The very, very popular five-piece multi-instrumental group Mr Cat & The Jackal is often described as experimental acoustic folk while exploring blues, tango, pirate, Balkan and Irish themes. They launched their new music video, for the crowd favourite song "Where's my shoes", in Cape Town on 20 September. One of the band members, Gertjie Besselsen, answers some questions about the video and the band's immediate plans.
Hello Gertjie, how are things?
It’s going well, although I'm tired and coming down with some kind of flu.
Mr Cat & The Jackal's second album, Sins & Siren Songs, has been with us for about a year and a half. Are you still getting a kick from performing the songs from this album? Is there a third album in the making?
Yes, absolutely. The songs tend to keep changing, almost organically. So although we have been playing a song for two years, it still does not feel old. There is some new material coming in. Hopefully we'll have the third album ready by March next year.
“Where's my shoes” is the fourth single from the album to be used for a music video. How do you keep the creative juices running to keep video ideas fresh and striking?
We try to keep it fresh. Not make the same video twice. We had the idea for a performance video, so building on the concept came quite naturally.
The song has long been a crowd favourite at gigs and festivals – I remember how some festival-goers got rid of their shoes, tied the laces together and chucked them upwards to hang over a wire at the Woordfees Straatfees in early 2012. Is that still the case with the tune? Why has it taken so long for it to get its own music video?
“WMS” would have been the third video, but then we got the MK MVP for “Try”, so we made that first. I remember the first time people started taking off their shoes. It was at Bohemia in Stellenbosch. There was a guy who held his rollerblades up high – that was classic. But somehow since then it tends to happen everywhere we go, even up north in Pretoria or Potch.
Tell us more about the video – how did the process flow from conceptualisation to execution?
We really wanted to make a real performance video, not act like we're playing our instruments and sing over mics that aren’t even plugged in. So we put together a small theatre production. We asked one of our good friends in theatre, Wolf Britz, to direct it. Got a bunch of friends for the cast and got a theatre to shoot it in (we've got contacts like that!). It came out great! It really looks like a little musical. And all the sound is recorded real time, so it is really a full-on performance video.
The band's been touring the country extensively ... care to share some highlights and low points in this regard?
We went up to Gauteng for the first leg of the tour. This went really smoothly. We played at the new Arcade Empire, which is a great venue. Potch is always a crazy party … the drinks are just so cheap! Then we played a tattoo convention and I got my first tattoo. I just thought, when in Rome …
The second leg of the tour was all the way up to Mozambique for the Fellowship of Rock & Roll (FORR) festival. That must have been the highlight. Everybody's spirits were just so high. We toured back all along the coast to all kinds of small coastal towns and Backpackers. We met the craziest people … hippies that got stuck in paradise and party animals too amped for their own good health. The second last show we played at Port Alfred. We expected a small, chill town, but when we got there it was their rowing intervarsity. The town was crawling with drunk students in overalls (apparently so they can puke on each other, fall and roll in the mud without caring). But unfortunately by this time our equipment had been taking such a beating that we had real hard time with technical difficulties, and that's always a bummer. But the crowd still enjoyed the show. It is great being able to travel the country, and we're all grateful, but it turns into bloody hard work when you get tired from late nights, early mornings and long hours on the road.
How do you guys view this project in terms of future endeavours and longevity? Will you still be doing this in ten years’ time, or do you have a “five albums, that's it” kind of approach, like Die Antwoord?
Oh, not at all. I'll be doing this till I physically can't anymore. We never had the rise of something like Die Antwoord. We've been working our way up since day one, and we're here now because we worked for it. We take it step by step. And we'll continue working, and climbing those steps.
What are you looking forward to in the next year or so for Mr Cat & The Jackal?
I'm always looking forward to future projects, like the third album and more music videos (the first single will be out later this year). Hopefully we'll be able to hit the overseas soon, and the full-on Mr Cat & The Jackal stage production must happen within the next two years.