Vika & Linda On Tour… Next Stop Adelaide!

Vika & Linda are two of Australia’s most beloved and enduring voices. From singing together in church as children to chart-topping albums and international stages, the Melbourne sisters have forged a career spanning nearly four decades. With eight studio albums, multiple ARIA nominations, a #1 album (Akilotoa), and an OAM for services to the performing arts, they are admired by fans and peers alike. Now the focus is on their new album Where Do You Come From? and are on their largest ever national tour to date with their band The Bullettes stopping in Adelaide tonight. Audiences will be treated to songs from the
new album together with the songs and stories of their inimitable career. Vika & Linda spoke to Rob Lyon about the album and tour when they landed at Adelaide Airport on the way to their hotel.

Congratulations on the new album. You’ve got to be really blown away by how fans have got around this one?
Linda: Yeah, we are. You never know when you make a record how it’s going to go, but it’s had a really great response straight from the first day, really. I think the strength of the title got people talking, and then the track backed that up, Where Do You Come From? and it’s been really great response from the public.

Being out for a month now, when you reflect on it, how does it sit with you now? Are you even more proud than when it first came out?
Vika: I think so, because of the way people are reacting to it live. Being able to sing these songs to an audience and have them relate to them so strongly, which they’ve told us, because we go out and sign merch after each show. They really love the songs, so we can’t ask for much more than that. It seems to have hit not just the question of identity, but people from all walks of life.

Linda: Yeah, it’s been great. That’s with Where Do You Come From? but all the other songs too on the album. Like, we’ve got a song for swimmers, the swimmers relate to that song and they love it so much, they come up and they tell us. People have been crying at our show, and we’re like, what the heck? We’re upsetting everybody, but they say it’s tears of, they’re just so overcome with emotion. I think that’s great, when you can sing like that, and we’ve got a great band. You can tell a story, then you’ve done your job.

I guess that’s one of the powerful things about the album, not only are they your stories, but people can relate and connect with them as well?
Vika: Well, yeah, I know, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because we haven’t done much song writing, but we thought for this record, we really wanted to, it was time, you know? We’re approaching sixty, Linda is, I am sixty, and it’s like, we’ve got things we want to say. We can’t just sing about falling in love, because that’s not where our life is anymore. We’re different women now, so we need to be writing stuff that’s relevant to us and it’s interesting, the people are resonating with that.

I saw you at Split Enz in Adelaide, and you could see the emotional pull your new songs had. People were genuinely moved by those newer songs.
Vika: Oh, thanks!

Linda: Yeah, that was a great tour to do for us, because we’ve opened for a lot of people over the years, not so much recently, but when they asked us to do it, it was… like we said, we were fans of theirs since childhood. Their song writing, their artistic bent, and for us to tour with them to their audience, it was really great fun just before our record came out.

Vika: It was like a gift from God, is God smiling on us? We couldn’t have asked for anything better than that tour. I think the experience has taught us what our job is as an opening act. It’s to warm up the crowd and not bore them too much with a whole stack of new songs, which was why there was a mix of old songs in the set, maybe things people were familiar with from the Black Sorrows days and stuff. So yeah, I’m so glad people enjoyed it, and I’m so glad that Split Enz gave us that opportunity.

Even going back, was it clear in your mind that these were the stories that needed to be told? Once you started writing them, did the songs write themselves?
Linda: It wasn’t really clear, but we did have a sort of rough sketch because we wrote a memoir, No Bull. So there were triggers in that writing of that book that we thought, oh, this could be extended into a song. We could write a song about this, for instance, Where Do You Come From? Which was related to a bullying incident for Vika. She was called “Coke” on her second day of school, and also the memories of that, when we used to always get asked, “Where do you come from?” That triggered that song.
There were songs that I wrote with Mark Seymour very early on, Waiting on the Kid, which was about single parenting and then we wrote a song about a mother, and we put the pieces together like that.

Vika: Our love of swimming, because we have to exercise more as we’re aging. And then the great song Glenn Richards wrote for us about partying and addiction, and that’s been a part of our life as well.

Linda: They didn’t write themselves, they were difficult, they took a while.

How significant was Mark Seymour?
Linda: He had known us for a long time, and we spent a bit more time with him recently because of our writing of Waiting On The Kid. He always is a great go‑to guy. Vika thought, let’s try and ask him to do more, because of his edginess?

Vika: I like how edgy he is. I love his song writing. I think Mark is one of Australia’s best songwriters. It was like he had that edge, and I knew he’d kind of get what we were after, which is why we asked him to collaborate on so many songs on this record and he’s interesting with melody as well. He took us in a different direction, not the usual sort of safe thing we would usually do, and he works really hard at it. That was great, it pulled a lot of stuff out of us that we want to explore more. He’s great with ballads, as you know, Throw Your Arms Around Me, as much as he is with bangers, so he was kind of perfect because we do both.

Did you expect the songs to be as personal and as deep as what you thought, or is that just part of everything coming out when you’re writing these songs?
Linda: I think the way Vika writes is the way she speaks, which I like. It’s direct, it’s not flowery, it’s to the point, and I think that that way of telling stories hits home with people. Because I understand what she’s talking about. You have to write from personal experience, I think it’s better. I mean, you tell a better story, I think, if you’ve lived it. You know, we’ve tried to make up songs before, and they were crap.

There are some amazing contributors from Ben Salter, Glenn Richards, Helen Shanahan and Cameron Bruce. Were they obvious choices?
Linda: We’ve worked with a guy called Bill Page from Mushroom, he was our early A&R guy thirty five years ago, and he continues to send us up‑and‑coming songwriters. He sent songs from Glenn Richards, Ben Salter and Helen Shanahan. So all three were connected to us through Bill Page.

Vika: We love her too. That’s right, and it just so happened the songs they sent fit with the theme of the record. They were life themes, and they were things that we could relate to because we’ve also been interpreters for a long part of our career, singing other people’s songs, and that’s always an interesting thing to do, which is why, when Helen’s song came, and Glenn’s song came, and Ben Salter’s song came, it was like, oh yes, these fit with these life themes that we’re talking about.

You’ve presented plenty of great stories so far, but are there more stories left that haven’t been told that could easily make the next album?
Linda: I’m sure there is. I asked Mark can we continue writing? He said yes, so maybe Vika and I can sit down with him for a few more things. We’ve got a lot more things to say, and our confidence is building in the song writing department, so I think we have to continue on that path. It’s much more fulfilling, I’ve got to say.

How’s the tour been going so far?
Linda: It’s been fantastic. We’ve had a ball, and importantly, going as far and wide as we can in each capital city, getting out to the regions, we always love that. Love meeting people. We love seeing the reaction that the songs are getting and we don’t think that people are going to come to us. That’s never been the assumption, and we love touring. We love touring, it’s in our DNA, we’ve been doing it since we were like twenty years old. So it’s like getting out there, and getting amongst it, and it’s a bit cleaner these days. Finding out all these lovely theatres and stuff that little towns have, it’s wonderful.

Is there anywhere left in Australia that you haven’t been to yet that you’d like to get to?
Vika: I haven’t really been to Northwestern Australia very much, which I’d like to get to. We went there once on a camping trip that ended up being quite fruitful for songwriting, but no, that’s where I’d like to go.

Was there any temptation to play the album start to end on this tour? It just seems like too good an album not to give every song their moment to shine.
Linda: We’re almost doing it, because we’re doing eight songs out of eleven. I think when people are familiar with the record, that might be a good thing to do. At the moment, we’re just trying to introduce them to the songs slowly because people are still requesting Never Let Me Go and Chained To The Wheel, which we don’t do because Joe sings that with me, it’s a duet, and When Will You Fall For Me? So, we have to incorporate those into the set.

By the time November rolls around, once the tour finishes, you won’t know yourself. What are you going to do with the spare time you’ll get?
Vika: We’ll go swimming!

Linda: Crawling to the fetal position.

Vika: No! Touring makes you fit. We’re always looking forward, like, what’s the next thing we’re going to do?

Linda: And… we’re all going on Red Hot Summer Tour, and then I’m going to Antarctica. We love Colin as well. We love Men at Work. He’s such a great storyteller. He’s taught us a lot about telling stories in between songs.

Vika: Yeah, he’s a great show. It’s a great line-up, you know? There could be a few more chicks on the bill, I reckon, but it’s pretty good.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Where Do You Come From? is out now, listen/ purchase HERE

Catch Vika & Linda on the following dates, tickets HERE