Bushman's country gallop with Dobbyn

Warren Maxwell in his TrinityRoots days. Picture / Dean Purcell

The best pie in the country, reckons Warren Maxwell, is the steak and Speights Old Dark one from Waikouaiti, just north of Dunedin.

"You can really taste the beer in it," he giggles.

Maxwell, a member of the late TrinityRoots and saxophone player in Fat Freddy's Drop, is nearing the end of a nationwide jaunt with his new band, Little Bushman, in support of Dave Dobbyn on his You Got Heart tour. Maxwell was one of the backing musicians on Dobbyn's latest album Available Light and has been playing saxophone with the headliner after his band's support set.

"It's been a bit of a pie-stop tour," he laughs, in that typical bro-like fashion.

Today he's in Taupo, and tonight the band will travel a little further up the road to play their "out-of-it" music to the masses in Putaruru.

"I think that's one of the great things about this tour is that Dave is going to quite a few little places, you know, Greymouth ... Te Kuiti. They really appreciate you for taking time off the beaten track a bit and they love it. They seem to be more festive - a little bit more eccentric, especially in Greymouth.

"You do get a relatively conservative mainstream audience and it's all a sit-down theatre audience which I've never ever played to. But it's a different energy because you know they are actually listening quite intensely."

Teaming up with Dobbyn is a strange combination because though his market is a wide one, Little Bushman play some seriously bent and twisted psychedelic stuff. Nine-minute - if not longer - epics are all part of their set. Plus, guitarist Joe Callwood plays with a screwdriver to create these "really freaky Hendrix kind of sonics".

And get this, the Bushman's debut album, which they will be recording early next year, is likely to be "five- or six- 10-minute tracks", says Maxwell.

"I think we'll just go hard out with an album, and just do like the early Pink Floyd stuff so that we're completely going anti-pop and so that we're doing justice to the songs, and drag them out, and go on a big journey."

TrinityRoots took many of us on a trip during the six years they were together and when the band played their last gigs earlier this year there were a lot of sad faces. Official word was that the split was amicable but Maxwell also reveals now that he felt he was starting to be categorised as "a reggae folk musician".

"And that's why nothing the Bushman do has anything to do with reggae. There's no roots, no reggae at all. It's all psychedelic, jazz, rock," he cracks up. "I didn't like the Maori reggae songwriter [tag]," he laughs again, "because it's like, 'Man, I'm just a musician'."

The Bushman's influences include artists like Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, and even, "freaky pygmy music".

But Maxwell's inspiration for wanting to do something more psychedelic comes from his love of finding a groove and just sitting on it.

"It's complete self-indulgence, man. From hearing a groove, or a rhythm, or a melody, and if it's good I can listen to it for 10 or 20 minutes. Over and over, if it's good. Because something happens to your body, and your psyche, and it puts you in a trance-like state. I'm starting to sound like a bit of a stoner, and I hardly smoke at all."

It's been a busy and successful year for Maxwell. He had his first child - a girl - and she travelled overseas with him when Fat Freddy's toured Europe. That band has sold more than 50,000 copies of their debut album, Based On a True Story.

Maxwell doesn't mind if people don't associate him with Trinity and Fat Freddy's, preferring to keep the bands separate because he wants listeners to hear the Bushman's music from a fresh perspective.

"It's just really good, experimental fun and I like the idea of bringing two worlds together." 


* Little Bushman, supporting Dave Dobbyn on his You Got Heart tour play tonight at TSB Showplace, New Plymouth; tomorrow, Wanganui Opera House; December 2, Forum Nth, Whangarei; December 3, Civic, Auckland. 

* Albums - TrinityRoots - Home, Land, and Sea (2004); Fat Freddy's Drop - Based On A True Story (2005).