Music and tattoos have shared a beautiful union for decades now. Be it hip hop mega-stars, or heavy-metal rockers, there’s no longer a stigma attached to the craft and the vast majority of folks in the industry has at least one or two tattoos. Even South African sokkie-treffer stars are sporting ink these days, something that would never have been tolerated 30 years ago.
Rock ‘n’ roll has perhaps led this revolution from the music side though, and knowing this, Cool Inc Tattoo Expo has an incredible line-up of awesome bands to entertain tattoo fans and artists at this year’s event. The Voortrekker Monument will play host to 30 tattoo vendors and 18 bands over the course of the weekend, making it one of the biggest tattoo events in the country.
One of the bands on the bill this year is Hellcats, a 2-piece rock outfit from Joburg, with a surprisingly big sound, and some serious ink. We caught up with guitarist Warwick Rautenbach to chat tattoos, band dynamics and where they’re headed.
Jessica Kramer: Could you tell us a bit about some of the tattoos you have?
Warwick Rautenbach: Alessandro has more tattoos than a biker gang. Apart from the portrait of his beautiful daughter on his forearm, his body looks like an illustrated twisted tale.
Then I have 3 tattoos, a gypsy girl on my right arm in honour of my last band and then an incredible portrait of a woman with a feline head piece, for Hellcats. I don’t like to talk about my third tattoo, which is a result of being 18 and drinking way too much cheap British cider.
JK: With tattoos becoming more and more trendy these days, do you think there should be “meaning” behind what you get inked, or is it okay to just have something that looks sick?
WR: I’ve done both and the latter didn’t really work out for me – haha. But I think in this life, we have way too little time to worry about what other people think. It’s your body, do whatever the hell you like to it.
JK: Who is your personal favourite tattoo artist?
WR: Danielle Rose.
JK: Traditionally rock bands have at least 4-5 members but you guys manage to produce a huge sound with just 2? Firstly, how do you do it?
WR: We play hard and fuckin’ loud. Al is a real hard hitter on the drums so that generally pushes up the volume on everything. I’m pretty biased, but he has one of the most incredible voices I’ve ever heard in a rock n roll singer, he’s got a phenomenally high range which really does a lot for our big sound. Our guitar riffs are big and hairy and the music we’re writing right now just happens to be quite hard and fast, so that accounts for quite a lot of the big sound too I guess. What it doesn’t help with is keeping drum sticks and guitar strings in tact. We’re breaking a lot of both– a small price to pay.
JK: And what led you to decide to stick with just you two?
WR: When we were both in a four piece together before Hellcats, we rocked up for practices early a couple times and just started to write music really easily together. We were like “fuck anything else”. There’s something beautifully simple when there’s two of you making music. On the one hand there’s little room for error which forces you to work at your art. Then on the other hand, when you screw up, you’re like, “fuck you, there are only two of us” and that’s probably the most gratifying thing you can do in music, playing music for yourself, with a complete disregard for failure.
JK: You also have your vocalist sitting behind the drumkit – something that is pretty rare. Why do you think this is the case, is there something about drumming that makes it harder for vocalists or is it just the way the music industry has conditioned bands?
IWR: think playing drums and singing (at least the way Alessandro does) is a rarity because its barely fucking possible. Its exhausting. He’s throttling these things like they’ve wronged him and he’s giving it full tilt on the vocals. In theory it’s like running a marathon while towing a school bus, but he pulls it off, well.
JK: Since your inception in 2014 you’ve played all over the show, and shared the stage with massive acts. What has been the best gig you’ve played so far?
WR: We opened for Fokof a couple months ago and they always seem to pull a ‘Wembly’ crowd, so that’s always cool. But while we were playing we looked over to the side of the stage and there were the Fokof lads throwing devil horn signs at us and screaming “that’s fuckin’ rock n roll”. We could have been playing to a million people, but watching those 3 motherfuckers go ape shit for our music was a pretty much a life highlight.
JK: You’ve got a lot of rad tracks up on Soundcloud – any plans for an album release sometime in the future?
WR: We’ve really enjoyed releasing our music the way we’ve been doing. We write a track and then record it the same night on one shitty mic, then the next day its on the net, in all its raw glory. In saying that we’re planning to release a series of 3 track EPs in the next while. We’ve just finished recording the first set and those should be out in the next month. We plan to take all of those EPs and put them on vinyl when we’ve decided we’re ready.
JK: Summer is fast approaching and with it, festival season. Any cool gigs you guys have coming up?
WR: We’ve got tons of great gigs coming up for Halloween and that includes Arcade Empire’s Joburg Halloween party and Carfax’s Halloween Day Of The Dead party, and then The Cool Inc Tattoo Expo in Pretoria in November of course, and Mieliepop early next year. Shit’s rad.
Make sure you get your tickets for for Cool Inc Tatto Expo before they’re all gone.
