RED HOT RIGHT NOW
Meet seven super-talented South Africans who are going places
Bottomless Coffee Band FOLK-ROCK DUO @bottomlesscoffeeband
Esté and Lourens Rabé have gone where few married couples dare to venture – sharing a career. ‘It’s funny; so many married couples come up to us after a show to ask how we manage,’ Lourens says.
‘But it’s deepened our relationship and taught us so much about each other,’ Esté says. ‘It’s very fulfilling.’
They’ve been performing together as Bottomless Coffee Band since their days at Stellenbosch University, where they met. They each play a range of instruments, and their full, foot-stomping, energetic sound belies the fact that it’s just the two of them.
‘We didn’t want to sound like a duo, so we just kept adding more instruments to our repertoire,’ Esté says. ‘Lourens plays a Farmer FootDrum – basically a whole drum kit built into a box that you play with your feet. He also plays electric and acoustic guitars and harmonicas, and he sings. I play bass guitar
– I have a very tiny, cute ukulele bass guitar that always surprises people because it’s so small but produces such a significant, outright bass sound. I also play the regular ukulele, piano, glockenspiel, kazoo, a bit of accordion… and I sing.’
Esté, who has a background in classical music and a love of musicals, finds inspiration in Andrew Lloyd Webber; Lourens finds it in Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. This unique combination of influences produces songs that speak to their lived reality.
‘We wrote “Ek Wou Nog” on the very first night of the hard lockdown last year,’ Lourens says. ‘It was born from a deep understanding of the loss surrounding us and the hardships people were facing all over the world. It’s had an overwhelming response because people can relate. To us, that’s what it’s all about.’
Their other passion is conservation. Every time their song ‘Wilderness’ is streamed, the wine and cheese farm Fairview donates a sum to the Community Conservation Fund for Africa. You can stream Bottomless Coffee Band’s music on Deezer, Spotify, YouTube and YouTube Music.
…a husband-and-wife folk-rock duo, a sommelier, a writer, a ceramicist, a photographer and an up-and-coming soprano: local, super-talented – and all going places.