Northland soul singer Teeks seems on the expressway to success. His 2017 debut EP The Grapefruit Skies was met with critical acclaim; this yearVogue named him one of the music industry’s “most promising talents”; and he's currently on a sold out tour of New Zealand.
The 27-year-old is set to release his first full length album Something To Feel in February, and joins Kim Hill to discuss it.
Teeks, aka Te Karehana Gardiner-Toi (Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui), admits most of his new songs are quite sad, but says there's something cathartic about going through emotions "compacting them all into one song" and being able to release those feelings.
Although he's still making soul music, Something To Feel, which came together towards the end of 2019, shows his sound has developed both stylistically and lyrically, since his 2017 debut.
"I definitely feel like soul music allows me to express myself in the best ways that I can, in saying that I feel like soul music as a genre is so complex ... what is soul music? It means so many different things and I love that fact."
Teeks recently got the word 'surrender' tattooed on his neck and says although it may have negative connotations for some, that's not the case for him.
"For me it's a positive affirmation and it's basically about acceptance, surrendering to the process, surrendering to the present moment and surrendering to my emotions and my feelings and surrendering to any situation that's happening."
"It's not feeling defeated it's accepting what's happening and doing something about it."
Although Teeks mostly writes his songs in English, he draws on some of the principles used in te reo Māori.
"Te reo Māori's such a poetic and metaphoric language that I can kind of pull on those principles in the way that I write in English."
Before his music career took off, Teeks had been teaching te reo Māori at Auckland's Unitec, where he also studied music. With both his parents working in education, he'd considered becoming a teacher.
The turning point was his involvement in Māori music mentoring programme Pao Pao Pao. A wananga-based development programme spread across four or five weekends.
"You have to apply to get in ... they have an intake of 10 to 15 aspiring Māori artists. We were mentored by established Māori artists including Maisey Rika, Tama Waipara, Rob Ruha, Seth Haapu ... all those people that I looked up to growing up in school.
"Having those people who are prolific in the Māori music industry mentor you and just encourage you and give you props ... that meant a lot to me at the time and they believed in me and they kind of took me on.
"Even after the programme finished, after it ended, we had that point of contact and they continued to guide me and they still do to this day, so I'm very grateful for that."
One of the mentors from the course, Tama Waipara, introduced him to New York producer Jeremy Most for The Grapefruit Skies EP in 2016.
"He [Waipara] kind of linked us together and organised for me to go over and record some songs. He put us in touch via email first and we'd just been bouncing back and forth and I sent him [Most] a couple of tracks and that was that really and I flew over with Tama."
Teeks is currently on tour, playing sold out shows across the motu.
After initially planning additional shows, Teeks' team decided to do just one show per town: "Then next year post-album we'll do a bigger tour with bigger venues and yeah, hopefully people will come through again."
He said he was very fortunate that all his shows had sold out.
The tour ends in his hometown of Hokianga, where he shot the music video for recent single 'Without You'. The video features beautiful shots of Opononi, local kids and even some of Teeks' whānau.
"I try to get the community involved so there are some school kids there from the local area school, also my sister is in the clip and my nephew."
The tour is Teeks' first time playing live since his 2019 performance with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra at Auckland Town Hall.
"It was pretty big and pretty significant for me, I've always wanted to play the town hall and also you know having that orchestra on stage for me was pretty special."
Something To Feel is due out in February
