Katie Noonan Announces Final Emporer’s Box Tour

Katie Noonan is preparing to tour the country with her Captains one last time before returning to her trio Elixir.

If you want to catch Katie playing the tracks from the highly acclaimed album Emperor’s Box, this tour is the time to do it. The venues are first class, so add in Katie’s soaring vocals and some incredible tunes and you’ve got a recipe for a great night out!

I can only hope that this doesn’t spell the end of The Captains. They’ve produced some amazing music, which has excited me more than any other Katie Noonan venture since George. I’ll cross my fingers that we haven’t seen the last of them.

Tickets are on sale from the venues for the following shows.

21 & 22 February 2011 – The Famous Speigeltent, Adelaide
25 February 2011 – Kings Park, Perth
26 & 27 February 2011 – The Famous Speigeltent at The Arts Centre, Melbourne
4 March 2011 – Judith Wright Centre Theatre, Brisbane
5 March 2011 – The Factory Theatre, Sydney
18 March 2011 – Lizotte’s Dee Why
19 & 20 March 2011 – Blue Mountains Folk Festival

Image used with permission from Heapsaflash

Katie Noonan and The Captains Tour “Emperor’s Box”

The gorgeous Katie Noonan and her new outfit The Captains will tour the country this June to promote their debut album Emperor’s Box.

The band have been slowly developing their songs over the last two and a half years, and are said to be thrilled to take the tracks on the road.

Tickets for the following shows are on sale from the venues now.

5 June 2010 – Tanks Art Centre, Cairns
11 June 2010 – The Governor Hindmarsh Hotel, Adelaide
12 & 13 June 2010 – The Fly By Night, Fremantle
18 June 2010 – The Hi Fi, Melbourne
19 June 2010 – Metro Theatre, Sydney
25 June 2010 – The Powerhouse Theatre, Brisbane
26 June 2010 – Joe’s Waterhole, Eumundi

Image used with permission from Heapsaflash

Q & A with Katie Noonan

Katie Noonan first came to our attention as the frontwoman of Brisbane band George. Now she’s captaining a new ship, stepping out as lead vocalist of The Captains. I had the pleasure of chatting with Katie recently about her new project, balancing motherhood and music, and her hopes for the planet.

You’re about to release your new album with The Captains, Emperor’s Box, which I believe is the album you’re most proud of. What do you love about it?
It’s basically a return to that organic band sound that I think I’m most in love with. I love collaborating and I’ve finally found the right collaborators to share my music with.

When I listened to it what struck me most is the beautiful lush instrumentation. What have The Captains been like to work with?
Well I guess you can hear how wonderful they are as musicians and the craftsmanship they’ve brought to my songs and to our sound. We really just wanted to work on making an organic band sound that sounded cohesive and sounded like people that really enjoyed making music together.

The lyrics are also so gorgeous. After recording the covers album Blackbird, what did it feel like to get back into writing original songs?
Well I never left it, because I’m always writing. And I was writing the songs for this record all through the making of that record as well, because my main motivation is always writing my own music and trying to find my own sound, as a singer and a keyboardist, and a co-producer on this record.

So some of these songs are really old, and some of them are really new. Some were freshly inspired by being with The Captains and writing with them. Some of them evolved really slowly, some of them are 11 or 12 years old and they finally found the right home with The Captains, and some are really new written specifically for this band. It’s a real mixed bag.

The Blackbird thing was a real sidestep for me. It was a jazz record, and as you say I wasn’t singing my own songs, so that’s kind of a real sidestep for me from my main trajectory as an artist. But it was just such an incredible opportunity to work with these amazing musicians, and I couldn’t possibly pass it up. It was just amazing to work with them.

You worked on the tracks for the new album with some amazing people as well, including Tim Finn, Sia, and Don Walker. Who else is on your wish list for collaborating?
It’s not like I had a wish list. It was just circumstance and fate that led to those meetings and those pairings. I mean, Tim has been on my wish list to co-write with for a while. It took a few years to get that one together. Basically I’ve always been a big fan, but when I heard his record Imaginary Kingdom I was blown away. It’s such a hot record. So that was kind of the main wish list person that I had.

And then of course to work with Don Walker was such an honor, because he’s such an incredible songwriter. And then the others, Josh [Pyke] and Sia, are more contemporaries of mine, and we just kind of found each other through a series of circumstances and enjoyed the collaborating process.
Continue reading “Q & A with Katie Noonan”

First Taste of Katie Noonan and The Captains Debut Album

Katie Noonan is one of those artists who never seems to sit still.

She became an indie goddess with her work in George, turned to a more reflective jazz-laded sound with her first solo album Skin, and explored the works of Lennon and McCartney with Blackbird. For the last two years Katie’s gone in another direction with her latest band, The Captains. With Cameron Deyell on guitar, Stu Hunter on keys and bass, and Declan Kelly manning the drums, Katie is now exploring a more organic sound.

The band’s album, Emperor’s Box, is slated for an April release, so we’ve still got a few months to wait, but today I got a taste of what’s to come. I heard one of the new songs, “Time,” and I’m very impressed. I think the George fans who criticized Katie’s solo albums will embrace this, as it really is back to basics. There’s a little edge here, just a hint of that familiar George angst, but it’s softened by strings and Katie’s pure, heavenly voice.

For this album Katie’s written tracks with a who’s who of Australian and New Zealand talent. There’s Tim Finn, Don Walker, Sia, Josh Pyke, and Tom Shapcott, not to mention her esteemed Captains band mates. With these kind of folks lending their skills, I’m sure Emperor’s Box will be one of the big albums of 2010.

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Image source: The Harbour Agency