Luke Casey

Luke Casey has an impressive musical pedigree. Born in London in 1972, he was exposed to music at a very early age. His uncle, Andy Parker, was the drummer for the legendary English rock group U.F.O. Luke remembers, “My parents took me to see Andy play regularly from about age 5. It was pretty mind-blowing to have a close family member involved in such a successful group. I decided pretty early on in my life that I was going to be a drummer.”

Luke migrated to New Zealand in 1986 and by the age of 16 had already established himself as a staple on the Auckland live music scene. “I played in tons of bands, mainly because the opportunity was there. I also ended up doing a bunch of sessions because there weren’t that many good rock drummers around at the time.”

Luke is best known however as the drummer for Auckland stalwarts EYE TV. “I was in that band for 8 years and we did some great things: We toured America a couple of times, we toured Australia, we played in Gisborne,” he laughs. “Seriously though, the 3 of us (Mike Scott, Sean Sturm, Luke Casey) thought we were a fantastic band, and we made one great album (1997’s “Birdy-O”) but we imploded when we tried to become commercially successful.” Despite this assessment, EYE TV’s breakthrough 2002 record “Fire Down Below” spawned three top 10 singles-Just the way it is, Soul Train and “Nature’s Best” entry ‘One Day Ahead’.

The Relaxomatic Project, which Luke had become well known for in recent years, basically ended because Dan (Sperber, the other half of the writing team) moved to Germany. However, in their short existence, not only did they score a coup in landing the lead track on the multi platinum selling “Lazy Sunday” Volume 1 (released in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Phillipines and India), but they also became the first NZ artists ever to be released by the Blue Note Jazz label. “We put out two great albums and we were only ever going to do three, so we basically achieved our goals. It was always going to be a project-not the Rolling Stones.”

ILuke has recently released a Creative NZ Funded solo opus entitled TINPOT GURU. "The Tinpot Guru record is almost a full circle for me, as it is really influenced by a lot of the rock music I listened to when I was growing up. After EYE TV broke up, I still wanted to play Rock music but there were no bands around playing what I wanted to play, so I created my own band!” TINPOT GURU is made up of Todd Landers on Guitar, and Tim Wenzlick on drums. “Yeah, I am out front in this group. Todd convinced me to do it. I figure I am going to be New Zealand’s Dave Grohl.” Catch them live in the 05!