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Joel Turner.
 Joel Turner first drew public attention mid-2003 during the audition process of the inaugural 'Australian Idol'. Not seriously expecting to get selected to go further in the competition, Turner could never have imagined the response either which lead to him, together with The Modern Day Poets (brother Tim aka Dub LT, and cousin Chris 'C4') scoring a number one single, These Kids, a successful debut album and now a second single: Knock You Out (also featuring Anthony 'The Man' Mundine) as well as their first national tour.
A very busy, yet extremely well grounded Turner is calling from their rehearsal studio. "Yeah, no... um, totally man," he considers. "Like, we're totally stoked to be in this position at the moment doing our stuff. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I'd be doing this so early. I thought it would happen but not until I was like, thirty or something and not while I was seventeen; so it's like totally awesome. I was only doing little things like beatbox battles and stuff so I didn't think I would make it anywhere this quick."
Being relegated to the ranks of an Australian Idol 'Unforgettable' wouldn't have inspired much hope for a future, but by strange twist of fate it was Idol's Mark Holden that first picked up on Turner's talent and marketable attributes.
"Yeah, it's something that I wanted to do; introduce beatboxing to mainstream hip-hop in general, you know? No one really does full beatbox tracked music and that's what we're trying to do now and people have been taking us seriously, which is good."
Something that many people may not be aware of is that These Kids isn't an entirely new song: "We wrote it three years ago and recorded it over two years ago," he clarifies, "so it was just sitting there because we didn't think anyone would get onto it and when we first showed Mark he fell in love with the song straight away. My brother wrote the lyrics and I wrote the tune. He came to me after one of his good mates committed suicide and that was the inspiration for it and he asked me to make a tune for it.
"When I was fifteen, a friend of my sister was recording an album and wanted me to go along and play some guitar on it. When I was there I played him the guitar riff to These Kids and he really liked it, so he fronted the money for me to go up to Cairns where I stayed in a backpackers for three weeks and recorded it in a studio."
And the story behind Knock You Out? "Mark was doing the Grand Prix celebrity race thing and he was racing with Anthony and he played him some of our demo tracks. Anthony then said that he'd like to a song with us because he wanted to get into rapping. So we thought what would be good to do with him? 'Okay,' I thought 'boxing, yeah, Eye Of The Tiger,' so without even having the rights to it yet I went into the studio and laid it down We didn't use samples for that, I actually played the song on guitar and put voice bass over it [demonstrates], and then put the beat which has all those parts in there [demonstrates further], then we put it altogether and it sounded cool. Anthony then came in and dropped his raps then it took about four months to finally get the rights, but, that's how it came about."
And how did Turner first realise his unusual aptitude? "I started playing drums when I was seven and could do full on beats by the time I was eight," he explains. "Beatboxing came along because I didn't have a drum kit at home and I needed to practice my rhythms, so I did it by grinding my teeth together which was like... [demonstrates] that sort of thing. It's like when you're sitting on a bus and your daydreaming, like you're bored and you've got a song stuck in your head so you start going... [raspberries out a crude tune], but I'd sit there and go... [same tune, but in beatbox form]. I'd been doing that for ages, and then a friend said to me three years ago that I was actually beatboxing so from there on I started getting into and actually try to make beats."
Steve Jones
 | Joel Turner & The Modern Day Poets play at the Governor Hindmarsh on Thurs 21 April. |
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