Kahu S-B: The Transcript

This interview was recorded on the 1st of October, 2024.

Here's my conversation with Kahu Sanson-Burnett. Kahu was the last interview I did for my original Roots uni project in 2024.

I'll start with the basic questions: Name, age, hometown, high school?

Yep, yeah, so, my name's Kahu, I'm 19, I'm from Nelson, and I, went to Nayland College in Nelson.

So how did Parallel Park come together?

Yeah, it's kind of a long story. it kind of started with, me and the singer Florence in intermediate, at Nelson Intermediate School in Nelson.

We both auditioned for the rock band, and got into that in year 7. and then yeah, we just kept playing through intermediate. and we got our guitarist Ethan, in year 8. And then all went to like different high schools in Nelson. but yeah, we just kept playing. And we were lucky enough to be able to practice at, NMIT in Nelson. And then we just entered Rock Quest. Rock Quest. every year for like the whole time in high school. And yeah, that's kind of just how it came to be. Awesome.

I know you guys are pretty spread out across the globe. So how do you kind of manage that? What are some of the challenges to being in a long-distance band?

Yeah, it's pretty tough. we, we haven't been able to do as much as we hoped, but, yeah, like with, with the way we write, it's kind of either me or Ethan, kind of come up with a guitar idea. and then we can just like send it to Floss, she's in Amsterdam at the moment. She's got a guitar over there and she can just have a jam and come up with stuff and then send it back to me and I can just put it in and start kinda creating over it.

Our last single that we just released, we like recorded the day before she left. In the mid semester break, so yeah.

Yeah, Good Terms. I thought the name seemed kind of ominous. Like is this the end of Parallel Park by “leaving things on Good Terms?”

No Yeah, we're actually, we're planning to get back together at the end of this year. We're playing at the um Nelson New Year's Eve Exhibition. A celebration thing, which will be cool.

You guys did pretty well in the 2023 Smokefree Rock Quest, and you were able to use some prize money to film your music video for Can We Talk?

Yeah, yeah, it was pretty awesome. that was the first music video we'd ever done. and do you know Darcy Lawrey from Nelson? I think he was like, maybe the, one of the head boys at Boys College. But yeah, he was kind of a up and coming filmmaker, and yeah, we were able to, pay him the money to go in and film it and edit it for us. It was super cool.

That video had a pretty good run on YouTube. Did the success of have any sort of shift for the band's trajectory, or did you get any, like, insights on where you wanted to go as a band?

Not really, that was quite unexpected, um. I'm still not sure where all those players came from. It seems like maybe lots of them were like bots, somehow.

You reckon?

Yeah, I don't know, like, cause, yeah.

I think you’re just being humble.

Maybe, but, ‘cause it only got like 80 comments or something out of the like, 250,000 views or whatever.

Clearly you just left people speechless.

Kahu: Yeah, maybe. But yeah, Yeah, I don't know if it really changed much for us, but I guess it kinda just, made us more determined to make more music and videos and everything, so.

I saw on your website you're a part of JOLA BURNS. Yeah. I haven't heard of that before. Yeah. Can you go into a bit of that?

Yeah, yeah. So, that's a collaboration between me and my cousin Alyahna, who goes by Imani-J. yeah. Yeah, and we just started that. Yeah, we've kind of been writing music together for a while. In 2022, we decided to enter Rockquest. we kind of had to make a bunch of music for that. yeah, so it's kind of like a pop electronic kind of mashup thing. And then, yeah, we didn't get very far in the 2022 Rockquest, but, in the 2023 one, we got to the national final, which was super cool. So that kind of gave us a bit more motivation to keep writing. Yeah, now we've been booked for SoundSplash and the TSB Festival of Lights. Which will be fun.

So, you're currently studying commercial music at Massey. What made you decide to pursue this degree?

Yeah, I guess, kind of just after being in Parallel Park and JOLA BURNS, and going through Rockquest, I just really wanted to have music as a career. I just, I enjoy it so much. and it was, yeah, it was either like kind of coming here or going to Auckland, or like Vic, but yeah, I'm super keen on the kind of practical audio engineering stuff.

And being in Wellington seemed like a good kind of place to start rather than going up to Auckland. Just cause it's so close to home. So yeah, yeah, I decided to do the Massey course and it's been really good so far.

Has it changed or influenced the way you approach making music?

Not heaps, but I think I've just, I've made so many connections and stuff.

I've got quite a bit of production work out of meeting uni bands and other people. A lot of solo artists too, and yeah doing some work for them, which has been great.

Do you see yourself in the future wanting to go more in that production-side direction or continue doing more of the live stuff?

Um, I think a mix of both. I think there's probably more opportunities to make a living doing the kind of production and mixing stuff. But yeah, I, I still love playing like live and it would be, it'd be super cool to be able to do that as well.

With both Parallel Park and Joella Burns on your plate. How do you balance the creative demands of both projects?

Yeah, it, it's pretty tough. I've, kind of, yeah, I kind of had a break from JOLA BURNS the last like three or four months. Yeah. just, yeah, I felt kind of burnt out on that.

So, I guess with like anything creative it just comes in waves. like, I find the Parallel Park stuff easier to write just because it's like guitar based and I just sit down and start playing stuff on the guitar. It comes like that, whereas with the JOLA BURNS stuff I, I just sit there on my laptop making beats and stuff. But yeah, it's been pretty good so far.

So then looking into the future. You said you're playing JOLA BURNS at some festivals. Anything like that coming up for Parallel Park?

Yeah, that'd be a pretty cool way. like I said, we're doing this New Year's Eve thing in Nelson. And then, it sounds like Floss is gonna be moving to Wellington next year. And our bass player, Zac, sounds like he's gonna be at Vic. Hopefully we get to start playing some gigs up here and grow the community up here. Looking forward to it.

And Ethan the other guitarist is down at Canterbury doing engineering. So he's probably going to be down there for a while And then Maisie is also overseas. I'm not sure what she's going to do.

Alright, that was all the questions I had for today.

Cool, thank you