Singer farewells his hometown

Wairarapa singer-songwriter Mike Rigg is heading down south and will be taking his music with him.

The 29-year-old farewelled his hometown, family and friends with a show at Masterton venue King Street Live on Saturday night alongside a roster of musicians, performers and mates from throughout the region and beyond.

Rigg said he was leaving his Masterton day job in furniture retail to start work in Queenstown as a tour driver and guide.

"There's definitely mixed emotions about leaving but it's now or never to challenge myself. And my music, that will never leave me. Never."

Rigg's stage and studio adventures started at Masterton Intermediate School, playing bass in nine-piece school band The Misfits, which won the Wellington Intermediate School Battle of the Bands final ahead of about 20 other acts.

At Wairarapa College Rigg played in several bands including Arquette and Plan B, swapping bass for guitar and picking up percussion on the way.

After leaving school, he met veteran Wairarapa musicians Stefan Brown and John Mabey and "that's when I started jamming with local musos and got into it from there".

The collaboration led him to musician and sound engineer Toby Mills and work for about three years with pop rockers Deaf Lemon, a "high energy" four-piece that played throughout the North Island and in 2010 opened for Evermore and Supergroove at the inaugural Small Town Big Sounds concert at the Tui Brewery in Mangatainoka.

The group dropped its seven-track EP Yellow is Good the same year and won the 2010 Wellington regional Battle of the Bands showdown, contesting the national finals in Auckland.

The band also featured bassist Peter Pauli and keyboardist singer Pip Hansen and scored an online Urban Dictionary listing after dropping the F-Bomb during onstage patter to a 10,000-strong audience of mostly families and children at a New Year's Eve show in Palmerston North.

After Deaf Lemon, Rigg and Mills went on to covers band Mister Groove, which also featured drummer Paddy Addison, singer Hannah McGrail and bassman John Rees.

Rigg has since also released two solo albums, Living for Now in 2007 recorded with Mabey at Bassrick Studios in Carterton, and Moonlight in 2014, recorded at Addison's The Mobile studio in the same town.

Rigg's latest live forays have been in duet with Kapiti-based singer-songwriter Clare Christian, performing covers and some of her original tunes.

Christian also performed at Rigg's farewell gig Saturday, as did her daughter Lily Christian and Wairarapa musos Elton Halford, Jason Ireland, Stefan Brown, Pat McKenna, Paddy Addison and John Rees.