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A musician wins Lotto. Everyone asks what they’ll do with the money? “Keep playing with the band till it runs out.”
Creative people want to create, performers want to perform. Almost no one I know is in it for the money. Not in Tauranga. At best – and this is not at all a bad thing – Tauranga is a training ground, an off-Broadway try-out.
What musicians can do here is spread the word, hone their act, get in shape for the big gigs. Have a little fun. Two concerts suggest the Historic Village’s Jam Factory is the perfect place for all these things.
Punk bash
There was a punk bash last weekend, Stunt Clown with Cat Face and new band, Brain Squash. Everyone’s currently waiting for Stunt Clown’s new album and Brain Squash’s debut was suitably raucous. And relatively new punk outfit Cat Face caught my interest, containing as it does various legends of Tauranga’s alternative scene
Two brothers up front play guitar, Michael and John Baxter, both once members of trailblazers Liberated Squid. Michael was also mainman in The Knids, Billy Two and more while John was recently a Metrognome along with Nigel Gregory, the eccentric on keys and a wiz with words having scooped the 2024 Wham Bam Poetry Slam.
On drums and a bit of everything is Jason Fawcett, also a Liberated Squid. They share bass player Mark Anderson-Jones with Auckland band Torana, recently seen here launching an album at Ōkohukura on Grey Street.
Cat Face. Photo / Corrine Rutherford / Supplied
More importantly, what did Cat Face sound like? This is what impresses me. I don’t have to tell you. You can watch their half-hour set on YouTube. The band – or more accurately Julian Henry from Seaside Sound, rehearsal studio and gear place – filmed and recorded the show, just one simple camera at the back of the room.
It’s not bad: the picture is blurred but the obvious volume surprisingly hasn’t overloaded everything. It was up for the world to see within a couple of days; that’s maximising the impact of a venue which only holds 50.
Live show
Or why not do a free show there? That’s what Citizen Audrey is doing on June 27. Citizen Audrey is the artistic moniker of Te Puke multi-disciplinary artist Sarah Clumont, who has won awards for her short filmmaking, and gained quite the international following on TikTok and Spotify.
Citizen Audrey. Supplied by The Jam Factory
This is like a homecoming for the singer who is presenting this and all concerts for the rest of the year free as she prepares a live show to take to Australia in 2027, then Europe.
Her songs are epic productions, modern, vaguely in Lana Del Ray territory, with darkness often hovering lyrically and a chameleon approach to genre. There’s even a nod to death metal in her song Anhedonia. The songs in Tauranga will be more stripped-back, with accompaniment from guitarist Daniel Beeler and keyboard player/producer Sharn Whiltshire. Support comes from local rapper YdoubleR and, as of writing, there are still free tickets available.
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