Dave Alley, highly regarded itinerant Kiwi musician of broad Americana, serves up a cool curated set of original songs with local talented singer-songwriters in tow.
We are at the Onewhero Society of Performing Arts Theatre in heartland Franklin. Or it could be Waikato now. You drive a winding road up from the Waikato River at the Tuakau Bridge crossing.
First met Alley at the Auckland Folk Festival around Anniversary Weekend this year.
The annual festival had a few restrictions with overseas guests limited, the fallout from the virus madness. There was a biblical flood the previous year which virtually washed it away.
Dave Alley was featured at the Saturday Night Showcase, the stellar event of the weekend.
He played with several of the highlighted guest musicians, including banjo virtuoso extraordinaire Dan Walsh.
He is doing the same tonight with a bunch of talented local musicians.
If it was your first time here, you could feel like you were in Deliverance country.
Walking towards the theatre, and you hear a crowd buzz with every second word being fuck. That’s fine, it must be the end of a local rugby match.
They’re piss heads getting drunk, I am told by local woman, as they were playing a shambolic version of lawn bowls. This seemed the usual Saturday behaviour, and they likely had tickets for the show.
That was the street (or field) theatre pre-entertainment.
Inside the excellent little venue, and Rosina and the Weavers are the first featured group.
Their debut album Hitching the Starlight Highway is a great Indie Pop gem, which Alley produced. A link to the review is here.
Singer-songwriter Anna-Rose Rosina Evangeline Carpenter has a distinctive strong Folk to sophisticated Pop voice.
They do a couple of new songs in working progress, before landing For Marilyn. One of the best from the album, not the least because it sounds like a Smith’s early classic.
Since it is an homage to the famous doomed actress, that is appropriate.
Alley joins them for West Coast Ramble, which he co-wrote with Rosina. Adds a lot of guitar flash with some Eastern overtones.
Alley is working up to an album release, and he does a brace with Rosina as backing singer.
The first one is without any accompaniments. Dark and Dylan in sentiment, like the Freewheelin’ days of Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.
Strange is the world we are livin’ in. That is the theme, and he works up the passion.
I remember the last time I was here was in 2021. A great little show with a cello and violin player.
Civil emergency warning came out on all the cell phones, and we were in the most brutal lockdown of this virus tyranny.
Army and police descended on Bombay (where I live) and for weeks it became the totalitarian state. The world had suddenly changed forever.
He does another couple with Rosina. That’s Life takes inspiration from a Neil Young bio, where he reflects on life’s catastrophes.
Dorrie Muir is well-known as a local songwriter. She does a powerful song called War, sounding Sixties Protest Folk like a Buffy Sainte-Marie.
After the break, we meet Madam Madz Parker, a local singer-songwriter from down the hill in Tuakau.
She sings Soul with a familiar Seventies style, some jazzy accents and some Kiwi Reggae.
Sounds like Alley helped her into a recording studio too. He plays fast melodic licks to bring the sunshine out of her lyrics.
Alley introduces Aaron Carpenter, who comes from Waiheke.
First one they do Winds of Change, sounds like the intro to All Along the Watchtower. Carpenter sings something about women never harming him, the guitar sounding more and more like Hendrix’s version.
Both these guys get loose as they carry on. Carpenter belts away with a strident Folk vocal style.
Sun Shower is a Talking Blues in the manner of Dylan and It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).
Others are passionate Americana, where Alley plays slide, adds Blues and R’n’B licks, and generally sounds like a Kiwi Michael Bloomfield.
I compared to him to Delaney Davidson when I first heard him. Also, idiosyncratic Americana. He plays with everyone and has produced for the best artists in New Zealand, like Troy Kingi recently
Alley is more of a virtuoso than Davidson on guitar.
Alley and Carpenter end with a song singing I’m gonna ride my pony. There is some connection to the great Blues Master and Originator Charley Patton.
Dave Alley and Guests have laid on an eclectic evening of wide-ranging Americana, centred on the virtuoso skills of the guitarist.
Rev. Orange Peel