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Music.  Film.  Cult TV.  

 Room 44 @ THE NICE ROOMS presents

"Lucky Lupe - The David Ferreria Interview"

Date of Article:   19th May  2017

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David Ferreira and Tiago Salsinha formed the instrumental duo Lucky Lupe in Lisbon, Portugal in 2012.

In May 2017, The Nice Rooms caught up with one half of the duo, David Ferreira, to find out more about the group and their music.

Photo courtesy of: http://www.duofox.com.br/

David, welcome to The Nice Rooms and thank you for answering my questions in English - Good job really, as my Portuguese is non-existent! How about I start by asking you to describe Lucky Lupe and the music?

Lucky Lupe started in Portugal with me and Tiago Salsinha , but I moved to São Paulo in 2014 and Tiago still lives in Lisbon. I continued the band here in São Paulo with several other drummers, so the Band is managed by me here in São Paulo. When we play in Europe, Tiago plays with me, but here in South America I dont have a regular drummer, I have played with several drummers here.  Our music is an electric trip between Alternative music, Pop, Rock and electronic. We build sonic landscapes, soundtracks for mind travelling and relaxed sound environments. :-)

What's your own musical background?

I was born in Portugal and formed the group You Should Go Ahead  (YSGA) in 2004, an indie rock quartet who recorded their first album in 2006. In 2007 we were invited to play at the festival South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, and also performed concerts in New York to promote the band in the United States. Back in Lisbon in 2008,  the second album entitled Emotional Cocktail was recorded. YSGA has shared the stage with Placebo, The Strokes, Los Hermanos, She Wants Revenge, Prodigy, Dirty Pretty Things, Devendra Banhart, Maximo Park, Ben Harper, Gabriel o Pensadorr, Buraka Som Sistema, David Guetta and others.   


Photo courtesy of:  https://noisey.vice.com

In 2012  I joined the band Armada, a rock and roll quintet who released two CDs: Classic in 2013 and Spiral in 2014. As well as Lucky Lupe, I'm also guitarist for Drugstore (the famous band of the 90s) and host Balcony TV - São Paulo.

David, I have to ask the "Where does the name Lucky Lupe come from" question although I have a feeling it is something to do with musical loops??  :-) 

Yes, you are right, when we first started using loop stations, we had to learn how to use them while playing as a band, one thing is to use one at home just to study, the other is to actually use it while playing a song with a drummer, thats a totally different film :) We went to some troubles and difficulties in that learning process.


By that time we used to say (as joke) when we got things right with the loop stations, "Whoa, this was a Lucky Loop." 

That phrase stuck with us for a while  and we ended up using it for the bands name, we just changed the word "Loop" for "Lupe" to sound less obvious with the loops. By the way "Lupe" comes from a Spanish name : Guadalupe, Lupe its a kind of nick name for Guadalupe I think .

OK, this is for those people who have not heard Lucky Lupe's music before - If I was to ask you to choose one track that best represents Lucky Lupe's music, which one track would you choose and why?

I dont have a favourite track, or one track that I think that best represents Lucky Lupe, I think that the 6 Track EP is almost like a trip and you have to listen to it all. If I had to choose one I might go with ITQB or Delay Song.


Lucky Lupe: "Delay Song" 

Performance live on Balcony TV

 Run time edit: 6 mins 52 secs (2016)

I'm looking at the pedals on the video there ...

Everyone wants to know abour my pedals, almost everyone at our shows stares at those pedals. The Guitar Player Magazine and Bass Player Magazine (Brazil) have done some interviews with me to talk about my setup so I can talk a bit about them.

Its no big deal, In Lucky Lupe I'm using: in this order: 

1 Tuner Pedal, 1 Fuzz Pedal, 1 Whammy Pedal, 1 Overdrive and Compressor Pedal, 1 Phaser Pedal, 1 Delay Pedal and 1 Reverb Pedal, after this the signal goes to 3 Loop stations and off to 1 Guitar Amp and 1 Bass Amp. 

The Synth goes in the first Loop station and it also comes out trough the Guitar and Bass Amplifiers.

So as you can see it's no big deal. I can understand that it might cause a impact on people watching a show, but for me its business as usual.
I went to a lot of work to get the sound I wanted, but that was a case of need, I wanted to sound that way so o experimented a lot with different pedals to get the sound I imagined.

Listening to Lucky Lupe, it often sounds as though there are more than just 2 people playing instruments...

Yes, sometimes you have 5 or 6 different sounds playing at the same time. How do we do it without any pre-recorded sounds?

Its a kind of magic :)

Well as I told you earlier, we use loop stations.  A loop station is like a recording machine that we use in real time, so what happens is that I'm able to record a phrase in the loop station, and then press play. This makes the phrase I recorded to be played in a loop, after this I can do overdubs on top of that phrase, record different phrases over the first one ... and so on....

If you take a look in any of our videos you will be able to see how we do it live. (All our videos have live sound).

So, yes , we are only two but sometimes we sound like a 5 or 6 member band... Thats wicked :) 

You mentioned the 6 track EP in one of your earlier answers. Is it true that it was recorded in 2 days?

1:  Quarto Zimmer   (6:30)

2:  Delay Song   (7:21)

3:  Herbie Hancock Wannabees   (6:27)

4:  Desabafo   (4:28)

5:  Itqb   (6:58)

6:  Funk Song   (6:28)

Original Release Date: 3 Dec. 2015

Label: Tratore

Copyright: (C) 2015 Lucky Lupe [dist. Tratore]

Total Length: 38:11


Yes, it´s true , we did it in two nights at our studio back in Lisbon, on the first night we did all the drums, and on the second night we did all the guitars, bass and synths. 


It was a lot of work because we didn t have much time, but we had done a decent preproduction and we all knew very well what we had to play in each track. 


What also helped was the fact that we rehearsed a lot, so we knew pretty good all the tracks and this helped us not to waste to many time recording them. We lost some time to get the sound we wanted, after that was just "press Rec button"  


Lucky Lupe: "Funk Song" 

Live at Nimbus Studios

Run Time: 7 mins 30 secs (2015)


How was the recent Locomotiva festival?

It was lots of fun, we played 2 shows (Friday and Saturday) and in between we did a live session at Lab Studios, we recorded and filmed a live performance, hope it's out soon for everyone to see it.

Leuven Beer presents GIG Locomotive # 19

On April 7th, the biggest GIG we've ever done! There will be 5 bands that set the country's music scene and meticulously chosen for you that accompany the Locomotive Festival! Line up: Muñoz (Florianópolis), Lucky Lupe (São Paulo / Lisboa), Deb and The Mentals (São Paulo), FORTE NORTE (São Paulo), John Filme (Chapecó)
7PM - OPENING OF THE HOUSE 
8PM - JOHN MOVIE 
9PM - NORTH FORT 
10PM - LUCKY LUPE
11PM - DEB AND THE MENTALS 
00H - MUÑOZ

It's always great to play live shows and this was no different. We truly appreciate going out there and play music, meeting new people, show our work to new people, listen to the bands that also played at the festival was really nice. 


Being from Portugal and to be playing in Brazil is so cool, I get to meet and so many talented people, it's really great.

How has São Paulo influenced you and Lucky Lupe?

The first album was written and recorded while I was still living in Lisbon, actually we recorded it a few days before I moved to São Paulo.
So São Paulo had no influence on those tracks...

Now that I'm living here for a while, I can see some influences on me as a person. I became much more aware and concerned about social problems such as poverty, social inequality, violence, lack of support on issues such as health and education. Brazil is a great country but there's too much social inequality. It's really huge the difference between the rich and the poor here. 

That really shocked me. It's not that I didn't know about this, but when you see it every day you get a new perception about the issue.

Again, Brazil is a really great place, everyone that I have met here have treated me great and I'm very grateful for all I have achieved here, but I can't be indifferent to the problems I mentioned before.

Musically speaking, I started listening much more Brazilian music than I used to, I picked up some tunes on the guitar, some bossa, some sambas, MPB etc ... That is also helping me to learn a new language,if you now what I mean...

I don't think that there will be a bossa or a samba on the next Lucky Lupe record, but there will be some elements or small bits of those influences. It's almost inevitable because it becomes a part of you, when you start learning some new licks, after a while they become part of your playing and you will use them without even thinking something like, "ah this was a part of a bossa" or "this chord is used in some bossa songs...."

Are there any plans to release any Lucky Lupe on vinyl David? I think vinyl would be the perfect medium for your type of music. 

Maybe for our next album we will think more seriously about it. I agree that it would be more appealing if we had done our first record in vinyl, but it was all a matter of budget. CD  was much cheaper and we had a very tight budget.

Maybe the next album will be on vinyl or both. I'm working on new material and let's see what happens. I would really like to do it in vinyl.
It has a different magic and vinyl becomes like a collector item. 

Any word on your new material?

Well, I'm working on new stuff as we speak, I have already pre-produced 3 new tracks, and there are a few others in the oven  :-)


I'm not in a hurry to release new stuff, I dont even know if I  want to do a full album. These days things become old in like 3 months, if you know what I mean... Maybe we will release a Single, and see how it goes. There's no pressure, I'm happy with my timing, I dont want to put anything out here that I'm not 100% happy with the final result.

What I can tell you today is that we will have new music in 2017, that's for sure. 

And finally, where can audiences catch Lucky Lupe live in the next year?

Well that's a good question, certainly we will be in São Paulo and Lisbon, that's for sure, we would love to do a tour in Europe, but thats easier said than done... Maybe we will get some invitations :-) Who knows...?

There are plans to tour Europe in 2018, with new material out hopefully we will do it. In the meantime  we will be Playing in Brazil and Portugal. If something comes up we will do it also. Let's see what happens in the future.

On behalf of The Nice Rooms Webzine, many thanks for the interview.

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