Award-winner folk show to hit Tin Hut

HIGH NOON: Great North vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist Hayden Donnell and his wife Rachel, bassist and vocalist for the award-winning Kiwi folk band, who are playing at The Tin Hut in Featherston. PHOTO SUPPLIED

Double Tui Award-winning alternative folk band Great North will stage its debut show - and couples retreat - in Wairarapa this weekend.

Hayden Donnell, Great North vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist, said the six-piece Auckland-based group will play a noon show at The Tin Hut in Featherston on Sunday as part of a 14-date nationwide tour alongside The Bads and duet Brendan and Alison Turner.

Donnell said the tour was doubling as a "couples retreat" with each of the bands on the bill fronted by a couple including himself and his wife Rachel, who plays bass for Great North, the Turner duet, and couple Brett Adams and Dianne Swann of The Bads.

"Only pedal steel player Matthew Hutching is not currently dating a member of the tour party, and this will be our first Wairarapa show for sure. We tried to play in Masterton a few times but it never came through. We're really looking forward to making Wairarapa happen at last."

Other members in Great North include Dale Campbell on piano, acoustic guitar, trumpet, harmonica and vocals; Strahan Cole on electric guitar; Ryan Attwood on drums; and pedal steel guitarist Hutching.

The band was formed about five years ago, Donnell said, and took the 2013 Best Folk Album Tui for the album Halves before this year taking the same category for the album Up In Smoke.

"It's like a Tui sandwich. We won in 2013 then our friends Tattletale Saints won and then us again this year, which I really was so surprised about. It's almost more amazing than I thought it could feel.

"I hope we've put in enough work and done the hard yards to earn it. But playing live is where you earn your stripes and it's the best feeling in music, easily."

Donnell said the band was riding a popular wave of folk and country that was breaking internationally and nationally.

"There's the big pop folk dominating the mainstream stations - Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers - and at our level, the base level, there's this really healthy, thriving country and folk scene with the likes of Marlon Williams, Tami Neilson, Delaney Davidson.

"You look back 10 years and there was virtually nothing like that touring in New Zealand. Now it's a really robust scene stretching right across the country, and not just in one centre. I think Adam McGrath deserves most of the credit for that."

Donnell was sure the Wairarapa show will highlight the best of the folk and country moment, especially with the three groups involved.

"It's like an old style rambling, ramshackle tour we're taking to the road. We're all playing in one another's band and we're like the pedal steel, double bass, electric and acoustic guitar. It's a very acoustic, down-to-earth show that's strong on vocal harmonies and female vocals in every band. It will be more a personal kind of show than in your face."

The Great North nationwide tour with The Bads and Brendan and Alison Turner hits The Tin Hut near Featherston at noon on Sunday.