Reb with a cause
It’s taken Auckland musician and songwriter Reb Fountain a lifetime, and the death of a friend, to even start thinking of herself as No 1, writes Mike Alexander.
Reb Fountain has a small tattoo on her left forearm. It’s a permanent reminder of someone who played a significant part in her musical life but is no longer with us.
The body art is an emblematic feather that the late Auckland musician Sam Prebble used to sell as part of his merchandise before his untimely death, in 2014, at the age of 22.
It carries more significance for Fountain with the release of the second of the two projects she was working on with Prebble and fellow Auckland musician Dylan Storey – the album Little Arrows. It was preceded two months ago by the release of the EP Hopeful and Hopeless.
‘‘When Sam died, all of his friends and musical associates, most of whom were his friends as well, held a wake after his funeral at the Wine Cellar in Auckland,’’ Fountain says. ‘‘We ended up playing for about six hours. It was a beautiful thing. We raised money and gave it to his partner Emily but mostly it was about togetherness.’’
Fountain says there was a reticence to be the first to get up to sing, and when it came to Fountain’s turn, she struggled to cope.
‘‘I started playing Hopeful And Hopeless, which was one of the last songs Sam and I had worked on. I looked around and saw this community of friends. That was the first time I had really taken notice that I was a part of something. It was devastating to be remembering Sam’s loss and at the same time understanding I belonged, I was a part of something, which I had never known before.
‘‘Dylan [Storey] had brought Sam’s tour bag along to the wake. It had some of Sam’s merchandise in it – CDs, badges, posters and these patches that he and Emily had made. Emily had drawn this beautiful feather and they had it reproduced on a calico patch that people could sew onto things. We all had one at some point. When I saw the patch I knew I wanted to turn the design into a tattoo. It became a symbol of reminding myself that no matter how difficult things got I was part of a community of musicians, who loved and supported what I was doing, and, more importantly, a constant reminder that I would commit myself to staying in this world as long as I could.
‘‘We all have those moments, and not just musicians, where we feel we can’t do it anymore. New Zealand has one of the highest rates of suicide in the OECD, so we need to be talking about this stuff. I needed to be talking about it with myself more because it is certainly something I have faced many times in my life.
‘‘Sometimes it’s simply about having the tools to deal with those moments. I think of it as self-affirming. Despite those things that we might have felt were lacking when we were growing up, and those moments when those emotions threaten to catch up with us and overwhelm us, it is about self-care, picking yourself up and reminding yourself that you are worthy of love, you are not alone and help and support is available. You have to make the choice to do something about it though. I still find that hard. It’s like a fulltime job. That’s part of the Hopeful and Hopeless them. People like me are everywhere. There’s a few of us who are visible but if we can tap into that, it could create a groundswell of hope for others who struggle with their own dark demons.’’
Fountain arrived in New Zealand as an 11-year-old. She released her first album, Like Water, in 2006, her second, Holster, in 2008 and had been performing with Prebble and Storey for over 12 years as The Bandits.
‘‘I sound like a bloody Kiwi,’’ she says. ‘‘This is officially my home. I swear profusely. It’s such a bad trait I have been thinking about it a lot lately. How am I not going to swear in situations where it’s not appropriate. I’ll just have to pretend I am around children. I have grown up here. It’s unfortunate that not all of my family live here. I have always been far away from many of the people I love but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else other than New Zealand.
‘‘I made two records. The first I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just wanted to make a record. I had high expectations. It was my rock’n’roll dream, so to speak. I just took it for granted that if you stayed true to yourself other people would get it. For whatever reason, sometimes it’s the way music is trending, it didn’t happen for me.
‘‘For my second album, Holster ,I was a lot more involved in how I wanted the record to sound. I’m proud of it but it didn’t make me rich. I was so bummed out after that and, along with having personal life crises, I became quite despondent about music and how or where I fitted in. I have always felt on the outside of things in New Zealand. I just didn’t feel I fitted anywhere and I didn’t know where my place was.’’
Fountain took time out. She had already begun working on Little Arrows with Prebble and Storey but put it on the back burner – Prebble was touring his The Explorers Club album at the time and Storey had become a dad. Then Adam McGrath stepped in and asked her to join The Eastern.
‘‘He saved me,’’ Fountain says. ‘‘It changed my life because I had always been wrestling with my own demons and The Eastern gave me a beautiful vehicle to be free and let loose. Adam would always empower me to feel all of those things – fear, uncertainty, doubt – but also pick myself up in a way that I had been doing but had never been able to translate into music and performance.
‘‘Every night we would go out and play. He really taught me about working for your audience and that having expectations is not only defeatist but it’s also the wrong way around. The audience are paying to see you perform. You owe them the best you have so you need to have a good work ethic.
‘‘As a result of that and Sam’s death, Hopeful and Hopeless and Little Arrows are very much about all the journeys I have been on – as an immigrant and as a musician. One of those journeys is about when do we become validated or appreciated for what we do. As a musician, it’s taken me a long time to work through my own turmoil, to connect with what is really meaningful to me. When that happens, those other things don’t seem to matter as much.
‘‘So these projects are very much about that. I didn’t discover that until someone important to me passed away. That doesn’t mean that what they did was any more or less meaningful. You just didn’t necessarily appreciate it for what it was at the time.’’
❚ Hopeful and Hopeless and Little Arrows
are available now through Southbound.