Musicians answer questions from Elsewhere

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Sam Prebble (aka Bond Street Bridge)

20 Jun 2011 | 3 min read | 1

Auckland singer-songwriter Sam Prebble -- who performs under moniker Bond Street Bridge (the actual bridge just around the corner from me, so he's one of my "homies") -- is a longtime Elsewhere favourite. His intelligent lyrics, understated delivery and sense of the melodic was all over his wonderful debut album The Mapmaker's Art, a Best of Elsewhere 2008 album. He's a smart... > Read more

Beartown Straight Lines

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Liam Finn

13 Jun 2011 | 3 min read

When people in your family -- in this case your dad and uncle -- are famous musicians your road can actually be harder than most might think: just after a couple of Lennon kids. Liam Finn started his career in the band betchadupa which astutely signed to Flying Nun rather than pursue a major label, and since then he has established himself as an increasingly interesting and musically... > Read more

Liam Finn: Roll of the Eye

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Warren Cate

6 Jun 2011 | 3 min read

Singer-songwriter and guitarist Warren Cate has released four albums under his own name since the mid Nineties -- bristling with rock'n'roll firepower and great songs -- but for his new venture he and longtime bassist/guitarist Andrew Buckton (also of Delta and owner of Auckland's Studio 203) teamed up with drummer Mike Franklin-Browne (Pluto, Nightchoir, Stereo Bus) and guitarist Grant Wills... > Read more

Known Associates: Mercy

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Al Galbraith

16 May 2011 | 3 min read

The name Al Galbraith might not be familiar to many . . . unless you happen to be a New Zealand musician, have read anything of local music in the Sixties and Seventies, or been involved in soundtracks and advertising. Which, when you think about it, must surely mean Galbraith is pretty well known. Galbraith was a hugely successful producer (Mark Wiliams, Craig Scott, Space Waltz, Annie... > Read more

Al Galbraith: Day Night

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: David Kilgour

26 Apr 2011 | 3 min read

The new bio for David Kilgour starts with an arresting claim, "David Kilgour is a guitar god for guitar atheists". The evidence for this is of course his work in the Clean, with his band the Heavy Eights or on albums under his own name. Kilgour redefines a kind of electrifying electric-pastoral psyechedleic sound which can equally sooothe or soar as the occasion demands. His... > Read more

David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights: Diamond Mine

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Shane Nicholson

11 Apr 2011 | 3 min read | 1

Australian singer-songwriter Shane Nicholson has delivered consistently interesting, but rather too few, albums. Each makes you want another almost immediately because of their lyrical sensiblity and sharp songwriting. Nicholson is also alongside his wife Kasey Chambers on her albums and because she is part of a fine family -- dad Bill a long-established country artist in Australia and the... > Read more

Shane Nicholson with Paul Kelly: Whistling Cannonballs

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Eli Paperboy Reed

28 Mar 2011 | 3 min read | 1

Long an Elsewhere favourite, Eli Paperboy Reed's 2008 album Roll With You made the list of Best of Elsewhere for that year, and his follow-up Come And Get It of 2010 also got very favourable notice. Reed is a conduit for the great soul voices of the past -- Sam Cooke, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and others -- but he brings deep understanding and genuine enthusiasm to his... > Read more

Eli Paperboy Reed: I Found You Out (from Come and Get It!)

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Matt Langley

25 Mar 2011 | 3 min read

Matt Langley from Dunedin, New Zealand is one of the smaller but brightest lights on the musical landscape. His debut EP Lost Companions was critically well received but his album Featherbones showed the full measure of his talents which touch on folk, blues and alt.country. He does things the old fashioned way which others are now discovering or having to re-learn: He has toured solo or... > Read more

Matt Langley: Stars and Guitars

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Darren Watson

22 Mar 2011 | 3 min read | 1

Darren Watson of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, has long been a multiple-threat; powerful and souldful singer; excellent blues guitarist; great songwriter. He first came to attention in Chicago Smokeshop (an appropriate name for a blues band from another city full of politicians) which later became Smokeshop, and released a series of well-recived albums in the Nineties. In the past... > Read more

Darren Watson: Can't Get Enough of You

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Carolina Moon

16 Mar 2011 | 3 min read

Released in early 2011, Carolina Moon's album Mother Tongue was unique in New Zealand's musical landscape. Moon, a jazz singer with an abiding interest in world music, had looked to the Sepharic Jewish music out of Spain in the Middle Ages and with excellent musicians -- which included Nigel Gavin, Roger Manins, Kevin Field and others -- reset them in a way where they remained faithful to... > Read more

Carolina Moon: Absalom

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Marianne Dissard

13 Mar 2011 | 4 min read

French-born but a longtime resident of Tucson, Arizona where she has worked with various members of Calexico, singer/songwriter Marianne Dissard (interviewed here) broke through ina quiet way with her album L'entredeux in 2009 which steered a canny middle path between French chanson and pop, and edgy alt.country. For her new album L'abandon -- mostly in French but again with some Americana... > Read more

Marianne Dissard: Ete Hiver/Summer Winter

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Tim Guy

26 Feb 2011 | 3 min read

Singer-songwriter Tim Guy returned to New Zealand from Australia a few years ago and in that time has released three fine albums, the most recent being Big World. He has toured New Zealand regularly – sometimes with the likes of Anika Moa, Bic Runga, Anna Coddington and Paul McLaney – but his current tour is slightly different. He is filming his adventures and encounters... > Read more

Tim Guy: Rhythm of the River

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Barnaby Weir

23 Feb 2011 | 3 min read

Barnaby Weir out of Wellington, New Zealand, is best known as the man who steers the ambitious musical carnivals that are The Black Seeds and Fly My Pretties. But his 2011 debut solo album shows a very different side to his talents in songs which owe a debt to alt.country (and sometimes straight country) and have an emotional directness. The album Tarot Card Rock continues his working... > Read more

Barnaby Weir: Let Me Slide

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Tamara Smith of Mundi

16 Feb 2011 | 3 min read

Flute player and composer Tamara Smith has been at the helm of jazz-into-world music group Mundi for almost a decade now. Based in Christchurch, New Zealand, the ensemble has travelled internationally and has released two albums, their most recent being In The Blink of An Eye (reviewed at Elsewhere here). On the back of the album they are touring again -- dates are below -- but Smith... > Read more

Mundi: Indlela Enzulu

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Andrew McKenzie

14 Feb 2011 | 2 min read

For the past decade New Zealand singer-songwriter and guitarist Andrew McKenzie has been out front of the rocking alt.country outfit Grand Prix (currently not operating) -- but at the very end of 2010 he released a solo album under his own name The End of the World. And it is very solo -- he plays just about everything on it (a little help in a couple of places) and Elsewhere was very... > Read more

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Reuben Bonner of An Emerald City

11 Feb 2011 | 4 min read

The Berlin-based New Zealand rock band An Emerald City have been refreshingly unlike any other local band. Their self-titled debut EP of 2008 showed them occupyng the territory between ambient Krautrock, psychedelia and world music at a time when the previaling styles were anxious guitar bands, earnest singer-songwriters and a twee quasi-folk outfits. An Emerald City were different in... > Read more

An Emerald City: Key to the Kingdom

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Matt and Jenny (of Matt Stalker and the Fables)

10 Feb 2011 | 6 min read

Not many musicians would write a song about the misuse of the apostrophe in punctuation, but Matt Stalker isn't just any musician. He works as psychotherapist in London and for six years worked in maximum security prisons as a forensic psychologist. So of course Jenny Nendick, the cellist in his band the Fables, would be a research psychologist working on a study looking at bipolar disorder.... > Read more

Matt Stalker and the Fables: Apostrophe Catastrophe

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Jayson Norris

7 Feb 2011 | 3 min read

Expat-Kiwi Jayson Norris has lived in London since 2004 and has, I am told, released two albums internationally before his Freedom Twenty Eight on New Zealand's Loop label -- which puts him in excellent company. I'm not quite sure how this works out but his bio says he has seen him "sharing the stage with huge names such as Andrea Bocelli, Paul McCartney and Mark Knopfler". Sir,... > Read more

Jayson Norris: Save Me

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: George D. Henderson of the Puddle

31 Jan 2011 | 5 min read

George D. Henderson founded Dunedin's psych-pop band the Puddle in 1983/84 and over the following decade the group recorded an EP, an album and a single for Flying Nun, all of which are curently out of print. However "a Lazarus-like comeback over the past five years" (as the press release says) has seen three new albums in the past few years, their '09 The Shakespeare Monkey being... > Read more

The Puddle: English Speaking World

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Lauren Thomson

31 Jan 2011 | 3 min read

Auckland-based singer-songwriter Lauren Thomson released her excellent debut EP Our Love is Due in the closing days of 2007 and on the back of it toured frequently, often with Canadian Tami Neilson and Jackie Bristow. The three of them delivered a terrific package show which thrilled with foot-stomping barroom country rock, or took you to deep personal places with heart-stopping ballads.... > Read more

The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire