Untamed Anika Moa 'shakes things up'

ROYAL AUDIENCE: Kiwi singer-songwriter Anika Moa stages her debut at King Street Live in Masterton tomorrow alongside a full band and support artist as part of her Queen at the Table album tour.

The world will never tame Anika Moa, an award-winning Te Aupouri musician and performer who is evolving before our eyes.

A mid-afternoon call finds Moa, a lesbian mother of three, with her almost 1-year-old son Soren gurgling and chatting within reach at their Auckland home, while she also juggles her widening family life and a national tour in support of her latest album.

The tour will for the first time bring Moa to Wairarapa, courtesy of Masterton promotion company Up With People, since she won broad support in the region in 2013 after a Masterton church group baulked at hosting the performer because of her sexuality. Moa came out in 2007.

Vicar Jenny Chalmers at St Mark's Church, Carterton, offered her the Gothic-styled totara wood sanctuary as a venue and voiced her regret at the attitudes of some fellow Christians in Wairarapa. But those national headlines are overblown and stale, Moa said.

"I don't even like talking about it. It's too boring for me.

"It was what it was and blown out of proportion and I've got nothing to say about it, if I'm honest."

Moa earlier this year held on the New Zealand Herald website a series of tongue-in-cheek video interviews of fellow luminaries and friends, like her "good mate" Featherston musician Warren Maxwell with whom she completed the first season of television show Songs from the Inside, and former Martinborough celebrity hunk Art Green of The Bachelor reality TV fame.

Interviews, from both sides of the pen, mic or lens, are nothing new for her, she said, and fame is of little concern in her scheme of things.

"I don't have time to think about it because I'm too busy.

"I tour and I look after my kids and I write and, you know, there's not actually any time to give it any thought or consideration.

"I find there are more important things to talk about or think about.

"I can compartmentalise my life and everything I do, and anything that's distracting goes unseen by me," she said.

"Literally, you do interviews and you talk about your tour and you talk about your shows - and people come, so it's fine. I've been doing interviews for years, so I'm used to them."

A question about Mike Hosking cleaning his Ferrari draws ire and is shut down as a silly distraction and disrespectful grope for a story angle.

"Can we talk about the tour? I don't want to talk about things that don't interest me."

The Queen at the Table album support tour, she says without missing a beat, includes her King Street Live debut in Masterton tomorrow night, alongside a backing band that includes producer of the album, Jol Mulholland, and an acoustic set from fellow Aucklander SJD, or Sean James Donnelly, who Moa rates as "amazing".

Queen at the Table dropped in April and comes after her 2013 album for children, Songs for Bubbas, and was a chrysalis shift for Moa from being an acoustic singer-songwriter to an electronic and more beat-driven diva.

During her 15-year recording career, Moa has gathered numerous APRA Silver Scroll nominations and several Tui Awards; and in the market has achieved double platinum and platinum-seller status during her now seven-album release run.

"The latest album is quite electronic and very beat-y and very, I guess what music is these days, it's very electronic.

"I like experimenting and shaking things up and I've always changed my musical style because I get bored.

"I want to evolve basically, you know, this is me evolving."

Moa said her show likewise captures her professional evolution and will, in equal parts, embrace song and the sharing of opinion with her audience.

"In the show I do have honest discussions with people and I ask them for their opinion and they ask mine, you know, a crowd and performer Q and A.

"That's when my honesty comes out and we all talk about real things like John Key, and the flag and Mike Hosking, you know, whatever."

Anika Moa plays from 7pm. Tickets cost $30 from www.eventfinda.co.nz.