Kaeleen Hunter and Angelika Heinrich make sweet, jazzy funk. They also help people from all over the country realise their dreams – assuming they dream of writing and recording music. The women go all over the country with a mobile recording studio, with which they conduct songwriting and recording workshops under the name “Live Vibe Music”, “from the beach to the bush to the big smoke”. They will be conducting a tour of Darwin’s live music venues throughout September, as well as a six-week tour of remote communities in the Arnhem and Gulf regions in October, supported by Artback NT and TRAX Contemporary Music Touring Program, bringing the gift of digital recording to communities across the Top End.

So you’re spending a week in Darwin doing some shows and workshops in early September before heading down to NSW for a week and then back up to Darwin again before you start your community tour on the 14th. It must be a fairly hectic lifestyle – how do you feel about it?

Life is full and we have got what we asked for so the best thing is to just embrace it! It is a grand task maintaining a long term sustainable career creating only original music while continually raising the bar both professionally and personally… keeping our eye on the prize takes commitment to our ‘busyness’ and it sure helps to be drug and alcohol free. It’s fulfilling because we get fed on many levels doing exactly what we love and that’s living by the creative process.

How did you get started touring and doing workshops in remote and regional towns and communities?

Touring our music is something we have always done and workshops grew out of our desire for a sustainable musical career. We have years of experience now , so working in remote communities is for us another opportunity to share the skills we have to offer.

We actually live ‘with’ community as Kaeleen’s children come from the Djabugay Community in Kuranda in far north QLD on the Atherton Tablelands. We have moved in and out of this community for almost 30 years so living and working with mob is part of our life style. The opportunity for this NT tour came from connecting with the crew at Artback NT and seriously they have just been awesome at making this next tour happen.

Mettaphor: Kaeleen Hunter and Angelika Heinrich

Live Vibe Music is our workshop tag and really our aim at every workshop is to create a vibey live thing! Our intention is to facilitate workshop participants to do their thing so there are no limits really – whatever they create is all go regardless of participant base, using Logic 8 and the whole loops thing means it doesn’t matter if you are a gifted musician or not – the pallette is full!

In an average year, how long do you think you spend out-and-about on the road?

We tend to spend 4-6 months on the road in a year, and this is actually just growing having now discovered the Top End touring over the last couple of years – luvit. Even when we are home on the east coast we are often moving up and down so travelling and playing is our thing.

Where will your workshops be held this tour? I understand you are working especially with women in these communities?

Our workshops are being held in seven communities, Ngukurr, Numbulwar, Minyerri, Yirrkala, Nhulunbuy, Maningrida and Groote Eylandt.

This is a women centred project – focused on women and facilitated by women creating the opportunity to access technology in a musical context.