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September 13, 2024 14 mins

Troy Kingi is a man on a well-documented mission, creating ten albums in ten different genres, over the course of ten years for his 10:10:10 project. 

Through this project, Troy has carved a remarkable reputation for musical versatility. 

In August, he released album number 8 in the project, Leatherman & the Mojave Green, a rock album that has brought him back to his roots. 

Before getting to work on his final two albums, Kingi has found the time to squeeze in a tour of New Zealand. 

Leatherman was recorded in Joshua Tree, a national park in California, and Kingi told Jack Tame that the choice to record there was him trying to rekindle the flame that got him into the industry in the first place. 

“I was at a point where I was questioning all my directions, and back in the beginning, I’d just write for the loving of writing and things would flow the way they’d flowed. And I felt like I kind of lost that,” he told Tame. 

“So actually going back to a genre of style that is probably the core of who I am, it was timely, it was like, perfect timing.” 

He’s been touring the album around New Zealand since its release, with more shows still to come in Christchurch, Hamilson, Tauranga, Napier, and Gisborne.  

More info on shows and tickets can be found here. 

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at b.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Rejoin up at the Yes Accident more in a New Zealand.
You're a jactative on Newstalks. The'd be this is Troy
Kingy and you would have to say, Troy Kingy is
a man on a mission. Ten albums and ten genres

(00:52):
over ten years. Throughout the project, Troy has carved a
remarkable reputation for musical versatility and talent. Last month, he
released album number eight in the ten ten ten project,
leave Them in the Mojave Green. Of course, Estelle music
reviewer on Saturday Mornings gave it ten out of ten.

(01:13):
She reckons it was extraordinary, a rock album that has
brought Troy Kingey back to his roots. And now somehow, somehow,
Troy is squeezing in a tour of New Zealand before
getting to work on the final two albums in his
ten ten ten series, and Troy is with us this morning.
Ah Tomuddy Ekilda, good morning.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Ten ou queer Jack. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Thank you for being here. I think we should talk
process and I know that you're not the kind of
guy who likes to be too retrospective and think about
the past too much. But just for the sake of context,
can you talk us through the process for recording leather
Man in the Mahabi Green.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
There's quite a big process obviously. The first part of
that is trying to find funding to get somewhere, and
we happen to record this album over in Joshua Tree
in La So there was a lot of the funds
together to get over there. Luckily we were able to
get Tom Herne and Tofaki on board to film this

(02:14):
documentary and that essentially got us over there. So, but
the big impetus behind going over there was those that
don't know I'm doing a ten ten ten series where
I'm trying to do ten albums in ten years, ten
different genres. This was number eight. Yeah, and when you

(02:35):
try and put something like that in front of you,
you're going to head a wall at some point. And
I feel like last year was that war. So going
over to the desert was me trying to rekindle the
flame that got me into this industry in the first place. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
So Joshua Tree, for people who don't know, California middle
of the desert like forty degrees every day. It is dry,
it is a super harsh environment, and there is this
amazing studio there. Rancho de la Luna like Rancho of
the of the Moon talk to us about that environment.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah, I've known about this place for over two decades now.
One of my all time favorite bands, Queens of the
Stone Age, recorded songs for the Death back there that
come out in two thousand and two. It's still my
favorite album to this day. So when Matt, who works
at the label I'm with, suggested we go over there,

(03:28):
I always thought it was just a pipe dream. But
actually standing there, you know Dave Catching who's also in
Queens of the Stone Age, who name Queens of the
Stone Age, he runs the studio. So just being able
to sit with him and him to say, hey, Josh,
use this guitar on the song, or Dave Grohl was
playing the exact same thing. You know, you can't help

(03:51):
but just get excited and inspired. So yeah, it's nothing amazing.
It doesn't look anything like it's no Abbey Road or
anything like that, but it's basically a house in the
middle of the desert with all these cool trinkets, just
the way I like it. It's super rough.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
And ready, and so you went there seeking inspiration. Why
do you think you'd hit that block? Is it just
because you've been churning out so much stuff over the
last few years as part of the ten ten ten.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah. I keep saying it's a creative block, but it's
probably more. I'm still able to create a lot of stuff,
but I was just at a point where I was
questioning all my directions and back in the beginning, I'll
just write for the love of writing, and things would
just flow the way they flowed, and I felt like

(04:41):
I kind of lost that. So actually going back to
a genre or style that is probably the core of
who I am. It was timely, It was like perfect
timing and somewhere like that. It wasn't just the studio,
it was the desert, it was the people. We had
a few cool experiences over there and it all just

(05:02):
culminated in what we have in the Mahavi Green.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Let's talk about some of those cool experiences. And for
anyone who hasn't seen it, I cannot recommend Troy Kingy's
Desert Hikoy on TVNZ plus enough because it's amazing. So
you went over the head out into the desert in
the middle of the night. That was that was pretty special.
But you really leaned into the search for inspiration because
you decided to do a cultural ceremony where you took psilocybin,

(05:29):
you took magic mushrooms. How was that?

Speaker 3 (05:33):
I was quite anxious about it, actually, because people will
listen to a few of my albums and think I'm
a super draggy dude when I'm on very straight edge.
You know, I've got five kids. I got to be
on the ball all the time. So but I just
wanted to embrace everything, and especially Joshua Tree in the

(05:53):
Desert is it goes in conjunction with that sort of
thing trips or psiloicobin or whatever you want to call it.
And initially we were supposed to do ayahuasca, and then
one of my friends is like, ah, I probably don't
want to do that straight out the bat. You probably want,
you know, you want to train for like a few months.
It started a bit easier, and so they suggested that

(06:14):
we do mushrooms and I'd never done that before. I
didn't know what to expect, and I can't quite recall
a lot of that thing, but I know it felt
really good. And then all I know is the next morning,
I just woke up and songs just started writing themselves
at like five in the morning. So I don't know
what unblocked. But from that point to the toil we

(06:38):
got home, everything just seemed to flow really nice.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
It was like a creative river. That's the term you
use it, that's it. Yeah, was that a scary thing to.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
Do hard up out. I don't know how people do that,
you know, like at festivals or out in the public.
I'm just glad that we had this nice, confined space
with actual experts that could help us go through that journey.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
And I even said in the Docker, I loved experience.
I don't need to go back there for the time being,
but I love it for what it was. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Did you think there's something like a primal connection that
people have with being in the desert, because it's funny
like being from ALTI or being MILDI like, we don't
really have a desert my experience here, right, But I
wonder if there's something like at an even kind of
deeper level, something like really human or you know, that

(07:35):
there's something kind of in our matter that connects us
to those Maybe it's the insignificance of being in the desert.
Did you did you feel that kind of primal?

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Definitely. We had another friend of mine, Mark Russell, who's
been documenting my journey for about sex or seven years actually,
and he would get up earlier as to see the
sunrise and then he'd go up before the sunset to
take photos and oh, man, it's just a beautiful place.
And you're right, it does. It does show you how

(08:08):
insignificant you are in the greatest scheme of things, and
you were just flawed by the beauty of the environment
and you did go back to the core of who
you are, and it was all soul searching, all of
that sort of thing. Without having to try and soul search,
you just were in a place that made you think

(08:28):
that way. You know.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, have your fans reacted to the range of different
sounds that you've produced in the eight albums that you've
released under the ten ten ten so far?

Speaker 3 (08:42):
I think I have an amazing fan base that are
kind of just with me now that I got people
suggesting like, what are you doing next? You're going to
do a techno album or you're going to do a
death metal album. So right at the beginning, I was
a bit worried that I was going to alienate my
fan base. You know, they might love the reggae album
and just say, why don't you just stick to that

(09:03):
or the sole album. So once I got to album
number four, I was just like, oh, well we're in
this now. Yeah, you're either with me or you're not.
That's fine, but I'm going to do this thing. And
and I've got quite a loyal fan base, so that's
pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
And you said earlier that this feels like you're kind
of original sound in a sense of kind of desit rock. Yeah,
is that is that accurate?

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Well, if you listen to my very first album, which
is probably more blues indie stuff, but there's definitely elements
of this, And you know, being a first album, everyone's
first album, they've had like however long to write that album,
so it's quite a clectic but yeah, you definitely hear

(09:47):
elements of this. And just going back to that same
with my drama, that's I found him when he was sixteen.
He was I was an itinerant teacher at high school
and he was in a banded school and that was
his style, and so I put him through the Ringer,
you know, like playing folk and playing soul music and
then eighties synth pop, and then to finally just go

(10:10):
back to what he loved. You could feel his love
for drumming again, you know. So yeah, it was definitely
a kind of homecoming.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, hip Hop's next day.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, it is that I'm not too fair. I'm you know,
I'm not I might be rapping, but I've actually just
put a call out to all my friends in the
industry and people that I admire and asked if they
want to be part of it, and they all said yes,
and we go into the studio in November. So we

(10:43):
finished this tour at the end of this month. I
got a few things on next month and then we
go straight and so haven't got a lot of time
for the turnaround. But it's always the case though. Yeah,
but it's all good because we're actually writing in the studio.
So each of the artists has a day yeah studio,
and I've given them a playlist and asked what style

(11:04):
are you leaning towards or well then a that I'll
like a soundscape that I'm looking for.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
What artists would be most represented on the playlist.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
I've got actually got a female EMC from Wellington mar
Is on it and she she's the one who pointed
out that it's pretty much Polynesian bar Tom Scott, So yeah, cool,
I'm just like, oh far, I don't even think about it. Yeah,
it was just my favorite home bro. Yeah yeah, yeah.
So I'm still yet to come up with the overall

(11:39):
theme for everyone to talk about. But yeah, it's a
hard one because I probably want to talk about politics
or something to do with indigenous things, but I've already
done that in the past album. So I'm like, what's
another spin on that? So everyone just said just take
your time and fi grid out and whatever it is,
they'll smash it doesn't what it is.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, it's funny. I was reflecting on the ten ten
ten project the other day and in the ways that
like it forces you in some way. I mean, it
doesn't forces you to release music, right, If you're going
to do ten albums, teen genres, ten years, then you're
forced to constantly be creating. And are you familiar with
this the kind of principle around creativity that the best

(12:21):
way to be creative is to put constraints on things.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Oh one hundred percent, do you reckon one hundred percent.
I feel like if I didn't have that, I don't
even know if i'd have an album out now. I'm
one of those ones that just needs a deadline, And
people say, do you feel like the quality is going
to dip? That you're pushing up so much content? And
I'm feeling like, if I had five years to write
an album, I'd probably still write it the two weeks

(12:45):
leading into you know, so it doesn't really matter. So
but that's always my thing is I need to be
proud of what I'm putting out, and and there was
one thing right at the beginning, I don't want to
just put it out for the hell of putting it out.
I want to do my best with the time that
I have.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
One last question, where do you get your client? Because
you have such amazing distinct style, and like seeing you
in the desert as well, I was like, damn, Troy's
looking amazing. But I'm not convinced that that's necessarily the coolest,
like as in cold, the coldest cut of clothes to
be wearing when it's forty degrees. Where do you get
your clothes?

Speaker 3 (13:23):
These particular ponchos that I've been wearing from a company
in Totoo called Tony Fayaja. I think it's a moldy
feller who married woman from chileer that's yeah, right, I
come from. But I've also got a designer who I
work with on a movie toke like five years ago,
Lizzie Turner, whose husband Jared is an actor, an amazing

(13:45):
actor if you've seen a couple of years ago. She
made me this bright, silky green shirt green suit, sorry
for my eighty synth pop last year. She made that jacket,
the cowboy looking jacket that I was wearing in the desert.
So I basically just wear what I'm told. I also

(14:05):
have Hills Hats from Willington, who's been making me hats
for the last five years. This hat actually the material
for this hats from eighteen eighty. Whoa, so it's quite
an old hat. So do you want an ancient relic
of a hat? And I'm like, yeah, so you made
it for me a bit month ago. Yeah. Well.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Congratulations on leather Man and the Mohave Green. Thank you
for sharing his story with us, Thank you for going
on tour, and good luck for November when you're back
in the studio.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
Thank you so much. Bro appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
That is Troy Kingey. His tour details are going to
be up and available on the News Talk CV website.
Leather Man and the Mojave Green is his latest album.
It is absolutely fantastic, so if you haven't had a
listen yet, make sure you do. Two albums to go
and his ten ten ten project. Right now, it's twenty
one minutes past ten.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to news Talks he'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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