Q&A with Perth Artist Bertie Anderson
For Rappfox readers, who aren’t familiar with Bertie Anderson, tell us a bit about yourself. What made you get into music? And in particular R&B music?
I've been into music since childhood. From as early as I can remember, I've been amongst music and performing. My Father (dec.) was a touring performing reggae artist with a band called Brokin Inglish throughout the late 80’s/early 90’s and my Mother was part of the background singers for that band. I was mainly raised around the genres of Reggae, Blues, Gospel, Hip Hop, Rap, Pop and R&B.
R&B obviously stems from the Blues sound but I was drawn to R&B because of the melodies driven by the beat. I love to dance so R&B captured my heart and soul like it was meant to be.
I stumbled across your track Ice Cream on Spotify, which was released in November last year, and instantly liked it. It has a great vibe to it. Tell me about the process of making the track.
The process of creating Ice Cream is quite a funny story. I work with an artist by the name of Arian Anderson (A.J Lyriq) who is also featured on Ice Cream. Together we created the production duo The Andersons under a movement called #GreenTeam Music Australia. In one of our writing sessions I brought along an unfinished beat idea that was literally a 4 bar loop with a drum beat and bass line that I created one day just beat boxing.
We played it over and over and started to write. It was in the peak of summer and in the home studio set up we use, there was no air conditioning at the time. So as we're writing and coming up with ideas I said to Arian “bro, it's crazy hot today I feel like ice cream”. We started to have a conversation about ice cream and as we're talking we're both writing and humming tunes at the same time. Within minutes, I started singing “you got that little ice cream cone” to the melody of the bass line and before you know it we had the hook. The rest came very naturally once we decided it was gonna be a metaphorical song with sexual references. The whole song bar James Elmer's third verse was complete in a matter of an hour.
I've been into music since childhood. From as early as I can remember, I've been amongst music and performing. My Father (dec.) was a touring performing reggae artist with a band called Brokin Inglish throughout the late 80’s/early 90’s and my Mother was part of the background singers for that band. I was mainly raised around the genres of Reggae, Blues, Gospel, Hip Hop, Rap, Pop and R&B.
R&B obviously stems from the Blues sound but I was drawn to R&B because of the melodies driven by the beat. I love to dance so R&B captured my heart and soul like it was meant to be.
I stumbled across your track Ice Cream on Spotify, which was released in November last year, and instantly liked it. It has a great vibe to it. Tell me about the process of making the track.
The process of creating Ice Cream is quite a funny story. I work with an artist by the name of Arian Anderson (A.J Lyriq) who is also featured on Ice Cream. Together we created the production duo The Andersons under a movement called #GreenTeam Music Australia. In one of our writing sessions I brought along an unfinished beat idea that was literally a 4 bar loop with a drum beat and bass line that I created one day just beat boxing.
We played it over and over and started to write. It was in the peak of summer and in the home studio set up we use, there was no air conditioning at the time. So as we're writing and coming up with ideas I said to Arian “bro, it's crazy hot today I feel like ice cream”. We started to have a conversation about ice cream and as we're talking we're both writing and humming tunes at the same time. Within minutes, I started singing “you got that little ice cream cone” to the melody of the bass line and before you know it we had the hook. The rest came very naturally once we decided it was gonna be a metaphorical song with sexual references. The whole song bar James Elmer's third verse was complete in a matter of an hour.
The music video is pretty funky too, tell me about shooting it and what you had in mind when you created it.
I work with a very talented videographer from my hometown Cairns, Queensland. His name is Roger Green who runs Roger Dat Films. We grew up dancing together, so I trust his creative process and vision. At the time of coming up with the concept he was networking with another talented videographer from here in Perth, Western Australia, Andrew McIvor who runs under JustPlay Media. I had already seen a lot of Andrew's work through fellow Perth artists so when Roger said they were both thinking of a future collab project, I suggested Ice Cream and they jumped at it. Together we came up with the concept of using a lot of bright vibrant colours to give the visual the feel of different flavours of ice cream. We actually went out and bought a lot of lollies, desserts and props to use for B Roll footage which ended up making the process so much fun to be shooting and eating junk all day haha.
I've always been hugely influenced by Michael Jackson and artists that sing and dance so there was a lot of work that went into rehearsals and scouting dancers and performing so that we could get it right. I have to give mad props to everyone on set that day because they all took on the project as if it were their own and everything ran so smoothly. Such a great memory.
You’ve released a couple of singles here and there, any chance of a full-length project?
A full length project is definitely in the works and will be coming soon. There's obviously a lot to invest in a bigger project to help it be as successful as possible so I've been holding off until I feel the time is right. My fanbase is on a slow rise and with the amount of live performances I plan to do this year, an EP or album would definitely feel worthwhile.
What else do you have planned for 2019? Any shows?
Definitely a lot more performing for 2019. Last year I was very much focused on honing in on production and writing and learning about the process of creating great music. You never stop learning. Because I've had a lot of feedback regarding performing since releasing the Ice Cream I feel it's the right thing to do and I definitely enjoy performing a lot. Gotta give the people what they want. I'm also in plans to create a monthly event for local and interstate artists to showcase their sound and original works so that's something to look forward to this year as well.
Thanks for your time.
Follow Bertie Anderson on Facebook, Instagram and Spotify. Also check out his latest single Toxic below.
I work with a very talented videographer from my hometown Cairns, Queensland. His name is Roger Green who runs Roger Dat Films. We grew up dancing together, so I trust his creative process and vision. At the time of coming up with the concept he was networking with another talented videographer from here in Perth, Western Australia, Andrew McIvor who runs under JustPlay Media. I had already seen a lot of Andrew's work through fellow Perth artists so when Roger said they were both thinking of a future collab project, I suggested Ice Cream and they jumped at it. Together we came up with the concept of using a lot of bright vibrant colours to give the visual the feel of different flavours of ice cream. We actually went out and bought a lot of lollies, desserts and props to use for B Roll footage which ended up making the process so much fun to be shooting and eating junk all day haha.
I've always been hugely influenced by Michael Jackson and artists that sing and dance so there was a lot of work that went into rehearsals and scouting dancers and performing so that we could get it right. I have to give mad props to everyone on set that day because they all took on the project as if it were their own and everything ran so smoothly. Such a great memory.
You’ve released a couple of singles here and there, any chance of a full-length project?
A full length project is definitely in the works and will be coming soon. There's obviously a lot to invest in a bigger project to help it be as successful as possible so I've been holding off until I feel the time is right. My fanbase is on a slow rise and with the amount of live performances I plan to do this year, an EP or album would definitely feel worthwhile.
What else do you have planned for 2019? Any shows?
Definitely a lot more performing for 2019. Last year I was very much focused on honing in on production and writing and learning about the process of creating great music. You never stop learning. Because I've had a lot of feedback regarding performing since releasing the Ice Cream I feel it's the right thing to do and I definitely enjoy performing a lot. Gotta give the people what they want. I'm also in plans to create a monthly event for local and interstate artists to showcase their sound and original works so that's something to look forward to this year as well.
Thanks for your time.
Follow Bertie Anderson on Facebook, Instagram and Spotify. Also check out his latest single Toxic below.