About 5 years ago – in 2017 – I wrote a song called Korean Restaurant. I had been inspired by a conversation between two friends that I had overheard in a café while waiting for a coffee. One of them was complaining about their one-way relationship with a Korean Restaurant. It seemed that it wasn’t really about the food or anything like that but they somehow wanted to be part of the team or family that ran the restaurant. But no matter how hard they tried – they had even learnt some Korean – all attempts to win them over received the same cool response as they always had. I started thinking that this really sounded like unrequited love. That this was a metaphor for an unhealthy, doomed romantic relationship. Someone later pointed out to me that being shunned by cool bars/restaurants was actually pretty relatable for most of us too.
So I went home and pretty quickly wrote and recorded a song about it. It was pretty lo-fi and quirky and I didn’t feel like it was a good fit for either Anxiety Club or Meech Brothers projects so I hastily posted it on my Night Bus SoundCloud page. Eventually (in April 2018) I fully released it to Spotify, etc. And then didn’t think too much more about it.
Every now and again I’d have a listen to it and I grew to not like it very much. It was just too lo-fi and a bit slow and didn’t sit well alongside Night Bus tracks like Fine Lines. It wasn’t getting a lot of Spotify love either so at the end of 2021 I decided to withdraw it from streaming services.
In January 2023 I received a streaming payment of USD30 for Korean Restaurant for a sale in December 2021 – just before I had pulled the song. That may not seem like a lot of money but it’s easily the largest royalty payment I had ever received for a song. It came to me via my digital distributor CD Baby and had originated from a company called SoundExchange. I emailed CD Baby and asked if they could provide me with any more detail. They were able to tell me it was a “non-interactive” royalty payment which is something that is generated every time the track is played “via non-interactive streaming (meaning someone did NOT click to hear a specific song) on services such as Pandora, Sirius XM, iHeart Radio and cable TV radio stations.” It’s a “Digital Performance Royalty” and it’s for the sound recording – not the underlying song/composition. It’s still a mystery to me where or who or what radio station was playing Korean Restaurant.
I then dug a little deeper into the song’s streaming stats and found that it had picked up some plays on TikTok too. When you think about it that makes sense – if you’ve made a TikTok at a Korean Restaurant of course you might then look for a song called Korean Restaurant to soundtrack it.
Maybe I had underestimated the song. Classic Me. Did I just mess up my one chance at fame and fortune?
I could not undo the distribution cancelation so I quickly set about re-recording the song so I could get it back out into the public domain as soon as possible (I didn’t want to re-release the old version). I guess I thought that I’d just release the new version as a Night Bus song but as I progressed with the recording I realised that the production could really be elevated with some bass and electric guitar – so I invited Gareth to collaborate on it and we decided it would be the next Meech Brothers single. It was already sounding a lot better than the original – Gareth’s contributions made a big difference (that funky bass part!) and my production skills had gotten a lot better since 2017 – but I thought some slightly twee female backing vocals in the chorus could help. I roped in my Orangefarm bandmate Vivien Reid for this and recorded her parts at her flat on Nairn Street (just a couple of doors down from where we use to live!).
We commissioned a lyric video from the fiverr guy who had made the Kind Enough visualisers and we released the new Korean Restaurant at the end of June 2023.
On rotation at RDU
And it all got off to a pretty good start with the song getting playlisted at student/alternative stations RDU, Most FM and Radio Control. It would also find it’s way onto Radio NZ’s Saturday night request show (thanks Jen who knows host Phil O’Brien) eventually (in December 2023) making it’s way on to cult RNZ show Matinee Idle.
I had a chat with Christine Holmes on Most FM about the song around the release date and you can listen to that here
You can listen to the song on Spotify, Apple Music YouTube and just about everywhere else. And while you’re at it, why not make a TikTok video with it? Cheers
I’m not sure if it was an official New Years resolution or not, but as the dust settled after the demise of Anxiety Club I decided that it would be good to have a break from bands for awhile. Step out of that world for a bit. Still probably do a little bit of music – maybe record some more solo instrumentals, maybe spend more time on the Brothers project – but I wasn’t even sure about that. I was a little fried from it all. I thought some time and space would be healthy. I’d recharge. Get inspired again. The universe however, had other ideas.
Orangefarm rehearsal at the Armada Rooms (l-r): Vivian Reid, Nigel Mitchell, Andrew Kerr (obscured: Peter Holm). January 2023
Towards the end of 2022 Nigel (remember him – he played guitar on Anxiety Club’s farewell video session) got in touch with me. He asked if I’d like to sit in on a couple of songs at his band Orangefarm’s February gig at Moon. I wasn’t sure. At the time I was down with my first bout of COVID and I wasn’t really capable of making a decision so I deferred. In the New Year Nigel and I met for a beer at a pub in Karori. Nigel explained their situation a bit more – multi-instrumentalist Vivan Reid wanted to focus on French Horn and backing vocals only and really didn’t really want to shoulder keyboard-playing responsibilities any more (she just didn’t enjoy it). There were a couple of songs that Nigel thought really needed keys to hold them together. I still didn’t commit. Later I found out that Andrew Bain would also join them at that gig to play a couple of tunes (so that Orangefarm bassist Peter Holm could play guitar on some songs). That kinda swung it for me – with Andrew there too it should be a bit of fun. I’d do it – the couple of songs Nigel wanted – plus I suggested I play on Do Me In as well – just because I really liked it.
Heather Weir, Tom’s brother, me, Andrew Bain side-stage at Moon
The gig went well. Let’s Planet opened (Nigel knows Alan Galloway and Caroline Easther) and then Orangefarm did their thing. I hung out with Andrew as well as Tom Watson and a few of their other friends (Heather Weir, Tom’s brother) – although I felt a little out my coolness depth. The tunes I played on went well. It was a bit weird coming and going through the set – but it was mostly fun. For my stage entrances I would crawl onto the stage – this was born partly out of necessity – the stage was super-crammed – but mostly for laughs. The feedback was good. People said I brought a good energy to the stage. So that was that. A little tiny bit of band stuff for 2023. Done!
Well – and you probably saw this coming – by March I was a fulltime member of Orangefarm. After the gig Nigel began courting me to join as the resident keyboard player. There were several coffees and chats while I considered the proposition. I eventually said yes (in the end I concluded I had nothing to lose) but surprised myself with the conditions I laid down – this couldn’t cost me any money, I wasn’t doing any admin or spreadsheets and I wasn’t going to attend every practice. I’d learnt a lot form the Anxiety Club experience. Despite (or because of) my conditions Nigel still wanted me. Apparently they had been in talks with another keys player who was pretty keen – but they wanted me. It is always nice to be wanted. They like what I brought. They called me a “proper keyboard player”. Whilst Vivian is classically trained and technically more proficient than me, they knew that a keyboard player who knows how to play in a band is something entirely different. Orangefarm had an album in the can and a relationship with Failsafe Records so the future was looking optimistic.
Meech Brothers
My apparent freeing-up of Music Time coincided with Gareth’s enthusiasm to do more music. He had already been far more engaged in the project than me in 2022 (and the preceding year or two as well really) and had a few songs written and recorded (with only minor contributions from myself). We decided to release a series of singles instead of an EP (not initially at least) because the latter would just take us too long to complete. We listened through the completed and not-so-completed songs and landed on Kind Enough to be the first of these singles. We made our own artwork from one of my photos and connected with someone via fiverr to make us a short animated “visualiser” for promo and the like. We snuck the release into the final days of NZ Music Month (for all the good that did us!). We were back. Again.
With the release of Old Dreams in September and Kev’s departure to Europe set for the second-half of November a small window of opportunity existed for us to celebrate the release of the album and wrap-up the band on some sort of high note. We eventually ruled-out doing an album release/farewell gig – it was just too much work to rehearse up a full set with a band (and the associated logistics and difficulties finding a good venue at short notice) and instead landed on the idea of filming a live set.
With Kev fairly preoccupied with his impending relocation I assumed the role of Producer. Now before I go on to bore you with the detail I just want to say that this little project turned out to be one of the most satisfying things (music or otherwise) that I have ever pulled-off. The end result exceeded all expectations. I couldn’t be happier with my own – or everyone else’s – performance. It was also a lot of fun. Having a fixed end-point brought focus and knowing that this was our very last performance made me appreciate every part of the process and not take a single thing for granted. How often do you know you’re doing your last gig with a band? Not that often I can assure you.
Again we turned to Nick George and signed him up to film and edit. A drummer we agreed, would add an extra level of technical complexity to the recording that we didn’t need and opted to go without. This decision in turn influenced the vibe we’d be going for – something a bit more chill and acoustic-ish – like an NPR Tiny Desk or MTV Unplugged (if anyone can still remember those).
Nigel Mitchell
Next step: recruit a band. Chris Armour was our first port of call to play guitar but unfortunately he would require financial compensation to be involved. Whilst his fee was reasonable we literally didn’t have any money left. At the time, Chris was fighting the good fight establishing the Wellington Musicians Association to lead a united front in negotiating better performance fees from the Council (and other event organisers too really). Maybe our project got caught up in all that at that time – I dunno. We would have liked Chris to be part of it – after all we’d been through a lot together – but the band wasn’t a council or a bar or a festival or a corporate event and we just didn’t have the money. We were just a couple of crazy guys with a dream (and mortgages). This was not-for-profit endeavour.
Kev and I threw a few names of guitarists around and Nigel Mitchell from Orangefarm seemed to tick a lot of boxes. Over the years Anxiety Club and Orangefarm have played the role of support act at each other’s shows and we had a lot of respect for Nigel’s songs and his guitar playing. Nigel and I met for lunch one day and I told him about the project and he was in without hesitation.
Nigel and Kim
Next we asked Kim Bonnington (You, Me, Everybody) to sing with us again. We first met Kim via our original guitarist Dusty way back in the early days of the band and she had joined us on stage once or twice and had added backing vocals to the Black Heart EP. Such a magic voice and a top-notch human to boot – and in a happy coincidence she already knew Nigel from their previous teaching lives.
Completing the line-up would be my old mate Andrew Bain on bass (who also knew Kim from earlier music path-crossings).
There was much discussion on venues. Somewhere along the way Nick suggested bar Bedlam & Squalor. I think he had filmed something else there and had got to know the owners. He liked the natural light of the space and it had the added bonus of not being open all the time. He approached the owners and we could use it, no worries. For free.
So we landed on four of the quieter songs from Old Dreams for the session – Carousel, Party All Night Long, Old Dreams and Lucky One. We had some enjoyable rehearsals at the Armada Rooms and then – after a couple of false-starts and re-schedules (Kev was sick, then the venue was double-booked) – we all assembled at Bedlam & Squalor – adjacent to Glover Park – on a balmy (like really hot) Wednesday evening in the middle of November. Time was running out with Kev departing the fo.llowing week so there was some relief we were able to make it happen in the end.
The bar owners left us to it soon after we loaded-in and their parting words to us were that we could help ourselves to drinks. Say what? So we went about setting up – Nick had already made a head-start with lighting rigs and multiple cameras. I had given myself the task of recording the audio and remarkably didn’t have too many problems using gear I hadn’t used much before (Kim’s 18-chanel mixer/audio interface). We ordered pizza from Rogue & Vagabond downstairs, poured ourselves some pints (I relished taking on the role of bartender), and generally enjoyed each other’s company. I had no idea how good Wednesday evenings could be.
Then we cracked in to it and it all went really well. We did a few takes of each song. We struggled getting a really good take of Party All Night Long though – it didn’t help that Kev’s acoustic guitar’s line-out failed partway through and never really came back that well. In hindsight I should have mic’d up the acoustic guitar. But overall it was a really enjoyable experience. It helps when all the players are top notch and have done their homework – you only have to focus on your own performance – and make sure you’ve hit the record button for each take! I surprised myself with how relaxed I was and how well I played. It was the combo of having played the songs a lot and just being really comfortable with this particular group of people. It was one of those rare moments when I felt like I belonged and that I was actually kinda OK at this.
Over the following months I worked on the audio mixes – I was really happy with what I was able to achieve out of a pretty basic setup – and we didn’t even do any overdubs. In many ways I like these versions more than the original recordings – there was something about having everyone in the room together and it felt like a genuine collaboration. Nigel’s contributions alone were significant – the eBow in Old Dreams, the new lead line in Lucky One. The songs all just sounded fresher. I think I’d like to release the audio as a Live EP sometime.
Nick would then work on the edits around his other projects. Kev – who was in Poland by this stage – and I would provide feedback throughout. Nick did such a great job. He put so much into the project and we really couldn’t have done it without him. The end result is pure class.
We eventually released the video (all songs – except Party All Night Long – in one cut ) in May 2023. I tried shopping the premiere of it around to various music media and blog sites – but to no avail. So we put it out there and barely anyone got to see just how good it was. But you can! Here it is in all it’s glory
But I don’t mind (that much) that not many people saw it. I’m super-proud of it and so happy we went to the effort of documenting us and these songs at this particular moment in time. And even better that I got to do it all with a bunch of awesome people that I now consider to be friends. Actual friends.
The Bedlam Band (l-r): me, Kim, Kev, Andrew, Nigel
After Chris Hill’s departure in the middle of 2021 everything was in tatters at Camp Anxiety Club. Over a beer or two Kev and I discussed how – and even if we should – keep going. Was this even a band anymore? We concluded that we should plough on and complete an album. But we would do things a lot differently to how we had been working so far. With Kev and I the only ones making a financial contribution to the project, we decided that we should take the reins and pull in other contributors as and when required. We wouldn’t put together a “band” for now – that could be something for the future when the album was complete.
Songwriting session at The Shack, Shelly Bay
So we went about recording and finishing a collection of songs. These songs would come from a few different places – some were the nearly finished recordings from The Shack Sessions (Face in the Crowd, Hey Hey Hey), some were slightly developed ideas that had been worked-up to a point in Shack Sessions (Lucky One, Espresso Martini, Lonely Dancing) and others were new songs that Kev brought to the table (Carousel, Left/Right, Old Dreams, Party All Night Long). Kev and I would occasionally get together in person – but mostly we worked on it remotely (sometimes I’d record keyboard parts in my car on my lunchbreaks!). I remember one particularly fruitful session at my place when Kev played me Carousel for the first time and I pulled out the Omnichord which pretty much set the tone and direction for that particular song. Another session at Kev’s would steer Espresso Martini down the weird path that ended in the passive-aggressive AI bot character that features throughout the song (after I was inspired by my own fitness tracker app that would interrupt my listening of early mixes when I was out walking). It was a lot of fun coming up with all the different lines the bot would say. In that same session we mic’d up Kev’s family piano and I convinced him that he should play it on the Old Dreams song – as it was such a personal song. We had talked about me or a proper piano player doing that part but I’m glad I stuck to my guns and talked him into it – sometimes the best production approach is just getting out of the way of the song.
Working on the album at Kev’s house
These were the best moments of the process. There was also a lot of slogging away in isolation (and with the pandemic and lockdowns still featuring periodically during this time it was almost the only way we could do it) too. Kev was diving deep into the infinite options available in Apple’s Logic Pro software. I sat in on some of this but struggled with spending hours finding the best drum part, etc. I much prefer some constraints in my music-making. Much of each song’s construction was therefore done by Kev with me adding parts here and there. Aside from the virtual contributors Kev also used website soundbetter.com to connect with some human collaborators.
Ruby recording the Vocoder on Lonely Dancing
He found Zach Samao in LA who ended up doing drums and beats on a few of the songs. The three of us would have Zoom calls to discuss what we were looking for. That was kinda fun too – and it really took a lot of the pain and awkwardness out of trying to find and pull favours locally. He also found a backing singer (Maygen Lacey) this way (and also a guitarist for Party All Night Long, I think). Chris Armour recorded a bunch of guitar parts for us too. I even got 9-year old Ruby to record the “robot voice” for Lonely Dancing.
Tracking the piano for Old Dreams
But overall this album malarkey was feeling like very slow, hard work to me. To help provide me with a sense that I’d achieved something (anything!) in 2021 I released an instrumental under my “Night Bus” alias in December. It was something that had been sitting around on my hard drive that I liked. It had a real 90s chill vibe – like Air or Zero 7 or something. It’s called Fine Lines and in the process I discovered my love for the freedom of not collaborating. I also learnt that December is pretty much the worst time to release new music
Tracking bass parts with Andrew Bain at his Newtown studio
Towards the end of 2021 the main thing that was missing from most songs were some decent bass parts. I got in touch with old music-pal Andrew Bain. Most famous as Fur Patrol’s bass player, our paths first crossed in the 90s when the drummer (Ross Malloy) of our band at the time (Blender) connected us with him to play on a couple of songs for our demo tape. Later – in 2013 – Andrew and I both ended up in Matt Langley’s band for a tour to support his Virginia Avenue album. Sometime after that we realised our day job workplaces were in close proximity to each other and we started meeting for lunch on occasion. I guess you’d say we’re actual friends now – not just music friends (trust me – they’re entirely different). It took me awhile to realise that – I always assumed he was way too cool to be a mate really. Every time Anxiety Club had found itself without a bass player over the years I’d ask Andrew if he’d like to join – but he was done with long-term commitment bands. He was only into short-term or one-off projects or gigs. He had found great empowerment in saying “No”. But he did say yes when I asked him if he’d like to put some bass down on the tracks for the album. Over a couple of sessions in December at the studio space he shares with Tom Watson (and comedian Karen O’Leary) in Newtown (and at his house when rehearsals below the studio got too loud one night) we tracked his parts. Andrew is such a natural and intuitive player and he just nailed it within a couple of takes. Fun times too.
2022
Will Donbavand
Also prior to Christmas we got the first couple of songs away to Will Donbavand in London to mix. Kev had met him during his UK music years. We had made the decision that we couldn’t possibly mix this ourselves and after trialling Will on Carousel we were convinced he was the right person for the job. Whilst he would do this for a very reasonable rate, it would still drive the band account towards the limits of the overdraft.
Things really picked up pace at the start of 2022. We had to keep feeding Will songs. He had a finite window before he was off touring again with Dermot Kennedy. This deadline was helpful and it focussed and forced us to stop tinkering. He would even mix Hey, Hey, Hey despite us having a Lee Prebble mix from early 2021 in the can. And he really did a great job of the whole album assuming more of a co-producer role than just a mix engineer – making creative contributions that really lifted the songs.
Over the first half of the year we did all those prep things – settle on artwork (we used a photo I had taken from my lawn of some clouds – and Kev did the rest), get some new press photos done (by our go-to guy, Nick George) write media releases, apply for (and miss out on) funding, and come up with a bit of a plan.
Somewhere in the middle of all that Kev dropped a bit of a bombshell – he and family were planning to move to Poland for a few years so they (and their kids) could be closer to his Polish wife’s (Asia) parents. They’d be gone by Christmas. Ooof! I had so many different feelings about it. Part disappointment – I was looking forward to assembling a band so we could have a crack at some summer festivals (I love doing those) – and part relief. There was an actual end coming. We wouldn’t continue to lurch on, beating ourselves up over a lack of success, getting frustrated with it all, enduring the admin of running a band again and organising practises and gigs and festival applications, etc.
And then there were two: Kev and I – the final version of Anxiety Club (photo: Nick George)
But we weren’t going to let his planned move stop us. We had to see this thing through. So we ploughed on.
Dad-dancing in a Beekeeper’s suit for the Lonely Dancing visualiser
From June we started releasing singles ahead of the album (which would be titled Old Dreams). We got early encouragement when first single Carousel got picked up by a Spotify editorial playlist (I wrote the pitch, so I’ll take the credit!). That made such a difference. The streams went through the roof compared to previous releases. It also made it onto rotation on some alt/student radio stations and got to No. 17 on the Official NZ Alt charts. This was a good start. Unfortunately the next two singles – Lonely Dancing and Old Dreams – didn’t have the same luck with the Spotify editors.
There was some studio radio love again though and I did a phone interview with Taranaki’s MostFm to talk about Lonely Dancing. You can listen to that here. But with no money left to spend on a lot of promo we were up against it. Kev would have put more money into marketing if I had also been willing – but I really wasn’t prepared to spend more on this – especially when there was no guarantee of results. I’ve always struggled with spending money on promo – I guess I’ve held this romantic notion that some hip taste-maker DJ like John Peele would somehow discover you, play your music and make you famous. For free. But that is a simplistic view – that somehow you can rise above the noise based on merit alone. In retrospect Kev was probably right and that you do actually need to spend just as much on promo as you do on the recording. With such a massive amount of music released daily the only way to cut through is to invest in those extra pushes. I think also, with Kev about to leave the country I didn’t see a lot of point getting more into debt over it. For me, one of the major pay-offs for being in a band like this is the opportunity to do those summer shows and that just wasn’t going to be a possibility now. But we made our own videos/visualisers including re-purposing a video clip of some of my own Dad Dancing (in a beekeeper’s suit, of course) for Lonely Dancing
The album was released mid-September without too much fanfare (just the usual social media posts)
But we needed to do something more to acknowledge this momentous achievement. We talked about putting a band together for one gig – but it all felt like way too much work in the time we had. We eventually settled on something that was much better I think. More on that in the next post…
The 2020/21 Summer was kinda tough, as everyone seemed to be playing festivals except us. It was a good time to be an at least semi-organised NZ band as the country enjoyed a rare (globally speaking, at that time) COVID-free season – with no international acts filling up all the festival spots. We, unfortunately we were fated to watch all this from the sidelines. It did motivate us to crack-on and try to put more music out into the world as soon as we possibly could.
We even had a plan that we stuck to the wall of The Shack
The plan
Looks do-able, right?
Well we got off to a good start. We finished tracking all our parts of Pesky – ultimately renamed Hey, Hey, Hey – in time for a mixing session at The Surgery with Lee Prebble in early February. It was the first time that I had worked with him. It was good fun.
Lee Prebble (l) with Chris Armour in the chair. The Surgery, February 2021
We then really struggled with the other two songs. We all recorded demos, and parts, but we weren’t that happy with how the songs were heading.
And then things really started to unravel. Drummer, founding member and heart of the band Chris Hill, told us he would be leaving Wellington and moving to Christchurch as soon as he and his wife Sandra could sort out housing. Doof! Around the same time, Miles got notice that The Shack would need to be vacated for the planned development work by the end of July. Double-Doof. Matt Hay also began excluding me from his band’s gigs and the recording of his new album. Triple-Doof!
To cheer myself – and my Anxiety Club band mates up – I fervently made this montage of the good times. Partly as a celebration, and partly as a desperate attempt to remind those of us who remained how good it was (and perhaps could be again)
I was actually really proud of how it turned out – particularly the stop-motion bits. My best video editing to date.
And it worked, in a way – seeing the five years condensed like that – made it all feel worthwhile. The guys all loved it. We are often hard ourselves in terms of the impact we’ve had – or the progress we’ve made – or the “success” we’ve had – and the last year and a half had felt like a real slog. But over the course of the band’s life there had been so many good times, so many good moments that I for one, could not let this go.
In June – with the strictest of the COVID restrictions behind us – we got in a room together again. A small room. Back at Toi Poneke, it was slightly weird breathing in each other’s air, but overall it was nice to play music again together.
By this time, Brad had moved back to the family farm in Marton with his girlfriend Hilary. He had to drive down from Marton for these sessions (but would crash in Himatangi on the way back) – frickin’ miles away!!! These sessions continued through Winter as we tried to work-up some new songs. Between sessions we also started recording parts at home and collaborating on mixes online. Brad’s attendance to the real life sessions became increasingly patchy and he was also unable to contribute remotely.
“The Shack”, Shelly Bay
Some online chats with Miles Calder turned into discussions about sharing their rehearsal space in Shelly Bay. We had long been unhappy with Toi Poneke’s subterranean bunkers and the Death Metal bands that often practiced right next door. We decided to make the move and by October, “The Shack” had become our new clubhouse.
Whilst The Shack wasn’t perfect – it was very small, there was no toilet and Shelly Bay really is quite faraway – it was a nice change and there was something bohemian and romantic about this crumbling artists residence by the sea that I kinda loved.
Inevitably Kev had to have “the talk” with Brad. It just wasn’t working out – we hardly saw him and he wasn’t contributing when he was away. I was also concerned for his safety – driving for hours through the night just to get to practice. It sounded like a fairly uncomfortable conversation, but it was the right thing to do. Progress was challenging enough without having to bring the bass player up to speed every four weeks or so when we saw him. Still, it’s hard – because the music gets mixed up with friendships and competing personal aspirations.
We kept doing our thing – coming up with new ideas, trying to finish old ones, working on tracks from home. A nice distraction during this time was the Radio NZ Kiwi Cover Song Contest. We decided to enter and after discussing the more predictable possibilities (Dave Dobbyn! The Muttonbirds!) we somehow landed on Lorde’s Team. True to form we left all this quite late and were forced to smash it out in under a few weeks. But you know, that deadline really focused us. We recorded all the parts at our homes – Chris Hill doing the drums in software – and I mixed it. I really love how it turned out – it’s far more me than say the Francine EP (synths! drum machines!). RNZ liked it too placing it in the Top 20 of the 200+ entries they received. Check it out!
Gareth and I also had a crack at the Cover Song Contest – with less success – with this cover of the Finn Brother’s Angel Heap (I still really like it, though!)
This brought us through to November and the contest “win” was a nice little boost in confidence for Anxiety Club after really struggling to make any sort of cohesive progress since summer. As the year drew closer to an end, a few songs were starting to rise out of the primordial soup of ideas and jams. We decided we would target releasing a series of singles over the space of a few months early in 2021. Sounded super-achievable. What could possibly go wrong?
For our final act of the year, Kev, myself and new furry family member Buddy, convened at The Shack to record a wee Christmas song. Grab yourself a Yule Log and feast upon the appropriately cheesey video! Merry Christmas, my friends.
Yeah, so that flu-type virus that I mentioned in the summer post did start spreading and it got a name – COVID-19. And it became a pandemic.
On 25-March the whole of New Zealand went into a pretty strict Lockdown. We all self-isolated, didn’t go anywhere except the local supermarket and we walked our neighbourhood streets – crisscrossing from one side of the road to the other to avoid our fellow walkers. It was a strange time, but it was not entirely awful – in fact, I actually quite liked it. Sure, there were stresses – the uncertainty of what havoc the virus might cause (we’d seen how bad it could get overseas), and trying to juggle normal work (from home) with childcare. But there were some beautiful moments. I remember one evening – while out on a late afternoon walk – the weather was super pleasant and I was at a nearby park. There were quite a few other groups (or “bubbles” as they became known) doing the same thing. It was at a time of the day that people would have normally been zooming about – coming home from work, taking kids to various extra-curricular activities, that sort of stuff. Instead it was calm and peaceful, and sound-tracking the whole scene was a lone mandolin player sitting on a park bench. It was surreal and beautiful and really pulled into focus some of the questioning (which a lot of us did) about the way we live our lives normally. The busy-ness. The compulsion to always be doing something or going somewhere.
Another thing that happened during this time was a global proliferation of split-screen music videos. Band members would contribute parts from their respective homes and studios (this Crowded House one is a particularly good example). It was quite the thing there for a bit. So Ruby and I made one and it’s definitely one of the best music things I’ve ever done. I like all the parts I played, but Ruby is the undoubted star and I just love her totally unselfconscious performance. I was even more impressed with her determination to do a good job – performing quite a few takes to nail that second verse. I can watch it on repeat all day long. Enjoy (and stick around to the very end for some pure comedy gold)
We had earlier developed our technique on this less successful – but still highly entertaining – one.
During this time, I also decided to finally release the Meech Brothers debut EP – Lost at Sea – on streaming platforms. It was just past it’s 10-year anniversary, so seemed like as good a time as any. Made a teaser video (and full-length version) using mostly clips I had filmed on my walks during lockdown:
Lockdown restrictions began to loosen slightly after month or so, with life returning to almost-normal on 13-May. Over the following year there would be isolated outbreaks and some uncertainty, but New Zealand turned out to be one of the least affected nations on earth with most of us enjoying freedoms that the rest of the world could only dream of. I felt extremely lucky and privileged to live here.
I must have been really bored one day. I was looking at those Spotify stats that you get and I wondered if there was a relationship between the streaming number peaks and things we have done in the real world. So I downloaded the data and added in the various events and gigs and radio appearance things (thanks blog!), and it looked like this:
It was pretty clear that doing stuff results in people listening to your music. RNZ being particularly potent (as was playlist push service that Kev paid for – but that was pretty expensive). It would be nice to have the baseline streams sit a little higher between activity, wouldn’t it? But I guess for a band at our stage, it is all about doing stuff.
This was such a moment for me. It felt like everything I had ever done – especially musically, but not only – had been preparing for this. This moment, on a big stage, with amazing musicians, and then playing like that! Me! I’m so glad that it was filmed (thanks Lisa Ekdahl!) – but it’s such a visceral memory that I’ll never forget it. Especially the way I felt. It was almost an out of body experience. I remember playing the solo (which I’d never rehearsed) and feeling the hairs on my arms stand on end. I remember telling myself not to rush it. I remember being in that perfect place between push and pull. Pushed along by the thrill of the moment but mindful enough to not over do it. To rein it in – just enough. And somehow I found all the notes that I heard in my head. They were just there. My fingers just found them without any real input from me. It felt so good. To be part of that magic. To be part of that moment. It is all worth it after all. All the times that my music decisions test me. All the challenges and frustrations. All the really unglamorous work that happens behind the scenes. The festival applications. The spreadsheets. Magic like this is so rare, but even just one minute of it is worth the pain of everything else that I traded for it.
But let’s rewind a little, that show in the clip above – in New Plymouth – wasn’t until early in the New Year. Before that, there was – as always – a bit of a journey.
The Francine EP
Anxiety Club finally released the Francine EP on 10 November. I’ve already gone into my thoughts on the finished product in the previous post , so I’ll leave that all behind there. We hired a PR person to help maximise the chance of it being heard by more than a handful of people. There was an immediate, but tiny flurry of interest that soon petered out. There were however some stellar reviews from Elsewhere, Off The Tracks and Muzic.net.nz.
Anyway, you be the judge.
Radio
One thing that the PR person did was get us an interview on Radio Hauraki. Kev and I had a chat with one of their DJs on a Friday night (15-November). I don’t think there’s a recording of it anywhere, but it went OK and they played “Public Service” – so that was pretty cool.
This was followed by a couple more radio appearances for me. Next up, later in November, I talked to Kirsten Johnstone about a song I really liked (Walking on a String by Matt Berninger and Phoebe Bridgers) for RNZ’s Song Crush podcast’s special listener’s episode. I really enjoyed the experience and the opportunity to briefly live my music critic fantasy.
Early in December I had a chat with Finn Johansson for his RadioActive Uncharted show. I was really happy with how this one turned out. Finn is a master at putting his subjects at ease and taking a genuine interest in all the stories he hears. He’s also really good at editing and he skillfully cut-out my less cohesive ramblings. Have a listen:
Francine Release Show, Caroline
As we lurched closer to the official Francine release show at Caroline – there was again soul-searching angst from Kev. The EP hadn’t exactly set the charts on fire (even with this fun lyric video that Kev made) and the gig – which had ended up being scheduled for a typically terrible end-of-year date of Saturday 14-December (right in the middle of Christmas Party Season) – wasn’t looking too flash either. Kev’s fears about the gig turned out to be mostly right – but it does really come down to your definition of “success”. If by success you mean a packed venue, with merchandise flying out the door and music critics fighting over superlatives to use to describe one of the best shows ever, then you might consider this one to be decidedly unsuccessful. In the middle of it – before we went on, just after Orangefarm‘s opening set – I guess I would have described it as looking like a bit of a disaster. It was the final ever show at Caroline, and we thought we might get a few people along for the sheer history of the moment. But we didn’t. But it’s funny, even though the audience was small, we once again established this really amazing connection with them and created a really unique experience for us all. And speaking with some of that audience later – Finn, Geoff Shaw, Miles Calder – they all spoke about what a fun night it was for them.
Anxiety Club, Francine EP Release Show, Caroline. December 2019
The first masterstroke was Kev deciding to move all the seating from around the perimeter of what would normally be a dancefloor, to right in front of the stage. Without that, it probably would have felt like we were playing to an empty room. From then on came much mirth, chaos and music. Brad broke a string on his bass – first time I’ve played a gig where the bass player has broken a string! But even that inspired another turn in proceedings with the rest of the band kicking into a very acoustic version of Be Still while Brad re-strung. At some point, Be Still morphed into Sweet Caroline with a full crowd-participation sing-along. There’s no way you could describe this night as a failure. It was fun. If nothing else, the gig served as a good warm-up for our return to Pukekura Park in New Plymouth early in January.
Festival of Lights, Pukekura Park, New Plymouth
What a great few days this turned out to be. A good ole fashioned kiwi road trip. Kev and I drove up together on the day before the gig and by the early evening we had settled in at pretty good eatery for drinks and food. We were later joined by Miles Calder and band – who we would be sharing the bill with the following night in Pukekura Park. They – Chris Armour (yes, he’s also in Anxiety Club!), Nick George, Dayle Jellyman and guest bassist Reuben Daubé had also cruised up that day in a couple of vans. It was all off to a pleasant start.
Len Lye Centre
Kev and I writing Set lists, Matt’s house
The pleasantness continued the next day with coffees, a trip to the Len Lye Centre, food and a dip in the sea with Kev and Chris Armour. In the afternoon we adjourned to Miles & band’s accommodation at Matt Benton’s (The Black Seeds) house to hang and run through the joint encore we had planned. Here’s a little bit of that rehearsal:
And that pretty much brings us to where we started with this post. Later that night we would close the show by living our own mildly indulgent Last Waltz fantasy and it was so very, very glorious. Miles’s band played the opening set. It was their first gig for a little while and it reflected the newer material that they’ve been working on for a new album. Way more psychedelia than the Americana that Miles is most well known for.
Playing Miles’s Wurlitzer 200A
We felt a little under-rehearsed heading in, but pulled it out of the bag as we usually do. Some light rain fell during our set but people stuck around – but many did retreat back from the lawn in front of the stage to the relative cover of the trees. In a weekend of many highlights, I played Miles’s Wurlitzer Electric Piano on Anxiety Club song Love Rescue Me, which was pretty much another bucket list moment for me and solidified my dream of owning one some day. After the show we got a pretty weird tour of the light installations in the park from one of the crew before we all retired to Matt Benton’s place for whisky and music-talk.
Post-show. Back row (l-r): Dayle Jellyman, Reuben Daubé, Kev Fitzsimons, Nick George, Clint Meech, Chris Hill. Front row; Chris Armour, Miles Calder, Brad Welch
Kev and Sam, Rhythm Ace Studio
The next day, with full hearts (although I did lose my beloved denim jacket somewhere along the way) we headed for home – eventually. While we were on the road, Sam Johnson at Rhythm Ace Studio dropped us a line and invited us to check out his studio in the sleepy and picturesque beach village of Oakura. We did a U-turn and headed back north and it was a good move. Sam – a Londoner now relocated to Taranaki with his Kiwi wife and family – has built an amazing little space in pretty much paradise. For me, it was keyboard heaven – a Mellotron, a Rhodes, a Dave Smith Prophet 08 synth, another Wurlitzer! While Sam made coffee upstairs in the house, Kev and I had a wee jam. We then had a good old natter with Sam who is such a genuine, positive, and gregarious human. We could have stayed for hours, but real life was calling.
Matt Hay & The Makers, Gardens Magic, Wellington
Before the end of January we had a Matt Hay gig. A big one. Really big by our standards. For the second year in a row I was back at Gardens Magic at the Botanic Garden. Doing this gig just once had a been a long-held dream, doing it twice was something I’d never expected. Like Festival of Lights this was a double-bill with us on first and then another of Chris Armour’s bands (yes, he is in every band in Wellington) The Tempests on second. With Delia out for this show because she runs the whole Gardens Magic concert season, we had The Tempests drummer – Richard Te One – play with us. As a longtime fan of his drumming since his and Darren Watson’s Smokeshop, playing with him was also on the bucket list (although this wasn’t the first time I’d played with him – I had sat in with The Tempests on one song at an Anxiety Club gig last year). He’s also an excellent dude. The weather was a little average, but Wellingtonians are a hardy bunch and as with the Anxiety Club show last year, the crowd steadily streamed in and staked their claims on the lawn and the bank. Initially, it felt quite strange playing these plaintive songs of Matt’s in such a big setting. Usually, we’re the band in the corner of the cafe gently accompanying your meal, so it was such a big step up to be the centre of attention on such a scale. We played really well though – we had rehearsed quite a bit for this. The energy lifted when Lynley Christoffersen and Jade Eru from The Tempests joined us on backing vocals for two songs. The first was a tribute to recently fallen Wellington music icons Rick Bryant and Arthur Baysting in the form of a cover of The Windy City StrugglersCan’t Get Back. This was followed by Matt’s gospel-tinged Promised Land. One more song later (Last Jubilee) and it was all over. It felt like we were just warming up – we could have easily done another few songs – but we were grateful for what we had. Here’s a Clint-eye 360-degree-view video of Can’t Get Back:
First Responders Music Festival
On the first day of February, Anxiety Club played the seemingly hastily organised First Responders Festival. Hosted by the St John’s bar (as a fund-raiser for Wellington’s Free Ambulance), the location – on the lawn between the bar and waterfront lagoon – was a good one. Unfortunately, a fairly brisk Wellington-wind was cutting it’s way through between the hills and the harbour – as it is want to do. A small, but keen crowd toughed it out on the lawn. On a nice day this would have been a total dream situation. Still, the show must go on. MC for the show was Liam Ryan aka DJ Liam Luff and it was nice to finally meet him after hearing him many times on Radioactive – and I also use to work at his brother’s company (Energy Intellect) a few years ago – classic Wellington Village stuff.
When we took to the stage in the late afternoon/early evening – after a few moody, mid-tempo bands – we decided to hit the ground running and keep the energy (and bpm) up – if only to keep us (and the crowd) warm. The setlist went out the window as Kev called the songs as we went. There was much mirth and banter – at one point Kev solicited a blanket from someone in the crowd to keep Chris Hill warm. I also did my longest ever “Ibiza party synth Jam” to date. It was vintage Anxiety Club, really. There’s something about this band – the way no two shows are the same, the way we can adapt to different (usually adverse) conditions, the way we have a good time and the way we make the audience part of it. It reminds me of Crowded House shows I saw many years ago.
Caleb Isaacs
Post-burger and espresso martinis, heading up Cuba Street to the show
At the end of the month for our last gig of the season (of the year, maybe?), Wellington turned on weather at the complete other end of the spectrum. It was one of those glorious long summer evenings. It was warm, calm, barmy. The city seemed full of happy people. Tonight we we were supporting Christchurch lad Caleb Isaacs and his band at the Tuatara Third Eye. We would play as a four-piece as Chris Armour was on holiday in Bali – but that would suit a quieter, more acoustic set. Support gigs are always so much more relaxed than headline ones and it was a really enjoyable night. After meeting Caleb and team and sound-checking in the afternoon the four of us had burgers together at Ekim followed by a pre-drink at our regular, Laundry Bar. We discussed the night ahead. We wondered if attendance might be affected by this new virus that was starting spread out from China. We had heard that some restaurants were starting to observe a slight downturn in business – particularly in Auckland. Surely an over-reaction…
Pre-show, Tuatara Third Eye.
It was stinking-hot upstairs in Tuatara for the show. It was a good turn-out. We played a pretty good set, I think. I was very happy with my playing. People seemed to enjoy it. We aired a cover of Blur’s Tender for the first time. We met uber-fan Geoff Shaw who has been following us for quite awhile, as it turned out. He’s come to a lot of our shows and even performs covers of our songs at open mic nights! We often don’t think people care about us or our music – but they are out there after all.
We talked about the future, what our goals should be. We had no idea what was around the corner, of course. We had no idea that evenings like this would become such precious and rare events the more the year unfolded.
Never take what you have for granted. Life is good.
After the emotional rollercoaster that was the Black Heart Tour, Anxiety Club settled into the obvious next phase of the rock ‘n roll cycle – recording another set of songs. Pretty early on we decided to keep this one snappy – both in terms of number of songs, and the songs themselves. We booked James Goldsmith again to engineer and with his Blue Barn Studio now closed, we would record at The Surgery in June. In the months leading-up, we did a lot of demo recording and we were the most prepared we’ve ever been heading into a session.
In May I had the first of what turned out to be two surgeries on my sinuses this year. Those surgeries ended up defining my year to some extent. The first one took me out of action for a good three weeks, and when my surgeon recommended a second procedure when things weren’t coming right, I really didn’t think much of it. But that second one in August was really disruptive. Aside from the first 2-3 weeks of initial bed rest and healing (which were horrendous with lots of swelling and headaches) there were secondary infections and other setbacks that left me feeling pretty out of it for most of Spring.
The Francine recording sessions were partly fueled by sandwiches from Good Boy
That’s enough of the self-pity! After the first operation, we headed into the studio in June. Loyal readers will know that I’ve recorded at The Surgery before – with Matt back in 2016 (for the Something Blue album) – and it was nice to be back. As with the Black Heart recording, we booked-in a weekend to do most of the tracking. We thought this would be be ample time given that we were only doing three songs this time.
On the Saturday we got the drums tracked with the band playing live in the room. On Saturday afternoon/night I recorded my final keyboards parts – taking advantage of Ed Zuccullo‘s Hammond C2 and using it on all three songs (which I hadn’t really planned/expected to do), plus a little bit on the house Rhodes and then my Nord. I came in on the Sunday for a time, but after a fairly sleepless night on Saturday, the eternal electric guitar tracking eventually did my head in and I headed home in the afternoon some time. I would record some Omnichord (borrowed from Kim Bonnington) at home and send that in later (and I would also entirely re-do my main part on Sun is Out at home after not being happy with my studio performance). Kev hadn’t been well for the whole weekend and elected to defer vocal recording until later when his voice was more up to it.
Chris Armour, Chris Hill and Kev discuss progress
Brad at The Surgery kitchen table, prepping labels for the Aviom personal monitor mixers
Around the time of the recording sessions we decided to run a crowd-funding campaign to help cover the costs of completing the EP. We already had a bit of money from summer gigs and that would cover the recording sessions and initial mixes. But we would need more money from somewhere to finish mixing, mastering and maybe cover some promo/marketing costs too. It felt like a bit of a gamble – would we really be seen as deserving candidates for people’s hard-earned cash? Do we look like we need it? We also thought that we had nothing to lose and it could be an interesting experiment. And maybe some people would actually like a mechanism to help us now that nobody really pays for music anymore. To maximise our chances of success – and to not appear greedy – we set a modest target of $1,500 and listed the campaign with NZ crowd-funding site PledgeMe. We offered a variety of rewards, from Black Heart CDs to T-shirts to digital pre-sales of the new EP right-up to the ridiculous end of the spectrum (soiled Phil Collins Sweatbands, personal pole dances by yours truly…).
Slightly surprisingly, we hit our target (actually going above the $1500 target by nearly $200) in the last week of the campaign. For those interested in such things, the donations came from a relatively small number of contributors (around 30), with $1,000 coming from just seven generous philanthropic fans (all of whom elected not to receive a reward). The most popular reward selected by the rest was tickets to the release gig.
In July, with Summer Festival Application Season looming, we decided to get some fresh press photos done. We once again called on Nick George who did such a great job of capturing our Botanic Gardens show in January. Mostly we stuck to the standard “serious band photo” rule, but occasionally we were our dorky selves.
Goofing around, Nick George Photo Shoot, July 2019
Mixing of the EP would continue through July and August, and there were some “creative differences” along the way with Francine (the song) being the most problematic. I submitted many lead-line ideas (well the same part, but with different sounds) for the verse with all getting squashed until it just got dropped completely. I also didn’t really like the way it was sounding – too loud, and harsh to my ears. I did raise my concerns – and maybe I didn’t push my points hard enough – but the recording ended-up sounding exactly the way it was always going to sound I guess. You can’t win ’em all, and when you’re in a band like this not every member is going to like every song or recording all of the time – you know, like how John Lennon really wasn’t into Maxwell’s Silver Hammer at all. But on the bright side, I got some Omnichord on Sun is Out – my favourite song of the set.
On Friday 2nd August a Matt Hay gig at Thunderbird brought some welcome relief from Anxiety Club mix-angst. And after missing a gig in May (I had something else on), this was first show of the year with Matt and co! And it wasn’t even the full team – Delia couldn’t make it. As always, it was nice to be back, even if there were a few hairy moments.
Matt & George, Thunderbird Cafe, September 2019
I’d then miss a Matt Hay Days Bay gig in September due to my protracted recovery from the second surgery (Delia missed that one too). Finally, the whole band would get together for a Thunderbird gig on 27-Sept – the first full-band show in over a year, apparently. Wha?! Matt has become quite philosophical about fielding a full team for every gig and doesn’t fight the forces of 5 people’s schedules and lives and will do a gig with whoever is about. But it’s almost always best with all five of us, and this show really stood out as one of the really good ones. Perhaps the time apart had done us some good – there was a nice energy and we all seemed to be enjoying each other’s playing and company. These are good Fridays.
As the fog slowly lifted after that second surgery, music-life started to return to normal. With the EP mixes in the can, Anxiety Club switched back to writing and rehearsing mode. Spring yielded a couple of songs in “I can change” and “Haven’t let go yet”. It was good to be doing this again.
While all of this was going on, Gareth was getting a cabin built in his backyard. With the new space came a new wave of enthusiasm for the Meech Brothers project. Naturally, it provided Gareth with somewhere to write and play, but perhaps most importantly, a new location for music-making was energising – just like when we moved into the The Blue Room in Toi Poneke all those years ago. For me, the change of scenery was great – and I didn’t bring much of my own gear to these sessions – I just used Gareth’s digital piano. And that simplicity was so refreshing. We spent a lot of time just playing – our own songs and covers – but at least one song came out this time, and it felt like more could be just around the corner.
On the Saturday we got the drums tracked with the band playing live in the room. On Saturday afternoon/night I recorded my final keyboards parts – taking advantage of 
Short on long-term goals 