Almost a year after the very last BowieFest, Roger Bowie is back and presenting diverse and high-quality musicians on his amphitheatre deck.
Jaw-dropping electric Blues from power trio Seamouse. Funky New Orleans Jazz Folk from Hopetoun Brown. Acoustic English Folk from Wax Birds. Poet story-singer and roving Queenstown troubadour Noel Coutts. And a special appearance by a time-travelling ingenue.
Last year he was feeling the pull of mortality. Reflecting on how it was a cancelled Rolling Stones concert which launched this regular gathering in 2014.
He may have listened to the guy who played Rock’n’roll and Rap before it was invented, Uncle Dave Macon from Georgia, USA.
Ain’t no use to grieve and cry/ For you got to live until you die. (Worthy of Estimation).
We are all here to party like it’s 1999.
Trump in the White House provoked hysteria around the world and today we are on the cusp of D-Day 2 April.
The necessary counter to the viral madness of 2020. Which impacted through the music world like an earthquake and changed the atmosphere for all. Many were forced to leave and find other work. Essential infrastructure around the industry took a mortal blow.
Many musicians I interview relate this traumatic time. It is a strange and malevolent act this global silencing. Live performance to people sharing the same space is the heart and soul of music.
Seamouse are a power trio from Wellington. Seamus Johnson guitar and lead vocals, Scott Maynard bass, Thomas Friggens drums.
Loud and powerful as people around me commented. Saw them recently at the Cross Street Music Festival where they blasted off with Sixties-styled hard Rock.
Not formulaic or rigid as they improvise.
Kick off with originals Whittlers Blues and Evil Heart. Delta guitar licks are all over it, behind a solid engine room. A John Lee Hooker rhythms morphs into Muddy Water’s Rollin’ Stone.
Dirty fuzz guitar with Six Whiskeys as they approach the fraught vocal attack of Jack White. Unleashes the fuzz and the guitar wails
Quit My Job is jungle Rockabilly and a sound like the early Sun Studios. Around the time Ike Turner was A&R man for Sam Phillips and brought in Howling Wolf.
Two stone classics associated with Wolf. Smokestack Lightning and Evil. Martin Marty Blackmore is invited up to blow a mean and spirited harp. It seems rehearsed but I will believe them when I’m told it isn’t. Blackmore is an ex-pat now domiciled in Melbourne.
The familiar Diddley beat breaks out and they launch into Who Do You Love. Johnson sings like Robert Plant on this as the bass guitar dominates the drive.
Johnson is a guest vocalist with the Come Together ensemble (here at the last BowieFest). Was told that for this years Led Zeppelin II tribute, he may be doing Ramble On or Whole Lotta Love.
The killer song may just be Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile. Momentous and heavy as it takes off in the stratosphere. Well, I stand up next to a mountain/ Chop it down with the edge of my hand.
Can’t ask for more.
Just prior, it is Roger’s daughter, Nicole Bowie who is the time travelling ingenue. Sixteen years old and is keen on the female Pop divas of the Fifties and early Sixties.
Solo voice with crystal clear tones, she runs through Connie Francis’ Whose Sorry Now and Where the Boys Are, and a rousing version of Dusty’s I Only Want to Be With You.
Her tastes may be considered retro which is fine to my ears. Someone can point her to the Motown female leads. Try the Supremes Let Me Go the Right Way for starters.
Hopetoun Brown were the horn section from Supergroove, as was pointed out in their introduction.
Tim Stewart on trumpet and trombone, Nick Atkinson on saxophone and occasional keyboards.
They could be the New Zealand version of the Memphis Horns. Supergroove did start as a Blues Brothers styled R’n’B and Soul revue band.
Atkinson plays with everyone, often beside multi-instrumentalist Finn Scholes. Also a regular with the Come Together super group.
Minimalist music as Stewart alternates between vocals and blowing a horn. Saxophone plays fills you may hear on a J.B’s record.
Funky with jazzy licks and the sound of street buskers in New Orleans.
You Look So Good is Beat poet Rap.
What starts as Summertime finds itself down in old Joe’s barroom before it settles into the Blues of St James Infirmary. Trumpet sounds slightly inebriated.
Dirty Shame written by Stewart describes the urban black ghetto experience post Malcolm X and MLK deaths. Different Soul music where the saxophone is edgy.
They cover their roots with a version of Che Fu’s Misty Frequencies (before he departed Supergroove).
Old-fashioned Gospel-tinged Soul. Also included on their Live at WOMAD (2020), which contains a lot of the songs performed this afternoon.
The Future Never Came, closes out their set as a tribute to Roger, full of jazz riffing.
Atkinson comments that the music scene in New Zealand has its own special vibrancy. Writing about music for the sixth year now, it appears to be overflowing with abundance.
The Wax Birds are closer to traditional English Folk. Jo Green and Peter Green come from Yorkshire and have relatively recently settled into the South Island of New Zealand.
Are they covid refugees? They could be. Long experience playing in different projects in the UK, they released their first album Slow Rise here in 2020.
Sweet melodies and nice vocal interplay from the soft female voice counterpoised to the slight harsh-toned male.
He’s not as fraught as Richard Thompson. She’s got a lighter touch than Linda Thompson.
Co-Parent stands out as a beautiful little tune about relationships which has a strong embrace.
Come Up to Meet Me is a sad, angel of mercy melancholy reverie.
Great cover of a John Prine tune In Spite of Ourselves, with a guitar intro which sounds like older Folk Blues from down the Southern American states. Americana nonetheless helped by Nicole Bowie.
Highland Mary returns to Celtic origins from the old country.
Noel Coutts is called the Southern Queenstown Troubadour, and he sounds like a version of Josef Conrad with a voice.
He is a poet. Many of these he puts into songs which make him a broadsheet minstrel.
Wild as a youth in a bike gang. Worked on massive sheep farms and that led to a life as a merchant seaman. Got hold of an antique yacht made from kauri.
One of his band projects was called Out of My Trio.
Has several children who have performed with him. Later in life he married a Polish classical musician, and he splits time between there and New Zealand these days.
There’s the Polish connection, and I assume he’s experienced the heart of darkness and survived it.
He wrote a song about the Pike River mining tragedy (for a friend who lost a son there) and he shares it with us. A solemn requiem rather than a lament. That is 29 Ghosts.
A gruff whiskey and cigarettes voice. Warm rather than harsh and he has gentleness of phrasing when he sings about Pohutukawa’s and Tui’s in the Rain.
An actor who had a role in a stage production of Porgy and Bess. Played a racist sheriff. Atones for that by singing a slow tempo, subdued version of Summertime.
A tribute to his Polish partner Song for Ella, borrows a little from Paul McCartney’s Blackbird.
He reminds me of Chris Priestley and his New Zealand narrative history set to music with his Unsung Heroes project.
My first time watching this most interesting Renaissance man.
BowieFest and Roger Bowie is back in business. There’s food and drink and with great music all is well.
Rev. Orange Peel
Photography by Leonie Moreland
Seamouse
Time Traveller Nicole
Hopetoun Brown (the Horns of Supergroove)
The Wax Birds
Noel Coutts
