Graham Reid | | 1 min read
For almost 20 years Dunedin-based Julian Temple has led his band through a number of line-ups, across seven albums, touring and receiving positive mentions in international media.
Along the way they’ve played on the West Coast of the United States – where he was raised – and he recorded a solo album on the side as part of his post-graduate studies at the University of Otago.
Two of Temple’s songs recorded by the band made the finals and semi-finals of the International Songwriting Award “which have pretty good judges like Tom Waits and the Pixies”, he observes.
At home they’ve skimmed in and out of the album charts and their latest, Tunnels, a mature and challenging work, is their best yet.
However, the Julian Temple Band have never had much local traction and recognition.
“We’re not poppy enough to be in the mainstream,” says Temple with frustration. “And not indie enough to get the hipsters on board. And it’s not barbecue reggae. With the way music is consumed now you can get all this crazy data, and our plays and streams are mostly from overseas.”
Julian Temple, a self-confessed “surf-bum”, grew up in a musical household in California, his mother an acclaimed Dixieland and boogie-woogie pianist and his father a classical lutist. His earliest memories are of building forts under the piano and watching the keys move.
Ironically, he didn’t get music lessons like his older brother – now a research biologist in the US – and sister in Northland, who home-schools her children and works in conservation.
“I was the last and my parents gave up [on lessons] by the time I came of age. So I taught myself. But I’m the one who ended up pursuing it.”
As a child in the 80s, he heard Bowie and Talking Heads alongside . . .
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