The power of music and the media has always been a tool for an artist to achieve global recognition; can you imagine talking about Jamaica and music without saying Bob Marley or Fela Kuti without saying Nigeria?
If you mention Barbados you will of course think of Rihanna but another name slowly being recognised as musicians with a Bajan heritage are Cover Drive the young, vibrant pop group headed by their beautiful lead singer Amanda Reifer.
Cover Drive’s rise to fame was in truth a little out of the blue for the young quartet who were initially just concerned with making music they loved. Their debut Lick Ya Down (2011) produced by J R Rotem (who works with artists like Jason Derulo and Sean Kingston) was huge and really set their style of rocking Bajan good vibes to the masses.
This debut was the catalyst for Cover Drive to be literally everywhere in 2012 but early 2013 they have been quiet taking time out “un winding and changing gears” back home in Barbados.It was not full chill mode however as the group used part of this time to reflect on their careers and importantly write new material.
So late 2103, Cover Drive are back to re-take their crowns as the hottest, most distinctive new group out there right now. With a fresh new EP called Liming In Limbo, they have been over in the UK on a sell out tour dropping some cuts from this latest project. For the die hard fans this is just a taster before they drop a fresh new album sometime in 2014.
Flavour got some time to talk to the group as a whole about of course music.
Ok first off guys what has your day been like?
Amanda-We have had a day of interviews we have been doing them since 10am and we are going to finish around 730 but it is fun though we like talking and meeting different people. We feel that it is just another opportunity to explain ourselves and spread our music.
How is the tour going by the way?
Amanda-Everyone said that the London crowd can be really difficult but the London crowd was insane.
You have been rocking your new material at the performances-what has the reception been like?
T-Ray-Yes we have and it has been amazing to come out playing some new songs at our show and seeing the response of our fans to the new material. It has been great and it has now given us an extra push to go and finish the album.
Is it a scary time to come off the back of such huge success like you guys achieved last year?
Jamar-That pressure does exist but I think that is true for every artist. The truth is that when we did our first album we were not expecting number ones it just happened and so we have kind of applied the same principles to the new music-we are not expecting success we are just doing the music we love.
T-Ray- The success of that first album was part of our five year plan but that happened in a year which none of us expected-we are just going to enjoy everything.
How did the break help you all personally and musically?
Amanda-The years before we were on this amazing rollercoaster of promoting our music, having a song go to number 1 and so it was this crazy year for us. It came to a point where we wanted to get back to writing and so we spent the whole of the year un-winding and changing gears because we had been on this other kind of grind for so long. We started writing again in Barbados and getting that sunshine vibe back, reflecting on the past two years all the good things and the bad things that happened and putting them into songs.
Barry-We came back because we missed our fans and so we decided to do our first UK headline tour.
Tray- I think the thing is we have definitely grown more into ourselves in the last year and so we know what message we want to spread with our music and what we want it to sound like.
Can you break down your creative process as a group?
Barry-Predominantly Amanda will come up with all the melodies and then she runs it by us and then we come up with the music and run it by her so then it all gels together.
Tray-Recently, funnily enough, my mum who manages us showed us that she is a super gangster writer.
Wow how comes you never found out?
Amanda-Kerry and I write a lot together. She actually has always written but she just never shared it with us and then one day we were writing and she started writing and I was like ‘damn that is good!’ Obviously I have known her since I was fifteen and so we have a great chemistry and she knows everything about me and so when we write together it is coming from a real place.
Lastly, what’s the most important thing for you as a group?
One of the themes in our music is staying true to who you are and stand for it. That is something we experience a lot in this industry we are a band and people want us to do this music or with people wanting me to do stuff on my own the truth is this is who we are and we do this as a collective.