GUEST MUSICIAN AND VIDEOMAKER STEFAN WOLF shares his hometown stories and friends

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GUEST MUSICIAN AND VIDEOMAKER STEFAN WOLF shares his hometown stories and friends

Paekakariki, a village of just over a thousand people north of Wellington, is one of those rare places that attracts the creative.  Like moths to the flame they come here -  painters, poets, actors and, perhaps most of all, musicians. One half of Rosy Tin Teacaddy lives across the fence, as does the bass player from The Black Seeds.

The guy from Fat Freddy’s Drop and his family are just around the corner, and The Eastern play in the lounge at their cousin’s place in Tilley Road every time they pass through.

I’m one of those musicians.  I once had a 7 inch on Flying Nun, and even graced some cool stages in London – alas, despite having released some ten albums and EPs, success has eluded me.  Now I’m too old to care – and so are my band mates in the Moumou Timers.

We’re happy here in little ol’ Paekakariki, getting together on Sunday afternoons for a beer and some rocking out. 

A few years ago, some of us started making our own music videos. YouTube was taking off big time and our idea was to use videos to get our music heard out there in that big wide world. At the start, we had no idea how to edit the footage, and our videos had to be done in one shot – so we started working under the moniker of ‘One Shot Wonder’.

It’s been a fun ride and some seven or eight years on, our videos have been viewed more than 50,000 times.  Not bad for a little village on the Kapiti Coast, we think.  Here’s a small selection of our best videos, starting with our very first, ‘Inadequate’. Note, all in one shot ;)

Inadequate (2008)

There are often many people involved in a production – it’s a fun thing to do and it’s great for the community to see itself represented visually and musically.  It helps that Paekakariki is chocka full of musicians, writers, actors etc.

This next video was a fundraiser for our local hall, St Peters Hall, which was in dire need of some tlc.  By now we had learnt how to do some basic editing, however holding the camera still presented a major issue ;).  (Troy Hunt on vocals)

Our Hall (2009)

Over time, we picked up a few skills (and bought a tripod!), and also became interested in story telling.  We really loved making this next video, in fact we were so happy with it that we entered it in the Australian Independent Music Video Awards.

We were totally shocked to be a winner (Best Independent Video – Pacific) and just a little bit bummed because we couldn’t afford to travel to the ceremony. (featuring Miss Indy Moon Giles).

On Your Side (2013)

A lot of our videos feature our little seaside village which we all love.  When I bought a scooter last year, it seemed good enough reason to do another song and video, just riding around our streets and beautiful waterfront - my partner Tarn had the camera in the boot of her car, with the back door open.  (featuring Chris Peirce on saxophone).

Emotional Slave (2015)

Although the Moumou Timers is possibly the oldest band in New Zealand we love rocking out over a few beers on Sunday afternoons and do the odd recording.  Our drummer Steve wrote this one, and the amazingly fit Wineke van’t Hof is doing all the running and boxing!

Sugar Hit (2015)

Apart from a beautiful beach and a gorgeous park, there isn’t much in Paekakariki: a dairy, a hairdresser, a pub – and a garage.  Pretty much everyone gets their WoF at Chris and Jason’s.  Chris loves his vintage rally cars and he agreed to play the bad guy and lend us his fire red 1971 Nissan for this shoot, which features my partner’s son, Opie Wootton.

Put A Sock In It (2016)

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