…bypassing the months of planning, booking, “networking” and nerve-wracking organisationisms leading up to it, we cut straight to the chase – the first flight, the behemoth 17 hour 40 minutes to Doha ex Auckland, NZ. Which was followed by an 8 hour vaguely meditative wait til the 5 or so hour flight to Vienna, Austria..
I was met by family for four days of recuperating and adjusting to being on the other side of planet earth where a record breaking long, hot, dry summer was evident and much discussed in broken English and my non-existent Deustch. A great respite. Familial hospitality , bush walks, lake swims, litres and litres of beer and plate after plate of great vegetarian Viennese food devoured gratefully. I was about to tackle head-on the myth that a vegetarian Alley is not genetically capable of getting even remotely obese.. Read more
greetings all,
the last week+ has been pretty cool.. Christmas was a chilled family gathering in Gizzy. A swim in the Waipaoa river with my brothers & co, a visit to Waihirere, and the old Mangakino Station & homestead near Whatatutu. Vanny rocked the Waioeka in true Vanny style. Still my favourite drive in NZ. A soak at Waiotapu on the way home, where if you know where to go you get a bath temp° pool to yourselves as the tourists crowd to the waterfall at the end of the track… Te Henga was another stunning gig where the koha box overflowed as the music lovers boogied hard out or chilled and buzzed. Shane Hollands busted out some beat poetisms to the tune of Funk in C & Catski joined us for a Phoebe Snow funk out. Molly’s on Waiheke Is was a quiet affair with Larissa & Andy being the core audience ha ha Quality, not quantity. Malcolm joining the jam on a Rickenbacker full of what can only be labelled, character. And “Carp” joined in for a late night rendition of his song Stranger in this town, a favorite of mine.
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Hello all,
I hope the NZ winter is going well for those here in the southern realms, and to those in the north, we all here are a little envious of the summer thing but with time we know we’ll have ours..
A new coat of paint has been applied to the ol’ website, thanks M! Nothing too dramatic.. No interactives as such, nothing for sale (out of print on all albums) and most importantly no pop-up Ads and googlisms to annoy the living daylights out of you. Aaaand there’s no App associated with this site as far as I’m aware. Really, all there is, is a little info on up-coming gigs, some photos and some links to stuff like Youtube and Facebook where you can get & do lots of other things and interact with virtual people, and download app after app after app… after app..
On to musical matters… The seldom aforementioned album “Simple Ain’t Easy” is still on the way, still, honestly, yep, yessiree and yes ma’am! I’ve managed to whittle it down to just 8 songs. A little over 30 minutes of finely crafted songism.. It should be ready this year, but some of you have heard that old chestnut before so holding of one’s breath is not advised, of course.
Recently an old keyboardist friend joined the band. Our one gig to date as a four-piece was a blast. Mark’s playing is a salubrious addition of groove-laden, melodic bliss. We’re looking forward to having more of these shows in the not tooooo distant future.
Please, keep a look out on the ‘Shows’ page and get along to a gig when you can.
thanks for taking the time to read..
over ‘n’ out
d