Day 3: Tāmaki Makaurau
Welcome
Yesterday we played the final of our three shows at The Hollywood, Avondale.
With a successful and uninterrupted show under our belts we all had a good night’s sleep and woke up to a blissful Sunday morning in our various west Auckland suburbs. I took a slow and gentle line through the morning hours, drinking a cup of steaming hot black plunger coffee from my favourite mug and tapping away at some light computer work. The afternoon was still young when a blue hatchback pulled up outside the house, two familiar figures in the front seats and a very long dog in the back. I said hi to Jon and Liz and joined Cole in the back seat for the ride out to Riverhead, a town on the fringes of Auckland that could probably be considered the countryside given the number of pastures and horses we saw as we drew nearer.
Pulling into a pebble driveway of a bungalow on a large section we were met by the smiling face and outstretched arms of Dave Parker, a great friend of ours and a man of many talents, two of which we planned to exploit on this outing. We were welcomed inside and spent some time catching up before the business of the day began, a business that took the form of several extremely large sheet-pan pizzas that must have cost Dave most of his morning to prepare. One by one these pies were withdrawn from the oven and laid out in front of this trio of salivating diners creating a beautiful and edible mosaic along the centre of the dining table. I served myself three slices, a zucchini, an eggplant, and a pepperoni, and enjoyed a side salad with lettuce, orange, radish, and mint, dressed with a lemon and fennel seed vinegarette.
This master pizza-smith is also the Beths’ master-luthier, the only man we trust to put our guitars under the knife, and that was the other reason we had come out to Riverhead on this Sunday afternoon. With swollen bellies we stumbled out to the workshop to beg Dave’s expertise on the several guitars we had brought with us, including a beautiful old English 12-string that Jon had recently purchased, and a four string Japanese electric bass that had played upwards of three hundred shows since its last service. It was a treat getting to look around Dave’s new workshop, a space which does a lot more than service guitars, you might discover if you were to visit his exquisitely produced youtube channel.
Cole hadn’t expressed interest in the workshop, preferring to dominate the living room rug with his sprawled sleeping posture, and we reluctantly disturbed this peaceful slumber to hop back into the car and head to Avondale and the beginning of our workday. Our Saturday night show had been so fun and easy that we held very little concern for the substance of this Sunday afternoon soundcheck, but we went up on stage anyway as tradition dictated that we should, and we jammed out enough chords to convince ourselves that we were headed towards another evening of success.
Bella Rafflyn played her first downbeat at 7:45pm, this twenty-one-year-old songwriter backed by a trio of black-clad musicians, stone cold studio pros who weren’t afraid to play both powerfully and accurately. This isn’t our first run-in with Bella; her band Coast Arcade supported us a couple of years ago when we played a week of shows at Whammy Bar; now she had a fresh batch of songs and was sounding better than ever.
Feeling relaxed from our afternoon activities and inspired after listening to a great opening set, we walked out onto the slightly sloped Hollywood Avondale stage for our own kickoff at the very reasonable hour of 9pm, enjoying the Sunday night scheduling that promised to have everyone home in bed at a sensible hour. It was another flawless show, this one even more relaxed than the previous night, and with a crowd in attendance that were determined to outdo the Saturdians in their enthusiasm and dancing performance.
Gabe attempted another flight of his helium-filled inflatable remote-controlled shark during one of Jon’s guitar solos and this flight was as equally as catastrophic as Saturday’s flight, ending in exactly the same fashion by crashing into the crowd, getting the motor ripped off, and then floating up to be stranded on the ceiling. It was precisely the night we had hoped for, a perfect return to our hometown, and we ended it in our own cars, driving our own amps and drums back home, just the way things used to be.
Thanks to Robyn Sinclair (my wonderful mother) for all the great photos from the evening.