Gone bush
Mara Simpson was sitting barefoot in the Australian sun when she decided to move to New Zealand to make music.
The singer/songwriter (named ‘Mara’ after the big area of land that the Masai tribe inhabits in Kenya, where she was brought up) had been doing a gruelling charity cycle ride when a bag with “everything” in it, along with her bike and her guitar, was stolen.
“Even my shoes broke,” laughs the vivacious 24 year old, “I’d had enough!”
She had dressed in “padded spandex” and joined a group of boys from Dublin’s Trinity University for three weeks of a nine-month ride Aids charity ride, but the theft brought her trip to an abrupt end. With not a single form of identification on her and therefore unable to take an internal flight, she was forced to endure a lonely three day bus trip before getting to an international hostel.
“I just kept saying to the driver, ‘No Espanol! Alone! Alone!’” she laughs.
At the hostel, she happened to bump into three friends from Nottingham University, the ordeal was over and she flew out.
Her dad picked her up. He’s a pilot and a guitarist who’s flown private jets for Metallica, The Rolling Stones, the Jagger family, even Robert Plant – and he was once nearly called on to play a concert with Van Morrison’s band when a guitarist had food poisoning.
Simpson, who was brought up in the UK and Kenya and now considers those countries as well as New Zealand home, finished her music degree and took a trip around the world before choosing NZ to come to make music two and a half years ago, influenced by Wellington’s soundscape.
“I was in Byron Bay, Australia, sitting at the bottom of my garden, barefoot in the sun with my guitar, reading a National Geographic, like a total hippy,” she explains, “I thought, ‘New Zealand. I have to go there, the land is beautiful and the music is good.”
On the plane she listened to Fat Freddy’s Drop, Trinity Roots and The Black Seeds on her Ipod, not realising that they were Wellington bands she would soon be very familiar with.
Simpson set up soul-folk outfit Mara and the Bushkas and their debut album Live at Bats is soon to be released. It’s lush, with a string section and four-part harmonies, creating a full, warm sound, says Bushkas drummer Jean Pompey, who has also just joined Trinity Roots. Anyone who’s heard Pompey says she’s got amazing talent, and she happens to be Simpson’s bestie.
“The songs are patient and mature, not your average three minute radio play cuts,” says Pompey, “Bats was a visually exciting venue.”
Simpson agrees, “We were a cinematic orchestra.”
It’s her responsibility as a performer to channel people’s energy, she says.
“You don’t know what someone is bringing to the conversation, what their reality is. It’s about understanding the influence you have on other people,” says Simpson.
While she releases her album, the Trinity University boys’ next project is to kayak the Nile. As “no one’s ever survived that,” Simpson has politely decided to give the trip a miss.
Mara and the Bushkas’ Live at Bats release, San Francisco Bath House, October 20
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