This New York seven-piece with Persil-white footwear started out as an a cappella group, but soon progressed to being a vocal play ensemble - every sound on their records comes direct from their vocal chords, including all the instruments. Think beatboxing extraordinaire mixed with soulful voices and you get the picture. The group have toured with Michael Buble, have had success in Europe and the US and now they’re planning an assault on the UK - RealMusic Blog was at their small London show this week, along with Coldplay’s Chris Martin. We spoke to the smooth-voiced Rod from Naturally 7 about their music and style, performing on the tube, meeting Prince Charles and Obama…
Hi Rod - are you enjoying the English weather?
“I am - it’s much warmer than back home, I was freezing my butt off in New York!”
Tell me a bit about your style ‘vocal play’ - how did you all come to realise you could make the sound of instruments with your voices…
“We started back in 1999 in the Bronx and we wanted to be a traditional a cappella singing group. But when we started to perform more, we realised we wanted rhythm in our uptempo songs so we decided to have Warren be drums - he has a natural talent for beatboxing. After that, we realised that each guy had a talent to do a few instruments, a light bulb went off and so we thought, let’s see where we can take this.”
You said Warren had done beatboxing before - had any of the rest of you?
“Not really - and even Warren only did it in school but not professionally. One of our lead singers Dwight is good at it too, but he generally sticks to singing in the band.”
What instrument do you ‘play’?
“I do horns and guitars, but the one that I do that nobody else does is DJing - so I do all the vocal scratching.”
Are you always adding more instruments?
“We’re always exploring new sounds and developing what we have to make it better. There are so many ways of using instruments - so we know how to do a dirty rock guitar, lead distorted guitar and so on.”
So tell me a bit about your new album Wall Of Sound… It’s a got a lot of covers on it - who chose them?
“We all did. We like to do covers because we think our interpretation is always slightly different and also we like to surprise people. When you think about seven black guys from New York you might not expect them to do a cover of As Tears Go By but we do. We have a broad selection of musical tastes that we like to dig in to.”
Speaking of covers you might not expect, you covered Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight brilliantly and sang it on a Parisian subway - tell me a bit about that…
“It wasn’t our idea! A record exec heard us sing in a restaurant in London and challenged us to sing on the subway in Paris. We thought it was a terrible idea, but we did it and took a film crew and it’s now had millions of hits on YouTube which is amazing. When people meet us, they always say ‘hey, I saw you guys on the subway singing! (Laughs) We all love singing that song though.”
You’ve had top ten hits around Europe, including Germany, Poland and France. How are you liking the UK and what are your hopes for here?
“We want Naturally 7 to become a household name and if you want the world, having success in the UK and the US has to be your goal. Having a No.1 in Germany is great, but probably only Germans will know about you.”
You performed at the 02 in July last year - how was that?
“It was incredible, we had a blast. If you want to be a player you have to play the 02! We’ve now done Madison Square Gardens and the 02, so we feel pretty fortunate and we got a standing ovation.”
From that, you were booked for the Royal Variety Performance - did you meet a royal?
“Yes! Charles and Camilla came by to shake our hands which was a great thrill - two of the guys in the band were born in Manchester and one is from Watford so it was especially exciting for them.”
You’re from New York - where were you for Obama’s inauguration?
“We were all thrilled and very proud - we’d been following the elections throughout so it was a truly historic day. Unfortunately we missed the swearing in because we were flying here, but as soon as we got off the plane we got to a TV set and we saw his speech, which was so powerful.”
What’s the most played song on your MP3 player?
“Lupe Fiasco - Dumb It Down”
Finally, given the choice would you rather walk sideways like a crab or jump like a kangaroo?
“(Laughs) Jump like a kangaroo - if you want to get some place, jumping like a kangaroo is the only way to go!”
Watch Naturally 7’s performance of Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight on a Parisian tube…
Naturally 7’s album Wall Of Sound is out now.
(Clare Lydon)
