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
