The late, lauded Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
Ask every artist who never made it. Better yet, ask any artist who ever did.
A good 10 years since cracking onto the South African music scene and thriving about it, I chat to Tristan Coetzee, front man, vocalist and guitarist for Pretoria-hailing indie-pop band December Streets.
December Streets have stealthily navigated the plastic hallway, climbing onto all the charts with bangers like “Magic” and “Messed Up”, and only hours ahead of our chat, they’d dropped their latest single, “Haters”.
“It’s been hectic! Building up to a launch is always like, you forget how much effort it takes. It’s crazy! I hate it. I really hate it,” Tristan comes in hot and I can tell this is all still very fresh. “You never know maybe the song flops, maybe it works…”
I joke and ask him how many times he’s already refreshed their Instagram feed. He laughs guiltily and says, “No dude, I do it too often but for this one I’m trying to leave my phone for more than 10 minutes at a time. Okay, and failing. “So far, so good, but you can only really tell after a couple of days what’s really happening.”
Coetzee reasons that, given how energetic and playfully upbeat “Haters” is, it might be the ‘get amped’ banger to lift spirits during lockdown, “The response has been surprisingly cool this time around,” he says and proudly adds, “A lot of radio DJs have called me and asked if they can play the song again.”
He tells me how he’s taken lockdown as an opportunity to catch up with family, “To be honest I’m usually really busy and I realise that I’m not best at dedicating time to spend with the family so now I’ve [moved back in with them for lockdown] and I’m loving it.”
Added bonuses to moving back in with the rents include access to dad’s wine cellar and unlimited access to Coetzee’s working on-property studio where he spends most of his time. “I’ve just been locked down making music and working 24/7. We’ve got some cool gear, I’m not gonna lie, so I’m entertained.”
Coetzee appreciates the connectedness that’s come of this corona shit show, “It’s broken down a lot of barriers. Like sometimes it’s hard to reach out to other artists but everyone feels the same level of human, if that makes sense?” We talk about how streaming has become the way of the gigging world, and how our favourite musicians are essentially letting us into their homes and hosting private shows for us.
December Streets are no strangers to the live-streaming gig game, having done a couple themselves. Just earlier that morning, Coetzee appeared on The Luckdown to chat to Goodluck’s Juliet Harding and to play their new single live.
But on a much grander scale, on the 1st of April, Coetzee let the world into his studio when he and Dane Steinhobel (vocalist and synth player) were the second South Africans to join the Global Citizen bill for their #TogetherAtHome virtual music experience.
Coetzee is still in disbelief about it, “It was epic. We had four days to figure out the streaming thing and put together a set. It’s such a massive platform so it was super nerve-wrecking, like I don’t get nervous on stage but with this my voice was shaky in the beginning, I was trembling,” he rattles off excitedly and then remembers to breathe.
He elaborates, “So it was myself and Dane, the other vocalist in the band, and we rigged up my guitar and the synths, then there was a track running in the background as well to keep on click, and we just triggered the songs and ran through the set and chatted a bit and interacted with people [on Facebook and Instagram]. It was quite a blur, to be honest.”
December Streets have spent a decade crafting their sound — think 6-piece band with a small spaceship to trigger a flurry of production — and to bring it onto an international level, they’ve gone the collaborative route. Coetzee explains, “Collaborating with songwriters, producers particularly, was a huge step to crafting our sound. I want people to think, “Wait what, South Africa?” when they hear our music.”
Their latest release “Haters” is a prime example of their collaborative fusion of instruments and production and it’s a ridiculously catchy retelling of the classic underdog success story.
Coetzee feels deservingly cheeky about “Haters” as he concludes, “You start playing music and you start all the way at the bottom and it’s a tough game. At the end of the day ‘middle fingers up’ [to the haters] ‘cause we had this passion when we were young, and we’re still doing it so fuck you for trying to put us down.”
