NZ Music Month Retrospective
Dunedin Public Libraries have been supporting the New Zealand Music Commission's NZ Music Month initiative for the last 15 years, and this will be the first year we've gone fully online to celebrate New Zealand music.
Dunedin's local musicians and songwriters have always come to the party to share their music and their songs with Library audiences, and this year is no exception. Despite the physical distancing requirements of lockdown, they've still found the time, the energy and the ingenuity to overcome the challenges of isolation to put together some fantastic video gigs for your entertainment. You'll find more details of these later in this issue.
Meanwhile, we can't open up the libraries to bring you live performances this year, so here's a look back at some of our special memories of past New Zealand Music month celebrations.
The Music Video: The Van Grafs
Always looking to innovate, Nook and Cranny Music Festival co-organiser Brendan Christie pitched the idea of making a music video in the Library during NZ Music Month 2018. Local rock band The Van Grafs volunteered to write a song for the project (Should Have Stayed Home) and scripted the video, which was directed by screenwriter, director and production consultant Al Baddock. Students from the Otago Polytechnic School of Film and TV, supervised by lecturer Stephen Hillman, volunteered their time over several nights to film the video at Dunedin City Library, using locations such as Teen Space, the reading tables on the non-fiction floor, and the basement fiction stacks. I was lucky enough to watch this creative process, which was so much fun, as well as hugely exciting to see the finished production. Without a doubt, my lasting memory will be the drummer giving it his all in the lift, while the lead guitarist doubled as a stagehand, holding the lift door open long enough to film the scene. It was quite a feat getting the whole drum kit in there, I can tell you! One of the Film and TV students, Lucas Ravenga-Taouma, made a very entertaining and revealing behind the scenes video, which shows how much work went into this. With thanks to Brendan Christie, Al Baddock (director), and cameramen Oliver Forbes, Mark, Lucas, Tenson, and Zach for making this possible.
The Springboard
Copyright, Adam Binns Photography, Dunedin, New Zealand 2019 — with Richard Jackson, Michelle Jackson, David Cox and Craig Hall." data-grapher="Adam Binns" data-width="2000" data-height="1334">
Many local musicians have been inspired to launch into music, or got the confidence boost they needed to play live gigs through playing in the safe spaces of the Library.
Dee Street Blues
This local Dunedin band, hailing from the Otago Peninsular, play original acoustic blues-infused protest music. They first performed at Dunedin City Library during NZ Music Month 2018, where their diverse musical range and upbeat songs carried both world concerns and wry humour.
Performing at the library in support of NZ Music Month, or for the Nook & Cranny, is always an annual highlight for our band, not least because we really do feel that we got our start there. I will never forget that first time we played there, on after some classical guitarists. The organisers and the audience were so engaged and supportive from the first song, and they seemed to really enjoy our music. It was thrilling. It felt like a real performance for us, and gave us the genuine confidence and belief to keep going and develop as an originals band. - Dee Street Blues
They performed again in 2019 on the Library Plaza at Nook and Cranny 4.0, and appear regularly at Louise Burnside's Gallery on Blueskin, the Galley at Port Chalmers, Bark at the Dog with Two Tails, and many community festivals, such as the Vogel Street Party and Thieves Alley Market.
Jackson Caine
Jackson Caine is a local singer-songwriter who is a regular performer at community events and fundraisers. He first played at City Library in 2018 at a New Zealand Music Month gig night. His incredible voice and heartfelt lyrics held the audience spellbound, while his easy, modest manner had us giggling in between songs.
Performing at the Dunedin Library was my 1st real live gig.
For me it was that giant 1st step that let me acknowledge to myself
and others that I now had a forum to pass on my messages through my
songs. My songs, and now my performing, is part of my healing process,
my "therapy" if you will, on my journey back from alcoholism, drugs,
broken relationships, depression and anxiety and understanding these
issues. Definitely plenty to write about there, but I knew if I didn't
take that step I would still be in the same place, or even worse,
today. The library sessions, the Nook and Cranny and the support I
received from the library and my trusty mentors showed me it is actually
a good thing to put yourself out there. So I have, though I still get
nervous as hell when performing live but that's just part and parcel
of the music scene, I guess. - Jackson Caine
Jackson's lyrics are a window into his very real hopes and dreams, with an underlying sadness and determination that reveal his strength of character in every line. Ragged Clothes is his signature song.
He has also written a song dedicated to our great city. He performed Dunedin as part of the Musically Challenged series, with another local musician darryl baser on drums.
Before the Snooze
This local foursome probably wouldn't have existed if it weren't for the Nook and Cranny Music Festival. Band members Stephen Hillman (lead vocals, rhythm guitar) and Adam Binns (bass) became friends while working as official Festival film crew and photographer respectively, and caught the music bug. They made their debut as performers with Set Me Free at Nook and Cranny 3.0 in 2018 with band members Wes Jenkins (Lead Guitar) and Scott Turnbull (Drums).
I guess it was a similar experience to watching a game of football and wishing you could get on the pitch and play yourself. It was also a safe place to try gigging again after a few years away from it raising a family and moving from the UK to New Zealand. It's a family friendly event and I thought it was a good chance for my children to watch me perform before they reached an age where I'll be the embarassing dad, which we've reached now haha. - Stephen Hillman, Before the Snooze
The band combine brit-rock bounce with hard-bitten steely lyrics to create lively crowd-pleasers that get the audience out of their seats and stomping.
Before the Snooze performed again at Nook and Cranny 4.0 in 2019, in between video and photography duties, playing out the finale of the day to a capacity audience with Find the Time. You can read more about the band and the challenges of collaborative songwriting in a bubble later in this issue.
Nook and Cranny
The Nook and Cranny Festival was born in 2016. We'd had 10 years of NZ Music Month gig nights at the Library by then, and I was keen to shake up the format. I whimsically suggested that it would be great to have a music festival in a library - one big event that would appeal to everyone. Brendan put on his thinking cap and came back to me a couple of weeks later with a pitch for the Nook and Cranny Festival - music in the nooks and crannies of the library. Five years later and the Festival has grown hugely, featuring some 50 performers and boasting an audience of around 3000 throughout the day. DunedinSound.com made a documentary about the Nook and Cranny Festival which neatly sums up the feel of this uniquely Dunedin annual event.
Brendan is a visionary and the driving force behind the Nook and Cranny. He's put musicians in the lift to create "live elevator music", and choirs on the stairwell and in the basement "because the acoustics are amazing". His contacts in the Dunedin music scene and gift for organising huge events make this Festival one of Dunedin's biggest and most popular.
We have been so fortunate, too, to have Stephen Hillman and his army of student videographers on board to record the performances over the years. It's hard to choose favourites with so much good music in the line-up, so I'll just give you a selection of the videos made by Stephen and his team from past Festivals. You can view the full playlist, year by year, at the official Nook and Cranny music channel on YouTube.
2016
The Flukes - Untouchable Girls
The Vortz - Funk It
Concrete Grady - Angels Walk Among Us
2017
Valley Bluegrass - Foggy Mountain Breakdown (played outside my office - what a treat!)
The INTERSECTIONists - Falling Under Foot
Mia - Sky People
2018
One Day Sane - You Hey
Seedy - Right for Me
Holly McPhee - Magpie
2019
Trent Hawthorne - 11.00
Katharticus - Wilson Parking
The Mentalist Collective - Running Through Long Grass
Finally, we have the brilliant photographic record of each and every year of Nook and Cranny - Adam Binns and Paul S Allen are regular members of the official photography team. Paul has been with us since the beginning in 2016, and you can view the full archive of his photographs on our digital history of the Nook and Cranny Festival on the Library's He Purapura Marara Scattered Seeds digital archive, along with biographies of the bands who have performed. This project is nearing completion, with more photos currently being uploaded along with band biographies. We would like to extend our grateful thanks to Paul for his generous permission to use his photos for this project.
New Zealand Music Month looks very different this year for Dunedin Public Libraries. But just because we can't bring you our usual gig nights in the Library buildings, we're not going to let that stop us connecting you with New Zealand music. Instead, we'll be bringing gig nights to you at home online! Join us on our Facebook page and on the library website every Thursday and Friday at 5.30pm throughout May as we introduce you to a different local band or musician. To launch New Zealand Music Month, Friday night's video gig on 1st May is brought to you by Otago Peninsular band, the Ellie Jackson Duo - husband and wife team Michelle and Richard Jackson, who make up part of the Dee Street Blues.
And on Sunday 3rd May, from 10am to 4pm, be sure to head to the Nook and Cranny Facebook page for a special online version of the Nook and Cranny Music Festival 5.0, created for 2020.
Dunedin Public Libraries have a great line-up of local talent this month all playing live from their home studios so you can enjoy them in your home stadium!