show at the grand finale, that we also did the soundscape for. I think the most enjoyable thing about this show was the fact that the music was so much much part of the art experience and there were so many gifted musos in the audience and they were all gracious enough to grace us with their presence on stage. It was phenomenal.
You are playing the Woolshed in Cairns this Fri night, what can the audience expect?
Well with Tinderbox, I’d have to say you must expect the unexpected, but a common denominator of The Tinderbox gig is Dance Floor Pumping/Phat Grooves/.. and better get set to lose control.
You mention the phrase Cyber Shanti in some of your promo material, what’s that all about?
The Cyber-Shanti element of Tinderbox arose from a swathe of tracks that we were working on that were/are based in 528 Hz, which is known as the frequency of love and also 432 Hz which is know as Verdi’s ‘A’ and we went on somewhat of a spiritual audio journey through the frequencies of the chakra’s.
The TBX Cyber-Shanti is like the more ethereal side of Tinderbox and playing the songs together in one set presented some logistical issues, such as having to retune etc, every track. The sound of these songs had a very different tilt to them and sounded more ethereal and could really be descried as a more spiritual audio journey where as the main thrust of Tinderbox had always been Heart pumping, bass, phat pumping grooves, hectic beat boxing,funky guitar riffs and edgy rhymes.
Tinderbox’s main goal is always to blow the roof off the party, Where as TBX Cyber-Shanti, You could say is Tinderbox in a meditative state. We often start a show with TBX Cyber-Shanti to allow peeps to lose their inhibitions and then boom!, drop that infamous Tinderbox Bass like it’s hot!
Can we expect some recorded output from Tinderbox soon?
We’re working on an album at the moment, but because it’s such a collaborative project, the albums within the albums keep emerging if you get our drift, we are creating more than we’re breathing. So I would say don’t hold your breath, but yeah deep breath and poof! there will be the Tinderbox album… Look out for it Feb 2019 .. Woot!
You can catch Tinderbox live this Friday night from 8pm – 10pm at the Woolshed in Shields st Cairns.
Todd Macalpine
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