I caught up with Nick recently for a chat about his band, his past in Supergroove, his music writing and basically a bunch of other interesting stuff that you'll just have to read about!
How did Foghorn start?
"Basically a couple of phone calls. That's the beauty of a trio, everything's just a couple of phone calls. 'Hello, Tom, Hello Nick!' Tom is my little brother and he plays drums, Nick Eagles, he's older than me and he plays bass. (We went to school together, although he was a few years ahead of me and I didn't really know him well.) There's not really a big saga about how we started, we just got together at a house and it was fine, it was easy."
You're obviously jazz. Would you use any other words to describe your style of music?
"Well at the moment it's a performance. We perform and that's what we're trying to excel at. The two main elements of jazz are improvisation and swing and that encompasses so many styles of music. You have dance music that swings and has elements of improvisation and you have rock and rap or whatever that does that too. I like to consider jazz a pretty broad term, and it's also convenient. It can be convenient but it can also build preconceptions of what a band can be. There's a lot of boring, dull trad jazz bands playing songs that were written 40 years ago and there's nothing wrong with that. But we're a band and we write all our own material and while some of it might sound fairly antique, some of it is pretty modern as well."
Do you think you'll ever do a Nathan Haines then?
"What go to London and shoot lots of drugs!? No...Nathan Haines is quite an inspiring character in many ways- I mean he's a superb player, Sony Young Jazz Musician of the Year...he's probably an inspiration to all jazz musicians in the country, and it's interesting to see how his playing has become more powerful. But are we going to play dance music if that's your question? I think we can make people dance, but I don't think we're going to do it with computers, if you know what I mean..."
You're in a trio with your brother and Nick Eagles. I find this quite interesting because when Tim Finn joined Crowded Housethe other two members of the group were afraid that because there was now too Finns in the group, they would be dominated. So...does Nick Eagles ever feel dominated by the Atkinsons?
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