Don's anchor

BY ALICE COWDREY

Don McGlashan is a busy man and his latest album and tour, which brings him to Nelson this weekend, is just another project for him. Alice Cowdrey reports.

He receives hate mail from National Party supporters, writes movie scores and has been busy travelling the world with Crowded House, but Don McGlashan says songwriting will always be the "central thing" in his life.

"It's what I do, so everything else I fit in because I am lucky enough to be asked. I never stop writing."

McGlashan, who has written more than his fair share of Kiwi classics over the years, including Marsha, Dominion Road and Anchor Me, has just released a new album with his band the Seven Sisters - Marvellous Year. This weekend, Nelson fans can get a peek at what he has cooked up, with a gig at the Nelson School of Music on Sunday night.

Over the past few years, the busy musician had more than just a new album on the go, playing with Crowded House during their world tour and composing and recording two soundtrack albums, for the Toa Fraser-directed Dean Spanley and the offbeat love story, Show of Hands, which was written and directed by Anthony McCarten.

In 2006, McGlashan composed the music to Fraser's hit movie No 2, which gave birth to the Apra Silver Scroll-winning hit Bathe in the River - originally sung by Hollie Smith and revisited by McGlashan for Marvellous Year.

McGlashan says that because he was performing, writing and recording a lot in 2008, he was able to try lots of ideas - so Marvellous Year has a lighter, more relaxed feel. (The name is not alluding to the fact that 2009 is going to be a corker, but comes from an image portrayed in the Allen Curnow poem The Skeleton of the Great Moa.)

And, as always, there are other projects, such as writing music for the Auckland Museum, for visitors to listen to via headphones while touring different galleries.

McGlashan says that when he is writing, ideas "catch hold" of him and take a while to "filter through" before they turn into songs, making things a bit harder when he is on the road.

"If I am touring overseas and see things out of the window of a tour bus, they are so fleeting I haven't got time to think about them."

However, when he returns home, a sense of purpose and a rush of energy returns and gives him a creative burst.

"It's always great to kind of get away; we go away and put this place in context and see the way other people live. We see how cramped and stressed and weighed down by history other parts of the world are, and how much space we have here and how good our living conditions are.

"This is the place I was brought up but I always choose to live."

McGlashan may have occasionally veered towards favourite son status for some of his best-known songs and his performances, but he's also tasted one of those peculiarly New Zealand controversies, during last year's election campaign. He objected bluntly to the use of Anchor Me as a soundtrack for images celebrating National leader John Key's election victory during a post-election wrap on TVNZ.

McGlashan, who had not authorised the song's use, told the network in a letter that he had never voted National and "would rather have sex with a very ugly crayfish than let them use my music".

For his trouble, he received hate mail from National supporters, who said they wanted to smash their Mutton Birds records and that McGlashan should rip up his passport and declare he was not a Kiwi any more.

Considering that National won, McGlashan says he expected its supporters to be a little less angry.

He also suspects that someone at TVNZ was having a laugh by using Anchor Me for the piece.

Although McGlashan originally planned to stage his Marvellous Year tour in old cinemas throughout New Zealand, the recession put him off, because it would be too expensive to convert theatres into venues for live music.

Instead, the tour will visit a range of pubs and other venues.

McGlashan says the music scene in New Zealand has changed drastically since he started out almost three decades ago.

When he started going to music awards ceremonies in the 1980s, there were a lot of songs he had never heard of because they were not played on radio.

The role of the media has not only changed - so has the approach musicians take to their careers.

It seems they have a focus on management, which can be to the detriment of good songwriting, he says.

Nevetheless, it's still a community he loves to be part of.

"I think the really cool thing about living here is that there's a big community of musicians. Most communication is artist to artist, because you know people."

• Don McGlashan and the Seven Sisters play at the Nelson School of Music on Sunday at 8pm, along with Reb Fountain; tickets $30 ($25 students).

 

- © Fairfax NZ News