GenQ Music

On March 10th, GenQ Music Editor Leigh May sat down with Beki Thomas, lead singer of Beki & The Bullets, and former singer from The Mavis's, to have a drink and chat about her life in general ...

Hey Beki, how are you today?
I’m very well, thanks! Busy as I’ve ever been in my whole entire life … in a good way!

Well, you were saying to me before, you need money to get over to America …
Yes. Well, from the moment we got back from there in October, we’ve been saving and working hard to get money for our next trip over there. The day we left, I was crying cos I didn’t want to leave, I was like “I don’t wanna go home” cos I feel alive and inspired when I was over there. We’re going to New York and LA, then we’ll be basing ourselves in … I don’t know yet, but we’ll be spending a lot of time in both.

What’s the difference between those two places and here?
Well, in my opinion, those two cities are very different. LA’s in California, lots of palm trees, driving everywhere, no one walks, hence the name of the song “Nobody Walks In LA” by Missing Persons … warm weather, lots of action at night, parties and bands on every night, electricity in the air, and there’s this feeling that everyone’s there trying to make it, which helps make it fun and exciting, everyone’s doing music or acting, so it’s great to be surrounded by those sorts of people. New York is like really cool, you can walk anywhere, catch the subway, really arty, great music and cafés …

And how is it different to Melbourne? What is it that makes you feel more at home over there than Australia?
I feel like a fish out of water over here, and I feel like a fish in water over there.  Meaning I’m fluffing around here doing nothing, whereas there I’m swimming. There’s so many opportunities over there, and so many more people doing what I’m doing, makes me feel like I’m where I belong, and it inspires me.

I guess LA, New York and Melbourne would all be pretty different to growing up in Ballarat, wouldn’t it?
Yep, haha! Very different. I love Melbourne too, but you only live once, you know what I mean. I just wanna go out there and do my thing, and if I’m doing music, I have to be where it’s at. Melbourne will always be home, but it’s not going anywhere, so who knows? I might come back in two months, or twenty years, or never. I just have to get out there and try. And, yep, Ballarat … haha!

Max Sharam’s from there too, isn’t she?
Yeah, though I never knew her, she was a little bit older than us, though I think we kind of crossed paths a little bit when we were young. We still go back there for Christmas and stuff, my little doggy’s at Mum and Dad’s house. His name’s Paddington, and he’s a Maltese Pomeranian. Looks like a mini Dulux dog, exactly. People come up on the street and say “mini dulux dog” … and they also say we look alike, cos of our hair, scruffy …

You haven’t dyed your dog’s hair pink though, have you?
I nearly did … I would have, except it’s at Mum and Dad’s … but I will one day, haha!

They become part of the family too, don’t they?
Yeah, they do. I just love it when you open your eyes, and they’re staring at you, head on the pillow … my dog licked the tears from my eyes when I broke up with my last boyfriend …

How many songs did you write about that?
Um … a couple of albums worth, haha!

It’s the best therapy, isn’t it?
Yeah! Some of the songs we play … “Wait And See” is about that relationship. Before we broke up, “we’ll have to wait and see” and look what happened! I predict my future in my songs … I subconsciously write stuff and it comes true …

Maybe you should write a song about winning a million dollars or something …
Well, haha!   I always look at the last couple of songs I wrote, and I go “oooh!” The last couple I did write, one’s called “Show The Business” and it’s about showing our band, and it’s great and getting out there and showing ourselves off. I wrote one called “Berlin”, which is about Berlin…

I figured …
Haha, yeah … I wrote this song called “Berlin”, it’s about Prague actually … haha! We wrote it when we were in Prague, backstage …

Going back a few years, how long has it been since The Mavis’s broke up?
Um … The Mavis’s broke up around 2000-2001, something like that, it’s all a bit of a blur.

Do you still write songs with Matt (Beki’s brother, lead singer of The Blowwaves)?
Not really … we still do stuff together, like pieces here and there, I did vocals and chorus for him for a song he was submitting to Kylie Minogue, but he decided he wanted to hang onto it … we got him up to sing with us at a gig once. We occasionally do gigs together, I’ve performed with The Blowwaves a couple of times, they’re GREAT!

Yeah, I saw them a few weeks ago … Jamie is so hot!
Jamie is great, such a girl, he’s gorgeous.

I can’t believe how old he is … he’s my age, and I thought he was his (my partner, Jamie) age …
How old are you?

I’m 27, and he’s (my Jamie) 20 …
Oh, you’re a cradle-snatcher like me, haha! It’s great!

Like I always say, you’re only as old as the one you feel.
Well, I won’t say how old I am then, haha! Yeah, once we dressed him up in a dress and blonde wig, and he looked exactly like Cameron Diaz … exactly! He’s gorgeous.

When The Mavis’s broke up, was it hard getting into the hang of writing songs without Matt being around?
Matt and I never really wrote together, he’s an amazing songwriter in his own right. He and Andrea used to write together. We wrote a few songs together, but he normally wrote his stuff on his own. Nik (Gill, guitarist from The Mavis’s and The Bullets) and I write songs together, but we already had our songwriting relationship, then The Mavis’s broke up, and we formed another band, then Beki & The Bullets.

You’ve written some new songs. Are you recording at the moment?
Yeah, we’ve got heaps of new songs. We’ve recorded a couple of them, one of which is going to be the opening track on a compilation in LA called “Girls On Top”, which is basically girls fronting bands and stuff, and that’s going to be released any day now. When we get overseas, we’re going to be finishing our new album in Canada.

Who’s producing it?
The guy who’s producing it is someone that no one really knows, haha! Ideally, I’d love to work with a producer called Butch Walker (Avril Lavigne, Simple Plan, Lindsay Lohan, Pete Yorn, etc).

If you were able to do a duet with anybody in the world, living or dead, who would it be?
Butch Walker, haha!

Apart from Butch …
Butch Walker, dammit! Haha! He’s my favourite … well, besides him, A. Jay Popoff from Lit, or Cyndi Lauper, she’s my childhood idol, my hair influence. My family went to see her at the airport when we were little, and Matt and I went to see her in concert a few years back, and we were both crying … Matt was crying first though.

Cool! I’m just trying to think of some more questions that I was going to ask you …
What else do you want to know? More random questions …

More random questions? Ok … this is on our 20 Questions, but I’ll ask you now … who would you turn gay for?
I know this might be typical, but Angelina Jolie, she’s hot. I’d rather do her than Brad Pitt. She’s amazing. And a few of my girlfriends actually … haha! You know who you are … they’re hot. My friends are very hot, boys …

Well, if we have any straight male readers …  
Yep, you know where to go … Beki’s friends.

Dot com …
Ha, yeah, www.bekishotfriends.com haha!