Freemasons Come Out For Mardi Gras, And Out Of The Closet

Feature, By Miss D, 19th February, 2007

Last week, disguising my excitement as an extremely cool, calm and camp interviewer, I caught up with Russell Small, one part of the duo that is the Freemasons. He was in his studio and on his first coffee of the morning getting sucked into MySpace, or as he likes to call it ‘MyPerve’, “Because you start looking at your own stuff, then at friends and then at friend’s friends and before you know it… well it’s really very pervy”, he laughs. From the get go you just know with an attitude like that, the Freemasons are going to really get into the pervy, funky Mardi Gras Party, that they will be playing on March 3.

Both parts of the Freemasons come with successful backgrounds individually, and when Russell Small and James Wiltshire joined forces two years ago they took the club and charts scene by storm. “It happened overnight really and it was much better that way as we had no time to think about it all, otherwise I would have shit myself!” They’ve worked with some incredible artists like Beyonce, Jamiroquai, Fatboy Slim and Faith Evans, but the funky sound they are now renowned for came after bashing around a number of sounds that influenced them individually. In fact, Russell admits, “We both love funky house, strings, pianos and chord changes – anthems really. We are actually closet queers! Well, musically anyway! Simply dying to come out!”

With that out in the open one wonders if their recent trip to Sydney in November last year playing at Arq helped them get any closer to coming out… musically of course. “Yeah Arq was fantastic, we weren’t expecting the response we got. Coming to the other side of the world and seeing how much people liked us was like wow! It was a big surprise. I really liked the Arq crowd and especially the atmosphere.”

So having had a little taste of gay Sydney and given they are gay, musically, what can we expect from them at Mardi Gras? “We are working on some special Mardi Gras edits – but I’m not going to give too much away!” he says excitedly, “We’ll be keeping it very funky, it’ll be very hands in the air!” And given the theme of Mardi Gras this year is Objects Of Love…”Well I can’t tell you what my Object Of Love is, but I’ll be bringing it and you’ll see it… I’ll whip it out for the boys!”

The mind boggles, but it is heartening to hear they are planning on having fun and are very gay friendly. “The first gay club I went to was with my wife fifteen years ago. I’ll just say this straight, but she is a fag hag from long ago! She’s really jealous that James and I are getting to do Mardi Gras. We have a very gay history and there are a number of gay parties coming up that we are playing.” He can’t confirm all of them but did mention the Freemasons would be playing Wild Fruit, (a Brighton Pride party) during Easter.

At Beyonce’s request the Freemasons are currently remixing her B-Day album and listening to a number of Freemasons singles from their album Shakedown you can’t help but notice that the guys seem to work with a lot of female vocalists. Given their penchant for closet queer music, I asked about their song choices to remix. “It isn’t a conscious choice to use female vocalists, it’s about the quality of song and the tracks we have been sent by females have been outstanding. And we are picky. For us to remix it, it has to be outstanding. We turn down a lot more than we do and we want to keep it that way.” He mentions that he is currently remixing a duet between Shakira and Beyonce which Russell believes will be massive. He tells me that Shakira’s stuff is a bit Spanglish, “I’ve never worked in Spanglish before and I had to buy a phrase book!” Now, that’s dedication.

As we wind down the formal part of the interview, Russell says if he was given a choice of going back to back with another DJ, he would choose Carl Cox as he’s a friend and full of energy. For an English morning with only one coffee and about to embark on remixing Beyonce and Shakira, Russell too seems full of energy. He talks easily, laughs a lot and seems genuinely pleased but down to earth about the Freemasons’ success. We’ve been quite camp in the interview with lots of puns and then he realises that he said earlier that he and James as the Freemason’s were ‘closet queers’. I remind him that he did qualify that as ‘musically’ and he laughs, “I can only imagine what parts of that quote you will pull out and focus on! I wonder what James will say!”

Well he might have outed the Freemasons, (musically), but the guys’ fun, energetic vibe can’t help but push through. It’s clear they love what they do and love the audience they have attracted and really, be they gay or straight, they know what works. To the Mardi Gras partygoers Russell says “Remember to wave, ‘cause we’ll be waving right back!”

The Freemasons will play The Royal Hall of Industries at Mardi Gras Party, Entertainment Quarter, March 3. For a full wrap up of all things Mardi Gras head to our Mardi Gras page.

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