Runaway sets a cracking pace

The Warratahs are experienced in the art of irresistible songs.

Warratahs treat the country to a foot-stomping tour, writes Paula Yeoman.

Barry Saunders describes The Warratahs' new album as "a bit of a happy accident".

"We didn't intend to make an album," he says. "We just slammed down a whole bunch of songs. And then we thought, 'Ahhh, we sound pretty good, so let's put it out'."

Runaway Days is the seventh studio album from the country-blues rockers who first made their mark in the late 1980s with the now classic songs, Maureen and Hands on My Heart. Later came songs like St Peter's Rendezvous and the rollicking harmonica-led instrumental Bruno's Last Ride, which embedded their distinctive sound in the Kiwi heartland.

More than 25 years on, this new offering proves Saunders has lost none of that ability to write a cracking tune. There's the ballsy, toe-tapping Day in a Million about the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

"I wrote that song the day after the quake and we got stuck in Lyttelton. I gave a lift to a young woman over the hill. It was good for me to able to mark that day because my family is down there. It was good, not to dwell on it, but to get it out of my system."

There's also the country-laced The Wheel Inside.

"I wrote that when we were touring in Australia. It's just about the heat and the madness. It's hard to keep it together when you're on the road in Australia. It's a hell of a big place. I love it, but it's a hard grind."

And for good measure, there's The Warratahs' take on the Johnny Cash classic, Ring of Fire.

"We'd toured years ago with The Highwaymen and June Carter Cash was on the tour with us.

"She told us that she originally wrote that song as a ballad," says Saunders.

"It has a lot of meaning to me. It was my mother's favourite song. A lot of people don't like this version. They know the Cash version with the trumpets and everything, and they don't want some folk song, so it pisses some people off. But that's just bad luck," he says, laughing.

They're all tunes that have the same country-blues spirit that made The Warratahs household names but Saunders says two points of difference make this record stand out from their others.

First, most of the songs were recorded in Auckland, not Wellington. And second, it's the band's first studio album recorded live. "The songs were really only scraps of paper. We sort of did them on the spot. Nothing's really more than three takes."

Saunders says recording so quickly produced a certain amount of panic but also excitement. "Sometimes the more stuff you put on, the more the song goes away. It's like trying to do a painting. If you keep putting stuff on, it eventually disappears. But with this record, the band only does one thing - you turn it on and that's what it sounds like."

Runaway Days is out now.

• The Warratahs are touring New Zealand, starting at King St Live in Masterton on July 7 and finishing at the Tuning Fork in Auckland on Friday, August 7.