The Otis Mace Combo play a Folkie, Country Rock mix of songs, filled with enough hooks to make it easy-listening and playfully seductive in a Pop manner.
I remember the name Otis Mace Guitar Ace from student days in the early Eighties. I must have seen him play at pub or varsity gigs, most likely I was mildly or moderately intoxicated.
Richard Lello was born in Canada in 1957 and emigrated to New Zealand at age eight. That would explain why he does not have an American accent. You are going to fit in with your classmates to avoid having the snot beaten out of you.
Being totally precocious and prescient, he shared a stage with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa as a primary schooler. He sang in a school choir and that group of kids got a spot with the opera Carmen.
Must have been precocious as he learnt classical(!) guitar at primary school. He switched to Rock music in his early teens.
He was perfectly placed to be caught in the initial Punk explosion. He was mates with a band called the Plague which had a certain notoriety.
His own outfit was Rex Reason and the Rationalists. A great name if nothing else, hinting at esoterica and Beat poetry.
Following that he has been in bands (Psychic Pet Healers and others) and as performed as a solo artist.
Musical meanderings have seen him perform in Canada and the United States. Spent ten years in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1995.
Through his Zelig styled musical odyssey he has opened shows for the likes of the Violent Femmes, Billy Bragg, and this country’s own minor Rock celebrities Blam Blam Blam.
A ubiquitous presence in New Zealand music, and to fully document his legacy would make a worthy project. There is a tiny scrap of an EP on Spotify. Little Critters by Otis and the Psychic Pet Healers from 1987.
Whimsical is how his songs have been described. He calls them melodramatic reptilian lounge folk. He may be the local version of Vivian Stanshall from the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Quirky, oddly melodic, and full of scatological Rock’n’roll.
I am seeing him with fresh ears and curiosity, as he appears to be an under-the radar minor legend of which it is hard to find much of his oeuvre.
Second song in is John Cooper Clarke’s The New Assassin, a Beat poet who surfed in on the Punk tsunami. The Combo delivers this with a nice swing Pop and make it sound like the early Elvis Costello, just before he hooked up with the Attractions.
With Mace who plays an acoustic guitar, occasionally through a gadget box, is John Segovia electric bass, and Rick McShane drums.
Follows immediately with Whatever Happened to Dr Death. It was a pro-wrestler’s handle, and the song is a shaggy dog story of the real-life Trevor Ryan. Talks about New Zealand’s own wrestling show, On the Mat which many of us loved as kids and teens.
Attention is swinging Pop with an edge, in similar fashion to the Monkees.
Then we get to Fifties Country Rockabilly with Grandpappy Was a Hypnotist. It starts with scratch your arse and pick your nose.
He does a couple of songs with lyrics provided by Richard Von Sturmer. An artist, writer and poet, and who penned the anthemic There Is No Depression in New Zealand.
Relationship is straight Country Americana. Mace uses his little break-out riffs judiciously.
Possibly the best blend of Country Americana with Pop is She Makes Me Feel Better than Townes Van Zandt. Preceded by the story of catching the legendary singer songwriter at the Gluepot venue in the early Nineties.
Opening the evening’s concert is Kirsten Warner. She is likely better known as a writer and poet, but she also played in her husband’s Swamp Blues band, Bernie Griffin and the Thin Men.
Giffin passed away last year, and Warner got a heart-felt emotional greeting from Kumeu Live.
With her tonight are Tony Daunt, a prolific musician who has played with many others including Griffin, and lately with his own Dauntless band. He supplies the electric guitar twang and melancholy mood. Rob Scott plays electric bass.
She starts with Five Rivers, written by Griffin and Donna Dean. She sings in the manner of an older style Country Folk, a similar fashion to the Carter Family.
The bass leads out a song which starts, sometimes I just wanna lay down my head and cry. Teardrop guitar by Daunt makes it Country Rockabilly, like Sun Records alumnus Warren Smith.
Her voice is a bit fragile tonight, but she comes into her own with the Circus Song. An assured Pop Jazz lyrical voice.
Which sets up the final song nicely. When I Die does address that home on high of heaven, and it has the same air of peace and heartache that the original version of Robert Johnson’s Love in Vain had.
A laid-back death song where the pain is transferred, and the last words are either sweet sorrow, or whiskey sorrow. Or both.
The Otis Mace Combo are flying now as they come to the finish.
Whimsical Country would describe his own song about how he met a woman at a fair of prison-made weapons. There follows a torrid love affair of too much sex and mingling our smalls. Not as openly cynical as the Rolling Stone’s satirical Country songs can be.
Fit Tuck Ridge and it’s time to give the drummer some, as he lays it out with a Bo Diddley train comin’ down the track rhythm. Paired with gratifying Rockabilly guitar licks.
The night ends with a warm and touching version of Warren Zevon’s Carmelita. That seems a perfect way for idiosyncratic Otis Mace to close.
Rev. Orange Peel
Photography by Den
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