Loops wants to make waves in Chintsa show
One of South Africa’s top performing folk musicians, Jeremy Loops, performs in East London this weekend shortly before leaving on his world tour. Saturday Dispatch’s Ross Roche caught up with him
AMASSIVE crowd is set to descend on the C Club in Chintsa along the East Coast Resorts road today for a sold-out show from one of South Africa's most popular artists, Jeremy Thomas Hewitt – aka Jeremy Loops. It will be Hewitt’s second appearance in the East London region and he is all set to delight a packed to capacity crowd. The show is set to equal the biggest party the C Club has hosted, drawing the same amount of people that came out to the Matthew Mole and Goodluck show in December.
“We have capped it at 1 500 tickets because of the rain predicted, we could have gone bigger, but we wanted to give the best possible experience for those attending the show,” explained C Club owner Mark Crawford. “It is more for the enjoyment of those who have bought tickets than us making money, so we want to deliver the best possible show. If it does look like the weather will be clear we will release a few more tickets, so keep an eye out.”
Hi Jeremy. Are you looking forward to your show in Chintsa on Saturday? If I am not mistaken, this is your second performance in the East London region (although the first in Chintsa) after you performed at Wiseguys a few years ago.
Yeah, this is only our second ever show in East London, so we’re really looking forward to it.
How did you enjoy that first performance at Wiseguys? What do you think of EL music fans?
The show at Wiseguys was good fun. I think EL music fans are like music fans from all over SA, who don’t happen to live in the major music centres, which is to say brilliant supporters of local music. It’s just a real pity that for historical reasons South Africa’s never really been able to sustain a bustling music scene all around the country, so I have admiration for the promoters who work in their local towns and cities to help grow the scene.
What are you expecting from the Chintsa show?
We don’t go into shows with expectations. We just prepare the absolute best set we can and we perform with full energy. People respond well when they know you’re giving your all, and more often than not, they give the same back. We’re planning to play quite a bit of new material too, so looking forward to seeing how that all goes down.
Have you heard about the venue and do you know what to expect?
The venue’s name has popped up but I didn’t know much about it. I know the area of Chintsa, though. It’s a beautiful getaway. We’ve been impressed with how the venue’s owners and managers have handled the whole process from booking it and staying in communication with us and being really hospitable in offering us a stay at their lodge after the show on them, so our expectations are sky high.
Is this part of your ‘Critical as Water’ Tour?
Officially, it’s not. It’s actually just outside my ‘Critical As Water’ tour. It nearly was, but my album Critical As Water only comes out on March 16, so it would have been a bit weird to say this show is part of that tour and then the album isn’t actually available for that show. Strictly speaking, this is the closing show of the ‘Waves’ tour.
With you currently releasing singles from your new album, how has the reception been so far?
The reception’s been great. Waves, the album’s lead single is doing really well. Not only here at home, but it’s charting in Germany, which has become a huge territory for us, and it’s performing really well in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland too. It’s cool to be in a position where you think of the success of new music from a global perspective. My next single Freak goes live on Friday February 23 (yesterday), so really excited to get that into people’s hands.
Are you excited for the album’s release?
Few things in a musician’s career are as significant as releasing an album, so there’s always a lot of emotions around the release. It’s only my second album release, so while this process feels familiar, it feels as special as the first. It’s officially out on 16 March so unfortunately folks in East London won’t be able to get the album on Saturday. March 16 is close, though. It’s less than a month away.
Following this show you have a few more in South Africa then a World Tour. You must be extremely excited for it. Is this your biggest tour yet?
This isn’t actually my biggest tour in terms of the number of shows we play. We deliberately kept the shows down to a few cities per country so we could reach more places in a shorter period of time. It is the biggest in that our geographic span would be the widest we’ve ever done in one continuous trip. Tour life is always exciting. We’re so used to being on the road that I feel a bit odd when I’ve been home for too long. You just adjust your lifestyle to constantly being on the move.
What countries will you be travelling too? Any of them for the first time?
We’re doing the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The only country of these that we haven’t played is New Zealand.
Having played outside the country before, what is the difference between SA fans and those in other countries?
For us, very little. We’re lucky in that our community worldwide is really, really passionate about the music we make, and they know the nature of our shows is high energy from start to finish. If anything, the thing that’s interesting is that our audiences overseas are as big as our audiences here at home, even though our profiles out there are a fraction of what they are here at home. It speaks to the incredible opportunity and potential we have to spread South African music further still and reach more and more people.
Who is the biggest act you have ever played alongside to date?
Hard to say who the biggest act we’ve played alongside to date is because once you start playing festivals abroad, you routinely play alongside huge acts. We toured with Twenty One Pilots a few years ago, so in that sense, they’d have to be the biggest we’ve played alongside for an extended period.
Lastly is there anything else big on your calendar that fans can look forward to in the near future?
Big album release, and a few big tours. We’re going to be busy for a long while with those.