GOOD HEALTH GOOD WEALTH ON ‘FULL CIRCLE’, JOHN KENNEDY AND MORE! | INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW | BRUCE BREAKY AND SIMON KUZMICKAS – GOOD HEALTH GOOD WEALTH
It’s been a whirlwind of a year for the alternative singer-songwriter duo. With their genre-bending sound, Good Health Good Wealth, have released their latest track ‘Full Circle’ to critical acclaim, gaining support of new music champions across the nation. We sat down with Bruce Breaky and Simon Kuzmickas to discuss everything from their latest single, to headline gigs and everything in between!
Interview by Keira Knox
Keira : What made you decide that music was what you wanted to pursue? Was there a certain turning point in you careers?
Simon : I don’t think it was a conscious decision really, I think we just started doing it and we’re still doing it!
Bruce : It’s like anything isn’t it? Someone asked me the other day, “How do you just write a song?”, for me it’s as simple as going for a run or eating your dinner! You’re just doing it and one day it clicks. For me personally, I was always making beats with the boys growing up. The turning point was when I met a guy called Fraser T Smith, he did a talk at my University. I got to chat him, we had a nice little back and forth for a while and he was the one that said to me, “Have you ever thought about writing a song?”. I said the same as what people said to me, I didn’t think I could, and he told me to write one! I wrote that track on the tube home, once you’ve written one the fear goes and you don’t stop!
Keira : Have you got a favourite song that you’ve written? Has song writing become one of your favourite things about creating a track?
Simon : I feel like they always change, you always come up with a new one, then you start hating it, then you love it again! (laughing) To answer your question, it’s like choosing your favourite child! You can’t really do that to us!
Bruce : ‘Full Circle’, the new one!
Simon : Yeah! But I like ‘Moonlight’ and ‘Guinness’, I love a lot of our tracks that are unreleased! Even material that isn’t done yet, I don’t know what it is, 20 seconds of music, so it could be anything.
Bruce : That’s the best bit, the actual creation of it. It exists, it’s out there. You’re always getting exited by new stuff! I do really love ‘Full Circle’, personally.
Simon : It’s definitely up there, for sure!
Bruce : Top three, ‘Full Circle’, ‘The Weekend’ … ‘Moonlight’ or ‘Guinness’, that would have to be my top three!
Simon: I’d have to go with ‘Moonlight’, ‘Guinness’ and ‘Gil’s Dilemma’
Keira : What are some of the main influences on your music? Is there any particular genres or artists that have inspired your sound?
Bruce : There’s loads! As you can probably tell, our music spans quite a lot of different genres. It depends what mood we are in and what we are writing. I’ve got Mike Skinner’s lyrics tattooed to me, so The Streets are a massive one for me. People like Prince, Daft Punk, people that got the extra mil to do something a bit different. Even like Bowie, other artists from back in the day, they don’t directly influence our style of music, but the fact that they are fearless to go and do whatever music they want to because they artistically believe in it.
Keira : As you touched on before, you’ve recently released a new track, ‘Full Circle’, what was the writing and recording process like for this track?
Simon : I recorded a guitar part, redid it about 8 times, sent it to Bruce to put words to the song essentially. It sat there for a year maybe, we weren’t really feeling it at that point. It was one of those were we butchered it about 8 times, trying to squeeze something out of it. One day when we trying to work out how to play it live, we basically stripped everything back, tried it in a gig setup and it kind of came out of that. It was almost a write off in a way, took everything off it, added different drums and other different bit and that’s sort of how it came to be!
Bruce : It was a lot more indie wasn’t it?
Simon : Yeah, it had a big sing-along indie chorus and we weren’t feeling it. We needed to make it a bit cooler and with a bit more dance, to make it more interesting. That’s when the garage drums came in and made it all work.
Keira : I saw that you got to perform the track for John Kennedy on Radio X, how does it feel to have the support of someone as renowned as him in the upcoming music scene?
Bruce : So good!
Simon : It means the world!
Bruce : To have someone like him champion it, we appreciate it so much! It keeps the fire in you belly as well. I want every person to have an opinion on it but when you do have that muso like him, for want of a better word.
Simon : Yeah he knows his stuff!
Bruce : If he’s digging it then it must be good! He’s such a nice guy as well!
Keira : Tickets are flying out for your headline show at London’s Lower Third next February, what can fans expect from this performance?
Simon : Just a big hour long set!
Bruce : An hour long set of pure belters! Our shows are always good fun, from day one we’ve wanted to people come to a Good Health Good Wealth show and feel like it’s one big party! Even when we take it down, we’ll still bring it back up.
Simon : With a lot of these band nights, people are there because they have to be their in a way. When you’re coming up and you’ve got a really small fanbase, it felt like it lacked something. Our thing was to always think of it as like a night out, don’t think of it as we’re doing a gig. We’re trying bring that natural fun to it!
Keira : Can we expect to hear anymore new, unreleased material from you at the upcoming shows?
Simon : 100%
Bruce : We’ll always drop a few new ones!
Simon : We’ll drop about 2 or 3 new ones in the set, our set will easily have plenty of unreleased stuff.
Bruce : It’s harder to put them in when you’re doing a supporting slot, you’ve got 25 minutes, you want to showcase songs that people then can go away and listen to. As we said earlier, we’re always excited to play a new one! It’s fun and it’s fresh.
Keira : Whilst we’re on the topic of live performances, what has been your best experience on stage so far?
Simon : They’ve all been good!
Bruce : Truck Festival was great!
Simon : Even when we released the EP, ‘Everyone Feels Like This’, we performed a gig in Brixton and that was really good! It was one of the first ones that made us think “Woah! This is the real thing!”. It was 300 sell out. I think they’re all good!
Bruce : It’s when you start seeing a little bit of a sea of people. Truck was good because you couldn’t get in the tent. Which was quite mad! We came out and hoped people would be there and it was chocker!
Keira : How have you found festival season this year?
Simon : It was good, we didn’t do loads but the ones we did do, were really good actually!
Bruce : They were fantastic! We did the This Feeling stages on all of them I think. They’ve been quality!
Keira : What are the next steps you plan to take as a band? Is there anything exciting you can tell us?
Simon : New music, obvioulsy!
Bruce : We’ve always got new music coming out. We’ll be taking it up a notch next year.
Simon : We’ve picked up a bit of momentum, so we’ll try and ride that as much as we can. The plan is to keep releasing, we were saying ‘Full Circle’ is part of an EP that will probably drop early next year. We’ll play as many gigs as we can, as many supports as we can. Just try and fill out the summer with festivals every weekend if we can, that’s the goal!
Bruce : Glasto here we come!
Tickets for GHGW upcoming live show are available here – SHOWS | Ghgw (goodhealthgoodwealth.com)
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