I take this creative writing class in high school. The Class is filled with bookish sensitive smart funny people and one maniac psycho rugby league playing sometime bully trauma filled totally confused giant who is a year older than everyone else. That would be me.
Despite all the above adjectives, the teacher finds me endearing and seems to believe in me a little; this is a rarity, but makes me behave.
I see this guy in the class always has tapes, I tell him we need to trade them, because of the above adjectives he doesn’t argue but you can tell he is suspicious. Months go by slowly in an everlasting swirl of angst, rage, adventure and weed. The Holidays rise up, I say to the guy with the tapes,
“What are you doing in the holidays?”
He says “Just band practice”
“You’re in a band?” I’m a bit shocked, there is very little rock n roll that I can see to this kid.
“Yeah”
“What kind of music do you play?”
“We’re um ah um a punk band”
What the absolute fuck I think, this does not fit the picture and how come THIS GUY! And not ME GUY is in a punk band? I have a black flag logo on my bag for god’s sake.
I ask him who the singer is?
He says “um we don’t have one”
I pause for a minute, “I’m your new singer”.
I used the power of the above adjectives to cement my position without argument. There was a sense of stress within my new bandmate about how he was gonna tell the other bandmates that this maniac psycho rugby league playing sometime bully trauma filled totally confused giant who is a year older than everyone else was now the lead singer of their band.
That was his problem. My problem was where to find a godamn microphone and amp.
I sold weed to this other kid who had these things (or at least his dad did and that was good enough). He wasn’t stoked about lending it to me so I told him he could be in the band too. He was good looking, popular, a surfer, with abs and he had an amp. He would be an excellent counterpoint to the bookish guys and the maniac psycho guy.
We were, as they say, away.
The first show I ever got to do out of town was with these kids in Dunedin on tour with the great NOTHING AT ALL who for their short moment were the greatest band in New Zealand.
We played an instore on our own at this record store called fire engine and I have a great photo of our guitar player with this fifty-foot lead playing outside the door and this older lady dressed like the queen with her hands in her ears.
I have done maybe 2000 shows since then and not a single one has been better than that.
Now I sing the folk music I don’t have to pull the maniac psycho card too often, but I’m sure there’s still plenty of folks with their hands in their ears.
Those guys I played music with back there started pretty wary of me and they weren’t to be blamed for that at all, I deserved it, but like the teacher in creative writing ( viva Ms. McColl!) they eventually starting believing me and it helped me so much! I don’t really know where all those guys are but they showed me so much about songs and the chances we all were taking mean so much right now in the here in now!
The Dunedin Folk Club were a bit like that with me and The Eastern, it would be fair to say we felt not quite in the folk mix when we started, being weak of technique, devoid of connections and any control of the volume level. But man, we wanted to be down so hard. Eventually we figured out the walls were just our own making and folk folk just want to make sure you’re not chocka full of bullshit. But before we figured out how to tunnel under our insecurities and before we figured out how to disguise we were all chocka full of bullshit. The Dunedin Folkies saw something in us and me, enough to let us keep showing up.
It has always meant the best.
So, showing up with me most folk singing record this Sunday feels a little like a homecoming. I’ll be doing the folk singing and telling the stories for anyone who’ll care to listen, and I’m not here to strong arm you into buying tickets like I did to get into that band way back when, I’m just here to tell you about it. So, if you’re recovering after feastock, a friend of the folk music then I’d be grateful to see you.
The night before I’m in Invercargill! Not for the first time but for the first time at the Black Shag Café! And the best news is that its right next to a new record store! Threes and Sevens Records! And its record store day! And they have music all day until I show up at 7.30pm (there’s a joke in there somewhere)
One good thing about being a folk singer is you don’t need a fifty-foot lead to get out the door, so who knows where we’ll end up. Bring your fingers to stick in your friends’ ears when they go “Who the hell does this guy think he is?”
And simply say “one maniac psycho rugby league playing sometime bully trauma filled totally confused giant who is a year older than everyone else…doing his best getting born every day.”
Tickets for everything from:
as well as
chch Lyttelton arts factory Apr. 28th
taupo museum may 4th (The Eastern)
Napier Cabana may 5th (The Eastern)
Gisborne the dome may 6th (The Eastern)
Auckland the Tuning Fork may 18th