“When I listen to Wrestlerish I think of driving in the passenger seat and losing out under streetlights and I think of bicycles and glitter and I think of girls and the way hearts used to break so well in the old days. A quarterlife crisis is a ridiculous thing to have, but he’s making the soundtrack to mine.” – Hunter Kennedy
Wrestlerish is Werner Olckers, who sings and writes the songs, Jacques Du Plessis who produces, plays keys, bass and sings, David Grevler who plays bass, Tambo and Gavin Flaks who plays drums, the tambourine, shakers and spoons…
We met up at Rocking the Daisies, it took us about 15 minutes to find a spot to do our interview, it was just after their set (which was outstanding). We eventually found a spot in Media Office and got started. The guys were relaxed and joking the whole way through the interview, teasing each other and quipping up at every possible moment.
They’re hailed as a band from Pretoria and as Werner is from Pretoria most people assume the rest of the band is, Gavin says “Most of us are from Joburg, it’s annoying being referred to as a Pretoria band…”
They disagree on how they picked the band name “I don’t think we have an answer for that…” says Gavin, but Werner interjects, “we do actually, sorta. It’s because I play everything and I’m quite Wrestlerish, it initially started as a solo project. Jacques then interjects “Wernerish didn’t work” Werner laughs and says “The Werner Olckers band didn’t work out either…so Wrestlerish it was!
The band met as Werner and Jacques “knew each other from awhile back” and it turned out Jacques knew Gavin who knew David…and so it went.
Their music influences are varied, very varied “Gavin’s into weird stuff” says Werner laughing, “he can recite D12 lyrics…seriously though, we’re into good music, when an artist or a band writes a good song, we like it!” basically they’re not too fussy.
Recording the EP, The Jackal “was a one day thing. I had a couple of songs” says Werner “and I had a mic” adds Jacques. Werner continues “If you listen closely you can hear Jacques rocking on his chair and the vocals aren’t perfect…it was like, lets record a moment. It’s pretty.”
The new things happening are that they’d “just shot a third music video (Bad News) it’s also to be our first video to be released. We have 3 lined up to released at some stage, in other news we’re working on a few record deals, trying to see who would be best for the band, but nothing has been decided yet…”
Werner says “The first few times we didn’t get performing on a big stage, it was hard going from being a band who generally played in clubs to a band who played festivals, now we’re starting to get it” Gavin pipes up “a few Red Bulls don’t hurt”
They unanimously chorus “Gavin” at my question of who takes longest to get ready before a gig ,except Gavin of course, who just sits there quietly, Jacques explains, “it’s hard to get him up in the morning-he’s not used to it!”One of the craziest things that happened at a show was “while on tour with Ashtray Electric in Bloem and Rudi and Rupert went to sleep in the van (after a few too many Jagers) after awhile we come outside and the van was missing. We phoned Rupert and he was like “I’m in the van outside the club” Well they weren’t. Eventually he climbed out of the van and it had somehow moved 3 blocks away…a bottle of Jager was missing…oh the mystery.”
They would like “to get to a stage where we would be able to support ourselves completely by just playing music, it’s every artist’s dream…it’s hard to do that in this country-you can’t always be on tour…we’d ultimately like to keep growing as a band..”
Wrestlerish are a four piece that “blend rock, country and folk like these genres should have always been one..” They are a band that is going to go far. Mark my words.
Tags: David Grevler, Gavin Flaks, Jacques Du Plessis, Werner Olckers, Wrestlerish, Wrestlerish band, Wrestlerish band bio
Musical Mover & Shaker! 