The scarcity of country bands

Some friends were round the other day and, what with these new drink driving laws impacting everyone's partying, I noticed all of us were consuming low alcohol beverages of one sort or another.

Which naturally led to reminiscence about Ritchie Pickett, a man for whom that was rarely if ever the case.It was Ritchie's birthday this month; he would have been 60.

Which doesn't really connect for me. It's only been four years but...Ritchie Pickett at 60? Hard to envisage.

Perhaps he would have mellowed and gone on tour playing gentle piano ballads. Perhaps his gloriously idiosyncratic song-writing would have given us a few more gems to savour. Who knows, perhaps he would have re-embraced country music.

I wonder about that last one. Ritchie first became recognised as a country artist, when television in NZ had shows spotlighting such music.

Jerry lee Lewis

Country songs and that Jerry Lee Lewis piano. It was a potent combination and maybe country music in this country has never quite recovered. That would go some way to explaining the staggering paucity of country bands kicking around these days. It's an odd thing, because every little town in New Zealand has a country club, and I'm not talking about the likes of the Watusi Country Club – I mean a country music club.

Tauranga has one, Te Puke has one; everywhere you go there's one. New Zealand has more than 70 country music clubs. Every week there are country music nights in pretty much every town. In Tauranga there's one on Wednesdays at The Matua and elsewhere on the second Sunday of each month.

Best song

APRA has its annual Silver Scroll Award for song-writing, but there is a separate award for Best Country Song announced at the Gold Guitar Awards.

The point I'm making is that country music is big in NZ. Which begs the obvious question: where are the country bands?

You would assume there's a simple formula, something like this: lots of people like a particular type of music so lots of people form bands playing that type of music because, y'know, they like it and there's an audience for it. It's not rocket surgery.

Yet in contravention of all fiscal and musical logic this doesn't appear to be the case. There are lots of people who like country music but bugger all bands actually playing it. If anyone has a sensible explanation – or, let's not be fussy, a silly explanation – please write in and enlighten me because it makes little sense to this particular bear with a very small brain…

Going back to where we started, another thing notably absent from Tauranga in the years since Ritchie moved on (he always sang ‘I guess the best honky tonk will be in heaven') has been a big – or even modestly-sized – celebratory concert, a whole bunch of people singing Ritchie's inimitable songs.And Tauranga would be a good place for it. Although Ritchie lived his last decade or so in the Waikato, most of his music came from when Tauranga was his base.

And there are still a whole bunch of musicians and singers here who worked and played with him: Chris Gunn, Simon Elton, Kevin Coleman, Paul Higgins, John Terry, Derek Jacombs, Graham Clark and many more, all of whom are still alive and well.

Perhaps during this space in time between everyone forgiving him and everyone forgetting him, a fitting tribute can be mounted. I'd pay to see it.

Blast of nostalgia

In the meantime, if you fancy a blast of nostalgia, there's a heap of Ritchie stuff online. That ole interweb has a wealth of clips stretching back to dynamite stuff from Tamworth in the mid-1980s to a jam in 2007.

But perhaps the best place to start is a tribute from another Kiwi country singer, now based in Australia. Glen Moffatt says he 'grew up wanting to be Ritchie – then I met him”. His piece at www.audioculture.co.nz/people/ritchie-pickett pretty much nails it.
There's a host of great photos and video of Ritchie singing ‘Honky Tonk Heroes'. To watch it is to be amazed all over again. What a singer. Damn. He really was that good.

You may also like....

0 comments

Leave a Comment


You must be logged in to make a comment.