Alayna all the way

Rotorua talent: Alayna Powley. Picture, Peter Graney.

Several days ago, the cream of risqué New Zealand humour heralded Alayna.

She was introduced as a singer 'better known outside NZ than in it”, they said.

To the delight of all who know her, Alayne appeared on 7 Days, a weekly Friday comedy revue of panelists who take the water out of anybody delivered with an acceptable coarseness to superficial laughter at barely passable quips.

Interpolated are selections of NZ singing talent. On Friday, it was Alayna's lot. She had to sing two songs for the panelists to determine the topics, or news du jour.

We're not sure how much preparation Alayna had, but her presentation as was usual – and in keeping with her mien – sophisticated, with a toss here and there of her hair which falls naturally over her shoulders as she plays guitar.

Had the show's producers researched their subject, they would have discovered this 25-year-old thrush has been around for some years.

She was, until recently, Alayna Powley. Her parents are respected schoolteachers in the rural primary school of Kaharoa, on the north-western reaches of the Rotorua hinterland.

Rob, Alayna's father, is a multi-talented musician and he and Rose, Alayna's mother, are skilled potters. They live at Hamurana, a rural settlement 15kms out from the vapours of a bustling city life.

Alayna has joined the ranks of those instantly recognised by one name – Ronaldo, Pele, Beyoncé, Elvis, Jonah, Jacinda (yep, why not?), Ritchie, Pinetree, and Fabian for those with longer memories.

She has been making music for as long as she remembers.

She has not burst onto the fame stage, she merely gravitated towards it – her voice almost a train of sighs initially was plaintive, an auburn-haired Marianne Faithful sans hang ups. She is no Jenny come lately, to misquote a Bryan Hyland song.

Her diction, like Karen Carpenter, or any of the great NZ voices – Jenny Morris, Bic Runga, Sharon O'Neill and Shona Laing – is distinct. Like Laing, Alayna pens a sound, pithy lyric.

In 2010, in Year 12 at Western Heights High School, Alayna had her first lick at domestic big time.

Her songwriting talents were recognised outside Rotorua, by less no a musical personage than Mike Chunn, who promotes local produced music ratios on our radio stations.

Well known for putting his microphone where his mouth is, Chunn of the celebrated Split Enz phenomena group which won acclaim in the UK and Australia, offered Alayna studio time.

To win her recording contract that year, Alayna spent two days in her folks' pottery shed; after one take the turn was sent to Auckland for a national secondary schools' competition. If not on the road again just yet, she could certainly fine tune her guitar.

She had finished in the top five category (Peace) in the Play it Strange category. 'I wrote it in a couple of days; we sent it in not really thinking we would make it,” Alayna told me at the time.

To gauge how the song might be received, Alayna performed it before assembly at her school. The reception convinced her of further promotion. She was 16. Also, feverishly successful at the time was Elizabeth Marvelly, a singing success touring the world with Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts, now making her name as a newspaper columnist.

Record producer Andrew Buckton was impressed with this new burgeoning talent. 'Keep doing what you are doing because that's what you're meant to do,” he encouraged Alayna. Mike Chunn was equally sanguine. Alayna's style has not changed. Her music remains daily baked fresh.

Just over a year later Alayna, now 18, was a guest at Mamaku school. She was welcomed with one of her own compositions, sung to her by the primary school students.

Later, she sang numbers at a Fonterra 10-year anniversary concert. She has performed numerous times in Rotorua.

Between times, Alayna busked in Auckland and performed alongside her father with a Touch of Irish which until recently performed on the back of an articulated truck on field at Paddy in the Paddock concerts.

The band generally comprised Rob Powley, Gene Rigney, his sister Harsha, Raheem (another solo name) and Jim McTamney.

At a national Lion Foundation Concert in 2011 in Rotorua, she was surprised to find then Prime Minister John Key in the audience. 'That was cool,” she said.

At other times, Alayna has performed for charity: Ronald McDonald House in Rotorua and a Rotarian knees-up, are two early examples.

Today Alayna hunkers between her Hamurana parents' home, New York where she cut an EP which registered more hits than a rugby international, and Auckland.

She completed an Arts degree at Auckland University some time ago.

I saw Alayna last winter walking her folks' dog at Hamurana. She and her two brothers Caleb and Liam were raised opposite a house in which I once lived before the local Rotorua council closed the leases.

She was the same Alayna I had known in her emerging years – engaging, unaffected, whimsically tossing her thoughts on the hardened, thick rind of life in New York, from which she was having a break, pondering further recordings in The Big Apple or flying to London to meet a UK request of studio time there.

All the while racking up literally millions of hits on YouTube and bemused at the increment. So it seemed to me. The IT world retains the capacity to surprise everyone daily.

No wonder the 7-Days comedy team had not heard of her. Yet, the introduction was a fair reflection of how comfortable Alayna, like any successful raid, is at flying under the radar.

Her sonorous, allegretto presentation is at last finding a groove in New Zealand.

But Rotorua folk have known this for many years.

You may also like....

0 comments

Leave a Comment


You must be logged in to make a comment.