Interview with Linda Bull

Two sisters just hanging out together

Linda Bull has been to Bluesfest so many times she’s lost count. Linda and her sister Vika are pretty much one of Australia’s most iconic singing duos and certainly  the most well known sister act.

While in lockdown they decided to sing one gospel song each Sunday morning for their followers on social media. The weekly performance became a recording, The Gospel according to Iso. The Bulls also released The Wait late last year and are currently working on a new recording to be released later in 2022. But for Bluesfest they are bringing last year’s work and some old favourites with them.

Linda and Vika will be doing a show on Friday night. ‘We’re bringing our full band up [with us] and we’ll be doing an hour of our own songs from The Wait and stuff from Iso.’ 

Bull says, on Saturday night, they will be playing with Paul Kelly, then on Sunday and Monday they’ll be doing RocKwiz. She says what she personally loves about Bluesfest is discovering new acts. ‘I love the fact that you can be sitting there on side-stage about to go on and you hear somebody from one of the other stages and you think “Who the heck is that?” And then you ask around and find out. That’s what I love about it, you always get a surprise.’

Their own show on the Friday is a power-packed set. ‘I think people might be surprised at how rockin’ it is – it’s not a ballad-heavy set, it’s more pedal to the metal as soon as we start. It’s a hard sing. We want to show the Bluesfest audiences that this is what we do live, and this is our a new sound, I guess. It’s a lot less acoustic, it’s a much more full-on sound.’

Bull says she is inspired by hard work. ‘I love watching people around me work really hard. I really like seeing people never give up and dedicate their lives to the love of music. I think it’s really hard to keep going sometimes, especially over the last two years, but I have loved seeing that kind of resilience in our music industry. Particularly Bluesfest – boy oh boy, it had to keep cancelling and then starting again. But they never give up and that’s what inspires me – that real “I’m not going to quit and this is going to happen”. That is what inspires me. I really get a kick out of that.’

Linda says that up until recently, she and Vika lived in the same street and spent most of the pandemic still being able to have contact, but eventually lockdown saw them separated. ‘That was the first time we were not able to be in the same room together in our whole life and that was really weird. We couldn’t go to each other’s houses. We had do things remotely. So we did a lot of Zoom work. It was pretty tough. It was so strange.’

Very strange for the pair who are inseparable – they’re together all the time even when they’re not working. ‘Our family is everything to us. We are sisters first and singers second. We hang out a lot and our families are very close. We just hang out – we like each other.’

For more info about Bluesfest, visit: bluesfest.com.au.