Wearing nail polish, interviewing world famous drummers, playing at London’s largest indoor festival and why music rocks his world – Travis Marc du Plooy chats to ZAmmm! about this and more!
A brother duo of South African blood, combined with British guitarist James Mattocks, makes up the London-based indie rock, skater punk 'munkin rock' outfit known as Munkinpure! And performing in London this weekend at Live Fest they will be!
Says Travis ahead of this big gig, “My brother Darryl and I are the Saffers in the band and our British guitarist James has been a dear friend for years, and one of the best guitarists on the scene at the moment!”After battling it out in live heats across the UK and beating 10,000 acts, Munkinpure are to play Live and Unsigned National Final at The O2 on Saturday 23 July at Indigo2, one of the main stages of Live Fest Festival.
Q1. I’ve seen you wearing nail polish, what else makes your style unique and quirky?
Yeah sometimes I wear nail polish, I also wear some strange pants which most people wouldn't be caught dead wearing, haha. However, the part that makes Munkinpure unique or quirky is that I am the drummer and lead vocalist, which is something you don't really see that often anymore. We combine indie and rock and make a pretty cool mixture of music!
Q2. As a drummer yourself, how has it been to interview other drummers?I've interviewed quite a few famous, and not so famous drummers for a website called UKDrummer.com and a magazine in South Africa called 'SA Drums and Percussion'. I love the drums and feel very fortunate about that I've been able to meet and talk with some of my drumming heroes. To date I've interviewed Jonathan Moffet (Micheal Jackson), Karl Brazil (Robbie Williams), Johnny Rabb (Bio Diesel) and even Ian Paice (Deep Purple) to name just a few. I find it really inspiring and love how drummers in particular always seem so willing to share their knowledge and ideas.
Q3. Why do you love what you do?
I love music because it makes me feel everything that I think one should feel in order to feel alive - love, hate, anger, happiness, compassion, jealousy - everything. I think music is the greatest gift you can give someone. It's like a religion to me and I couldn't live without it.
Q4. Where did your love of drumming begin?
I started drumming when I was in my teens, I was a huge Dave Grohl fan (still am) and loved the programmed beats on most of Michael Jackson’s records so basically started trying to imitate those grooves while using as much energy as I could to emulate Dave's drumming, before realising that other drummers actually existed. Now I'm really into Keith Moon, Tommy Lee, Barker and Danny Seraphine. According to my parents (who are super supportive) I would apparently hit anything and everything while growing up. Eventually I won some money off of a radio station, bought some drums and the rest is history.
Q5. How did you end up in London?
We felt that we had explored a lot of the possible avenues that our genre could explore back in SA and decided that we should try and expand our horizons. We love SA and we feel that it will always be home, we want to try and take our music internationally and are happy knowing that our fellow Saffers are proud of what we seem to be achieving thus far, we'll never forget our roots!
We wish Munkinpure all the best tomorrow night - as well as another South African singer songwriter known as Malory Torr - the cousin of SA-based singer songwriter Josie Field. To book a ticket for Live Fest at The O2 visit www.livefest.co.uk
Rock on Munkinpure and Malory Torr,
x
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