1 Aug 2010
Sunday Magazine
Hip to be Hick :The hardy crop of Kiwis making country music cool
Whether you prefer it slick and glossy, feral and munterish or dark and melancholy, New Zealand makes country music all ways. Grant Smithies surveys the wide range of sounds happening on the Kiwi country scene...
Some music snobs maintain that country music is just corny cowboy crap written for yokels who live in those dull provincial outposts referred to by TV programmers as “the heartland”. They imagine mutton-fed squares out in Deliverance country line-dancing in checked shirts and Hallensteins slacks. But country music has never been so easily defined or dismissed. Like rock, pop or hip hop, it has evolved since its inception, mutating like a particularly frisky virus, cross-breeding shamelessly with other styles. In New Zealand, musicians have been putting their spin on country music for decades.
Canada-born country singer Tami Neilson has won Best Country Album at the New Zealand Music Awards for the last two years, and it’s easy to see why. Rather than choose sides between slick Nashville country-pop and a more fashionable alternative country sound, she keeps one cowboy-booted foot in each camp. Recorded in her brother’s kitchen using an old refrigerator box as a vocal booth, her latest album, The Kitchen Table Sessions, contains hectic bluegrass versions of Dave Dobbyn’s “Slice of Heaven” and Scribe’s “Not Many” alongside the kinds of glossy ballads you might hear at the annual Gold Guitar Awards in Gore. Throughout, Neilson sings her heart out, recalling a cross between Roy Orbison and Patsy Cline.
“Well, country has a lot of range, and I try to get all that range into my music. A lot of people over here say they hate country music, yet they love Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams and Ryan Adams, and you can’t spit in New Zealand without hitting a country music club. You guys love country but you just don’t know it.”
Back in Ontario, Neilson’s parents played music professionally since before she was born. “We have footage of me on stage with them in a little frilly white dress when I’m not even two. I can’t talk yet, but I can sing. My dad’s trying to get the microphone off me, and I’m freaking out, and Mum’s waving my milk bottle at me to seduce me off the stage.”
From the age of 12, Neilson travelled with her parents and two brothers in a Partridge Family-style motor home, playing as a family band across Canada and the US. They performed regularly on TV, had two Top 20 hits, and shared stages with Brenda Lee and Loretta Lynn. She even opened for Johnny Cash in her pyjamas after an electrical fire on the bus destroyed their stage outfits.
“And then I married a New Zealander and had to start all over again. That was a real shock. I’d had this professional career since I was a teenager, then five years ago I had to start afresh in this place where so many people are hostile towards country music. Back in North America, country music is seen as being cool and cutting edge, whereas in New Zealand I was getting all this advice from people in the music industry, like, ‘Don’t say the ‘C’ word. It’s a dirty word over here.’ I was like, really?
“But at least I’m unique here. The fact that I’m singing country is a point of difference, and so is the fact that I’m this maple Kiwi: half Canadian, half Kiwi. Also, I think being Canadian gave me the confidence to do country versions of Kiwi songs that are iconic to you guys, whereas Kiwi musicians might be afraid to try things like that because of that whole tall poppy thing.
“Really, winning you guys over is like a challenge to me, and it seems to be working. Every time I tour, there are more hip, young city people at my gigs, and the minute we pull out a banjo, they freak out, they’re so excited. People are like, ‘Banjo! Awesome!’ Maybe it’s finally becoming cool to be a hick.” “The minute we pull out a banjo, people are like, ‘Awesome!’ Maybe it’s finally becoming cool to be a hick”
