Hi Folks

Well, 2010 has come and gone and we are into a new decade and looking forward to a great 2011. We will just back track for a moment and review November and December 2010. We had a great weekend with Val and Ray Thurgood at the charity concert in Te Awamutu on the 13th of November. They looked after us splendidly and made us feel as if we were at home. It was my first sojourn to Te Awamutu so it was all new to me. It was also nice to catch up with Roger and Denise Tibbs who we hadn’t seen for quite awhile. They had just returned from a trip to North America where they had toured the mid west states, with great success I might add. We also caught up with our very good friends Graeme and Lynda McCardle. The show was sold out and although we went a little over time I don’t think anyone noticed. They were all singing along right till the end. We must thank everyone for supporting the show and for buying our cds it is much appreciated.

On the 21st November we were Guest Artists and judges at the Little Tennessee Country Music Club Awards held at the Kawakawa Primary School. A great afternoon of competition and fun was had by all. They know how to enjoy themselves up there that’s for sure. Congratulations to Warren for taking out the Overall Award. Thank you also to Shirley May for inviting us along. We hope to see all these guys on the 30th November for the Vintage Railway Fundraiser Concert to be held at the Kawakawa Station from 3:00pm.

Our two main gigs in December were our regular Kamo Club Dance Section and Dargaville RSA Christmas breakups. It is always nice to play for these two engagements. They both like to have a good time and really enjoy a night out dancing and singing. We look forward to seeing them all in 2011.

October 2010

Hi Folks

The 2nd of October saw us in Rotorua at the NZCMA Entertainer of the Year Awards held at the civic centre. We headed off on the Thursday and spent the night with my cousin Colin and his partner Barb just out of Tauranga. They have an awesome spot up in the hills overlooking the bay. Colin was working on his new hotrod, a 32 3 window Ford coupe, which he was preparing for the Nationals on the 23rd October. It’s going to look and sound amazing. On Friday we shot through to Rotorua for rehearsals in the afternoon and to settle in to our motel. Saturday morning the weather was clear and sunny so we decided to take a paddle on the lake in one of those peddle boats. They are a bit wobbly to get into but once you are sitting down it is full steam ahead. It was nice and relaxing out there with the swans and the ducks. Saturday afternoon we went to the first show which was great. We then managed to grab a quick bite between shows with Susan and Richard Pinny who had come down to support us. Which we really appreciated, thanks guys. Then it was off to the evening show which was sold out. It was a fantastic show everyone sang well and the overall winners were hard to pick. The headline act for the weekend was The Warratahs and they were awesome. Barry Saunders has written some great country songs and they performed most of them on the two shows. It was also good to catch up with many other friends we had not seen in a while. Before heading home on Sunday we took a look at a model train expo being held at the race course. Annette’s nephew, Alex, is building one with his dad so we were looking for pieces for him. I didn’t realise there were so many different sizes of model trains but we got a good run down from one of the exhibitors, a fanatic I think they call them. After that it was homeward bound.

On the 16th October we were part of the Whangarei Country Music Club artists who helped with the “Kids with Arthritis” charity concert. This was to raise funds to send families to the United States for the International Convention which assists them in dealing with arthritis individually and as a family. They are then able to bring that knowledge back to New Zealand to teach others. It was an awesome concert. Our club members did a great job and were very professional. The arthritis society was blown away. The headline act for the show were The Hamilton County Blue Grass Band. A great show which was enjoyed by everyone in the audience.

The 13th November we will be in Te Awamutu for the prostate cancer charity concert run by Val and Ray Thurgood. It will be the first time to Te Awamutu for me so I am really looking forward to it. The other guest artists joining us are Roger Tibbs and Graeme McCardle.
On the 21st November we will be guest artists at the Little Tennessee Country Music Club awards to be held at the Kawakawa primary school. Thank you for the invitation it should be a great day as well.

We have just received our contract for the Barham festival which runs from the 13th to the 20th February and can begin making travel arrangements. This is going to be very exciting. We fly into Melbourne and travel by bus 4 hours up to Barham which is just across the border in NSW. It is a week long festival and we will be performing every day. Apparently it will be very hot at that time of year. I hope there’s a swimming pool handy and no snakes.

e are full on organizing our tour to Norfolk Island in May. We are looking forward to this one as we know all the contestants competing in the Trans-Tasman Award next year. Hopefully there will be a big NZ contingent supporting them as well. If you haven’t already you can down load the tour package from this website and join us we would love to have you there. Any questions just drop us a line and we will be happy to help. It’s an awesome week of country music and relaxation. Don’t miss out!

That’s about all for now we will catch you later.

Take care and Keep it Country

Annette and Kim

August / September 2010

Hi Folks

Well, what can we say, we just weren’t that busy during August and September. We would, however, like to thank everyone who voted for us in the Kiwi Pro-am national Country Music awards. We really do appreciate your support. We will have to get more of our fans onto computers to help boost our chances for next year. We would like to congratulate our good friends Michael and Ashley on winning the Duo/Group section. Well done you guys and all the best for your future endeavors.

We were booked to play the Kamo club twice in September and always enjoy the Wednesday night Dance Section gigs. Unfortunately we had to cancel our Saturday night gig on the 25th due to illness. We hate doing this and try to honour all our commitments and only cancel if we are physically incapacitated which one of us was. We apologise to all those who decided not to go out on the Friday night thinking they would have a great night with us on Saturday. We will try and be twice as good next time we see you.

We are looking forward to the Entertainer of the Year on October 2nd and will let you know how that goes at the end of October.
The contract for the Barham festival in Australia during February 13th-20th next year shouldn’t be far away. We can then start to finalise the travel arrangements. That will be exciting stuff as well.

Will catch you again next month. Take care and keep it country.

Annette and Kim

June / July 2010

Hi Folks

Well another couple of months have gone by and here we are in the second half of the year. We have been performing at various functions over the last couple of months. These have included the Dargaville and Whangarei RSA’s, the Kamo Club Dance section and a private 90th birthday party for a big fan of ours, Knocker Wells. This was a great party with some every touching speeches for a man who is every well respected by his family and friends. It was a privilege to be a party of the celebrations.

Our good friend Freda Kena also celebrated her 70th birthday recently with a dinner at the Kamo Club. Everyone enjoyed a wonderful meal and an evening of dancing and entertainment. Freda was a member of our first Norfolk tour. Thank you for the invite Freda I had a great time.
We would like to congratulate our friends Neil McKenzie-Hall and Grant Reha-Timoti for being the Senior Overall Winners of the Auckalnd and Gisborne Country Music Awards respectively. Both Neil and Grant have gained entry to the Norfolk Island Trans-Tasman Entertainer of the Year Award 2011. Best of luck to you both and we will see you there. Which brings me to the next item. We are now organizing next year’s tour to Norfolk Island. So, if you would like to be on our tour please contact us either by phone or e-mail or if we get it right you can down load the information package from our web site and come and spend an awesome week with us on Norfolk Island listening to some great country music and experiencing the attractions of this magical island. We would love to have you with us.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who voted for us on the Kiwi Pro-am National Country Music Awards nominations we appreciate your support. We haven’t made the top three finalists this year but would like to wish all those artists who have the very best of luck.

Annette and I will be heading to the Entertainer of the Year on the 2nd of October. We will be singing my original song “Before You Say Goodbye” which won the songwriters section at the Auckland Awards held in July. Some of you may remember this song as we have performed it at some of our shows. It is the one that I couldn’t settle on a name for and which I sometimes called “Mist On The Mountains”. It is registered with APRA as “Before You Say Goodbye” so that may be how it will have to stay. Another song which I also wrote was runner-up at the Auckland Awards it is titled “Runnin’ On Empty”. I was pretty pleased with that effort.

We must also apologize to all the people who were expecting to see us at Taukau Club on the weekend. We are very sorry we weren’t able to make it down with the Whangarei Club as I had come down with the flu and could not travel. We hope to catch up with you all in the near future.
Well that’s about all for now. Take care and Keep It Country.

Annette and Kim

May 2010

Hi Folks,

Well, where do I begin with May. I’ll start at the 1st perhaps. Saturday the 1st of May saw Annette and Alex, Annette’s nephew, fly out to Canberra for Australian National Boccia Championships. They flew out of Whangarei at 7:00am to connect with their flight from Auckland to Canberra for a week of boccia. Alex played well and learnt heaps from his Aussie counterparts. He placed 4th in the teams event, each team consisted of 2 Aussies and 2 Kiwis, and placed 8th in the singles. Well done Alex. Apparently he also had a hot date with two, that’s right, two lovely ladies. Must be those dashing good looks and that charm.

The Bay of Islands Festival kicked off on the 7th of May. As Annette was still heading back from Australia it was up to me and the boys in the band to tackle the Friday night set at Haruru Falls on our own. We decided that it would be a good chance to perform some of my original songs. Which went down surprisingly well. I must thank Ian, Tiny and Richard for making them sound like country songs. A couple of the songs hadn’t been performed live until that night. Saturday morning I was in town listening to the street entertainment and had breakfast with Lorraine and Maureen our line dancing friends. Just in passing Maureen happened to mention that she used to have breakfast with the Beatles before they were really famous, now that is amazing, she also said that it could be no different to having breakfast with me, before I am famous, how would that be. Anyway I digress. Annette made it up for the Saturday show at the Cruza Bar, where we caught up with our good friends, Michael and Ashley, who have just returned from Nashville. Had a good show there and then headed off to the big venue, the Copthorne, where we had a 45 minute set to do. The audience was fantastic, actually all the audiences we played to were fantastic, and we would very much like to thank you all for coming along to listen to us. We really do appreciate it. It was also great to see people dancing as well. On Sunday we finished off at the Paihia Pacific, which is a great little venue, Carleen Still was on before us and James Ray followed us so it was nice to catch their acts as well. Sometimes it doesn’t work out and you miss seeing acts that you would like to hear. Our drummer, Richard Pinny, was a busy man during the weekend playing for Reg McTaggart and his local band Enertia. It was good to listen to these two acts as well. Over the weekend we managed to see Michael and Ashley perform as well as our friend Kylie Austin both talented acts in New Zealand country music.

The following weekend we were heading off to Norfolk Island for the annual country music festival. We had a group of fourteen joining us on our tour. Half flying out with us on the Saturday morning and the remainder arriving on Norfolk on an afternoon flight. Both flights made it to Norfolk, which meant the weather was good. It can be a bit scary when you haven’t met some of the people on your tour before. Des had finally counted off the last sleep and was raring to go. Sharon, Makuini and Len had all been on our previous tours. But we needn’t have feared because we had a wonderful group of people join us. They all had some amazing backgrounds and it was a pleasure to meet them and show them around the Island. Well, we didn’t personally show them around the Island we had some help from Eddy and the other drivers. We were also joined by Brendan Dugan and his tour group on some of the organized events. Brendan even joined us on the Monday to do a lunch time gig at the RSL which was a real honour for us. The weather was great with only one or two showers during the week but nothing to disrupt the organized entertainment or dampen the spirits. The music was great as well. The New Zealand stars were Tami Neilsson, Jodi Vaughan, Barry Saunders ,of The Warratahs fame, Entranzet, the South Islanders and Philip Winter. The Australian contingent was headed by Catherine Britt and comedian Jim Haynes with Kristal Collins and Lee Brittan.

The Trans-Tasman was won by Angela Easson from Australia with Helen Van Der Linden from New Zealand taking 2nd place. The Dead Ringer Encouragement Award went to Breanna Gerritsen from Australia. The Original Song Award was won by Lance Coassin also from Australia. A big mention must go to Arianna Baker who was very unlucky in our opinion not place or even win the title as she sang and entertained particularly well. Hayley Smith was also a strong contender for the Kiwis she never fails to lift her game for this competition.

We must thank our photographer Barry Rabarts for all his hard work and constant support of our abilities as tour hosts. He was recommending us to all and sundry, so thank you Barry. Thank you also to his wife Sonia for being so patient it was a pleasure to meet you both. Barry and Sonia also convinced their friends Stan and Pat, and Colin and Lois to join our tour as well. We hope to see them again next year perhaps. We also had two lovely ladies from the Pukekohe area join us, June and Marlene, who were so easy to look after. They had their own things organized to do and just enjoyed the Island and the week of country music. We hope to see you gals back next year as well. Regulars to the Island Wayne and Jo Greig who usually tour with Dennis Marsh also joined us on our tour as Dennis and Yvonne were otherwise engaged and it was a pleasure to have them with us. We hope they may join us next year.

A big thank you to all our friends on Norfolk who made our tour group feel at home and always welcome us back each year. Brent and Leo for opening their home to us, they are the best friends we could ever have. Chrissy for helping to organize the tour and for making sure it all ran smoothly. Terrence at the RSL for supporting us and allowing us to entertain and to Kim and the band for their awesome musical abilities. We had a great time once again and were sad to have to come back to reality. It was nice also to catch up with Lucy and Campbell and their two wonderful daughters Sophie and Tasmyn.

Thanks also to all the people that purchased our cds we appreciate your support very much.Well, we are nearly at the end of May, but not quite. The weekend of the 29th saw us heading to Kerepehi for the Kiwi Magic Charity concert which commenced at 1:00pm. To save ourselves time we headed down to Patamohoe on the Friday to stay with Aunty June and Uncle Leo. Then went to Kerepehi for the afternoon concert with guest artist Kylie Austin and then headed north to Dargaville to appear at a concert there with guest artist Marian Burns. Both were great shows but it made for a long weekend of travel. The things we do for our music.

And that was the end of May. One of the busiest for us for awhile. We will catch you somewhere in June.

All the Best and Keep it Country

Annette and Kim

March/April 2010

Hi Folks

A pretty quiet March with Kim performing at the Relay for Life Cancer Fund Raiser while Annette was away on a course. A very worthy cause which we are always happy to support in any way we can. Well organized by Eddie Hemara with a great sound man, namely James Franklin from JD Sounds, making us all sound good.

Early in April we entertained the exhibitors from the Creative Fibre Festival at their closing function. An enjoyable and humorous couple of hours for everyone and an enthusiastic audience even after a very long weekend for them all. Kim met some long lost relations just for good measure.

We also had a great afternoon entertaining the ladies at the Whakapara Gardening Club birthday celebrations. Not much cash crop being grown here though. However, the spread was awesome especially the apple cake. Thanks to Betty for the invitation. It was a great sing-a-long afternoon. With everyone going home tired but happy and a bunch of flowers for mum.

The 23rd of April saw us at the Dargaville RSA for the first time this year. A few birthday parties going on here as well and a good number of people sticking it out until the end. Always nice to catch up with these guys.

The following week we were at the Whangarei RSA where a big crowd had gathered. Hopefully we thought to listen to us. Another good crowd on the dance floor right ‘til’ the end as well. Great to see our friend Larry again stirring things up. And also friends from the country music club, the rock ‘n’ roll club and the line dancers. Sounds like most will be at the Bay of Islands Festival. Hope we see you there too.

We still have a couple of places left on the Norfolk Tour. Joining us for the third year in a row will be Des and Sharon Fatt from Dargaville and Makuini Ututonga and Len Field all the way from Kawakawa. They must either be devils for punishment or they really really like us. No matter we really really like them. Des is counting down the sleeps. We look forward to meeting everyone on our tour on the 15th.

I would like to thank our friend Phil Steans from Nelson for recording two of my songs on his latest album “ Give Me One More Shot” they were “Wide Open Spaces” and “I’m Living With A Memory”. He has made a great job of them and just over the weekend he made it to the finals in the New Zealand Song category with “I’m Living with a Memory” at a South Island Awards plus winning the Male Veteran and Gospel sections, so well done Phil.

Catch up with you all next month. May is going to be full on.

Take care and Keep it Country

Annette and Kim

January/February 2010

Hi Folks

Well, it’s been an interesting start to the new year. We hope it has found you all happy and healthy and ready for an exciting 2010.

To bring you up to date on what we have been up to so far this year we had a great afternoon at the Kawakawa Vintage Railway concert on the 31st of January. A variety of entertainers performed for a very appreciative audience on an extremely hot day, it was a scorcher. Annette and I donated part of our cd sales to the Railway Restoration Fund so thank you to all those who supported us and the great work that the team up there is doing to preserve a very important part of Northlands history. Thank you also to Shirley May for organizing the day and inviting us to perform.

Due to circumstances beyond our control we could not fulfil our first gig of the year at the Dargaville RSA on the 12th of February so we apologise to everyone that missed us. We would like to thank Peter and Carleen Still for standing in for us at such short notice it was much appreciated. We are sure everyone would have enjoyed their company and made them feel at home. We did make to the Whangarei RSA on the 19th though and everyone seemed to have a great night especially an awesome couple from Whakatane who googled us before they came up to see who we were and what type of music we played. Friday the 26th saw us at the Paeroa RSA for the first time ever entertaining the locals. We had a great response to our music and hope to get back there in the near future. On the Saturday we went to listen to the Cream of the Country Awards auditions in Morrinsville for a couple of hours before Annette had to head back to Whangarei. Congratulations to Leeanne and Jan on their success in the awards, Jan was winner in the Gospel section and together they won the duo section and were runner-up to the Overall Winner our good friend Hayley Smith. Big congrats. To you to Hayley.

I stayed on in Te Aroha with Molly and Jim, Annette’s Aunty and Uncle, to do a guest spot at the Te Aroha club on the Sunday. What an awesome turn out they had, as usual. Always enjoy visiting Te Aroha everyone is so supportive. We really do appreciate it. Thank you to Myrie and the committee for inviting us down.

We are getting ready for the BOI Festival at the moment. The band is as keen as and looking forward to playing. I will definitely be at the festival and Annette may be there Saturday or Sunday. The week prior to the festival Annette and Alex will be in Canberra at a Boccia tournament, The Aussie Nationals I think. So we will be playing it by ear.

There are still places available on our Norfolk Island Tour and we would love to have you join us for an awesome week of country music and relaxation. It runs from 15th – 22nd May. So give us a call or download the brouchure off the web site.

Wow, we are into March already. Don’t know where the year is going, but it’s looking good lots of engagements coming in will tell you about those as they come up. We will also up date our “SHOW” page so you are able to see if we will be in a town near you.

Take care and Keep it Country

Annette and Kim

November/December 2009

Hi Folks,

Well, it has been a great year . Wow, 2009 has just flown by. We are getting ready for the Christmas break and would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous 2010. We feel we have achieved quite a bit this year and are looking forward to greater things in 2010 and hope you all will be a part of our journey. We have one more gig to do for the folks at Dargaville RSA on the 18th Dec. before the end of the year and are really looking forward to finishing off the year with them.

So, everyone take care, drive safely and have an awesome holiday. We will catch you in the new year.

Best Wishes

Annette and Kim

October 2009