‘I tried to party myself to death’
Glenn McConnell charts the rise, fall and rise of Fat Freddy’s Drop legend Dallas Tamaira, as the musician opens up on how he rose out of a ‘dark spiral’ of depression and drug use.
Dallas Tamaira’s great love led to his downfall, but it also fuelled his recovery. Tamaira is 47, and in many ways music defines his life. He left school early, eager to spread his wings away from hometown Kaiko¯ ura. But as a teenager, without school certificate and trying to make his way in Christchurch city, his options were few and limited. Alcohol became a close companion. He was young and ‘‘just floated around’’.
For the first time, but not the last time in his life, music came to the rescue. It pulled him back to earth, and onto a course destined for success.
Tamaira is the singer of Fat Freddy’s Drop, the hugely popular jazz and dub band that first made waves in Wellington with Hope in 1999. The track is uplifting and a continuation of political statements New Zealand musicians were making around the same time. It was also the result of taking LSD, founding member Chris Faiumu revealed to British newspaper The Guardian. That meant they wrote and recorded the whole track in just two days.
Fat Freddy’s is just one part of Tamaira’s life. He is also a father. Down the road from the Fat Freddy’s loft in Kilbirnie, he coaches basketball at the rec centre.
The band’s base is a lowkey space, a loft thatsits above a mechanic’s workshop, up a narrow staircase that leads to three faded white doors.
With Fat Freddy’s, Tamaira is known as Joe Dukie. The name came from his father, Joe Tamaira, who recorded contemporary Christian music.
Although Tamaira had limited contact with him growing up, it was his dad who got him into music. He’d been trying to convince the Ministry for Social Development to fund a course where he’d teach young people how to make music. Tamaira wasn’t an obvious fit for the course. He could play the guitar, but didn’t see music in his future. At school, he did kapa haka, but little else in the way of performing. He enrolled in the course. .
Tamaira was in Europe with Fat Freddy’s when the pandemic started to take hold. ‘‘We did one show in Frankfurt and then in a matter of hours, the tour was cancelled,’’ he recalls.
While he was gutted for the fans in Europe, he admits he was relieved to return home to Wellington.
The exhaustion of work, of touring, and the mental taxation that comes with that, had once again caught up with him.
He has never been diagnosed with a psychiatric condition but acknowledges he has his own mental illness. It became evident in what he describes as a downfall, a ‘‘downward spiral’’ that hit rock bottom about a decade ago.
The spiral was seemingly self-propelling. Tamaira was on autopilot when it came to drugs and alcohol. He knew it was detrimental but couldn’t break his habit. He decided to see where it would lead him.
Anxiety, and then paranoia, took over. He says he could no longer trust his closest friends, for reasons he struggles to articulate. He worried all the time. He was scared.
‘‘The people in the band, they were the people closest to me, but they were also the people who I was wary of when the paranoia was kicking in. I felt like I couldn’t trust these people,’’ he recalls.
What was he worried about? ‘‘Oh,’’ he says. ‘‘It was nothing definite. It was just a feeling of distrust.’’
There was a lot going on at the time. Back home from a big tour, a much younger Tamaira was ‘‘saying yes to everything’’. He knew something was wrong but didn’t try to fix it.
‘‘When I noticed anxiety, and stress and depression leaking into my real life – that’s when I was going down that downward spiral with girls, drugs and alcohol,’’ he says, gazing out the window of a quiet Wellington coffee shop. ‘‘I said yes to everything and continued that for a short period of time.’’
He pauses.
‘‘It was nine months when I tried to party myself to death. By the end of it I was at probably the lowest point.’’
It ended his relationship, and soon after, almost ended Fat Freddy’s Drop.
He pulled the relationship back from the dead, moved to Christchurch and was ready to say goodbye to Freddy’s. Music was killing him, or so it felt.
Looking back, he says with hindsight that it is clear he was sick. He had spent months pushing those closest to him away – through a mix of substance abuse and paranoia.
That was the downfall music brought. Tamaira says musicians like him can fall into drug use for innocent reasons. ‘‘You’re a creative, and you want to change your perspective. Most of the time, this starts because you’re trying to do what’s best for the music, for your creativity.
‘‘It all starts innocently, but then ego gets in the way. You stop thinking about music, and then it’s just you taking drugs, bro, that’s all it is.’’
Sometimes, that works out. But as fame builds, access to drugs and other vices becomes easier. That happened at a time when Tamaira says Fat Freddy’s Drop was starting to feel more like a job, and less like the musical outlet it started as.
Once again, pressures started to build for Tamaira.
Life has changed a lot since then, but similar issues still arise. He has a tortured relationship with music, which dominates so much of his life. He truly loves it. He loves Fat Freddy’s Drop, even though he says he’ll be the first to ‘‘b... and moan about it’’.
‘‘I mean, who doesn’t when they’re in a job for f ...... years, doing the same thing for 20 years?
‘‘At the end of the day, our bond is stronger than ever now thanks to having time off over the pandemic. We’ve had time, individually, and we used that to make music, to put on a show called The Lock In. We are stronger than ever.’’
Sitting in the Freddy’s house, a space that’s seen so much – where bandmates have crashed, where hits have been made, where memories are kept – it’s clear Tamaira won’t leave the band. The conversation has turned through hard topics, but his face lights up while watching a video of the band performing in Hawke’s Bay.
Behind-the-scenes pictures show this clip was a highly produced, cinematic-quality film. There’s a cameraman with some sort of robotic gyroscope on his back. It’s a long way from where the band started
out.
Professionalism is a double-edged sword for creatives. It gives you the resources to push the boundaries of your art, but in return it turns your art into work.
It’s a conundrum Tamaira has been struggling with. How do you find a balance?
His solution came from the most unusual of situations: the Covid-19 pandemic. Locked down with his family in Wellington, the 47-year-old dad thrived.
He put routines in place, which he says have greatly benefited his mental health. Each day started with yoga, with the full family. They would share their thoughts and say what they were thankful for. It was a year of mindfulness, exercise, and yes, music.
He jokes, ‘‘It really did come at a good time. It came at a time when I’d just had enough, really. I needed to make some proper life changes, so I won’t say the pandemic was what I was waiting for, but…’’
Instead of letting himself go in the lockdown, Tamaira says he focused on changing his life. Healthier habits followed, he’s eating keto – and avoids the temptations of Kilbirnie KFC. He writes and talks openly about feelings.
With Freddy’s tour on hold, Tamaira had time to be creative with no strings attached.
He released music everyday on social media, and then started working to release tracks under his own name. No Flowers, a track about powerful wa¯ hine in his life, was the first solo single. On Friday a new single Spider came out.
Tamaira explains that these solo releases are his outlet. This will not be his main project; he doesn’t anticipate more fame or wealth to follow.
‘‘It’s creative, it’s enjoyable to write something that doesn’t need to be filtered,’’ he says.
Spider is an example of that. Where Tamaira struggled to explain his paranoia or why he chose to follow that downward spiral as far as it would go, he says Spider shines a light on what he was feeling.
‘‘It’s all in there. There’s talk of relationships, the first verse is about relationships with people I’m close to, and the second is more about addiction and not feeling in control,’’ he says.
And he made it all very quickly, almost like his subconscious just emptied itself into the microphone.
This process, he says, has reminded him how powerful music can be.
‘The people in the band, they were the people closest to me, but they were also the people who I was wary of when the paranoia was kicking in. I felt like I couldn’t trust these people.’ DALLAS TAMAIRA