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LAB frontman Joel Shadbolt took a leap of faith this week and quit his day job to focus on the band’s future.
He handed in his notice as a guitar teacher on Tuesday and the year ahead, he says, will be “110 percent LAB.”
Shadbolt and keyboardist Miharo Gregory speak after dominating the Aotearoa Music Awards with four Tūi. It’s a result, Shadbolt says, that is “pretty modest.”
There was no big public ceremony this year, but the announcement came with enough pomp and circumstance that Shadbolt laughed, “We thought we were going to die because it sounded like a bomb going off”.
The five members of the popular roots outfit met with the confetti-filled revelation during an interview with Jessie Mulligan on current affairs show The Project. The Bay of Plenty group took home the same four in 2021 for Best Group, Album of the Year, Single of the Year and Best Roots Artist.
It may be familiar territory for musicians, but they’re still riding high, Shadbolt says.
“It’s an honor to be recognized by the industry,” he says.
It was back in 2020 that LAB had huge success in New Zealand with the single In the Air. The band members, which include Cora brothers Brad and Stewart and Ara Adams-Tamatia of Catchfire fame, are primarily from small towns around the country. Shadbolt said it was even more special to be recognized among the “big smoke” from places like Whakatāne, the Bay of Plenty and Wellington.
“We have worked hard for the last five years and this is all the result of those years,” he said.
“And it makes us want to work harder, to be honest.”
Now, though, those small-town musicians are gearing up to tackle the international market. Starting with entering the 2021 album LAB V for Grammy consideration, Gregory said.
“It’s worth a shot I think,” he said, adding that there are submissions for about 25 best reggae albums.
“If anything comes of it, it’s an admission of madness. We’re going to tour the States so it goes over pretty well,” added Shadbolt.
Grammy dreams aside, LAB will tour Australia in April and tackle the US and Europe later in the year in May.
It’s exciting, but also quite scary, says Gregory.
“You are no longer a big fish in a small pond. … You’re a tadpole,” he laughs.
But they’ve seen other Kiwi bands show it can be done, says Shadbolt, who looks to groups like Fat Freddy’s Drop for inspiration.
“We want to follow in the footsteps of such a band. It took them years to build that groundswell but they do it every year, and it’s pretty inspiring to see.
“The market is huge beyond the experience of traveling to another country. You set you can manage to crack it. It’s pretty unimaginable,” Gregory said.
Which city are they most excited for? Shadbolt has been to Las Vegas before, but was broke at the time and thinks this visit could be different.
“By the end of the night you’ll be broke again,” Gregory laughs.
LAB found their fame during a global pandemic, which Gregory says actually helped matters in a way. As people are locked down, the appetite for live music has grown. When the New Zealand border was closed, but live music reopened, small venues became bigger for Kiwi groups.
“The publicity went up when everyone was locked in their homes … it really helped us.”
“But now things are back to how they were pre-pandemic with international artists. Which is good because it keeps us hungry,” Shadbolt says.
That hunger to play music was something that was always in the cards for the Bay of Plenty musician, having grown up in a musical family with a mother who “had the best blues collection I think”.
“I was bought into listening to American blues soul and RnB, I don’t know anything different. I think I’m always going to do it. It’s just a matter of how and when.”
For Gregory, whether he wanted to play the stadium — whether it was music or sports — would come down to luck and genetics.
“I was too skinny for rugby league,” he jokes.
“So I’m playing the keyboard.”
But the feeling of playing in the stadium absolutely lives up to the hype of that childhood dream, said Shadbolt.
“I think it’s something you have to experience. We’ve been lucky enough to experience it as musicians on a huge scale… you get on stage… and suddenly you’re hit by this power of something, the synergy that happens between the band and the audience,” he said.
“There’s no drug that feels as good as this … it’s unreal.”
-Amberley Jack/Staff.
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