Tell us about how you two met in Dunedin.

Neil and I met whilst both studying music at Otago University. We were both doing the same performance paper, and were put in the same band (Dr Zaius) in our first year. We became friends pretty quickly, and have been playing in bands together ever since. Then of course in 3rd year we got married too.


Has your experience in Auckland so far been what you expected?

I'm not sure if I expected anything in particular... Neil is from Auckland, so he knew what to expect. I guess that I was a bit naive and hoped that things would easily fall in to place for us up here, musically. They didn't. It's hard work to make an album in Auckland - everything is expensive, and there is a lot of other songwriters making music. But Auckland as a city is more than I expected. I've grown to really like it up here - it is very diverse, and the upper central city K Rd area is very friendly. Plus it is warm!


Tell us a bit about your influences and what motivates you as musicians?

We both have very different interests. I grew up listening to a lot of NZ music, plus all the usual singer/songwriters from the US (Paul Simon, Tracy Chapman, Randy Newman etc).
Neil is very eclectic. He's doing his masters studying NZ composer Anthony Watson and Bartok, so there is that side of him. Plus he has been influenced by blues music, sonic youth and krautrock. And what motivates us? I guess we are just musicians at heart and don't want to do anything else. And we have songs that we want to record. So that motivates us.


How has it been adding more musicians to the mix? Are they coming on tour too?

Yes our band is coming on tour with us. It's been great having other musicians add their input. Our bassist Josh, from Meatbix, is very quick minded and a good improviser. Rich our drummer likes to create parts which traditionally a drummer might not play. And live we really do need a band. We're hoping to record the next album with them too.


Tell us about the process of making your debut album, 'City'.

We started with a bunch of songs that we'd collected over time, that we really wanted to record. After coming to Auckland and quickly finding out that no one was going to help us, we realised we'd better do it ourselves. We started buying recording equipment. At the start we got all the wrong stuff, so we didn't get very far very quickly. But eventually we learnt what stuff we needed. We then recorded all the tracks from our home in central Auckland. Most of the recording took part over the summer of 06-07. We had to wait for days when it wasn't raining, or there weren't too many insect noises, or the neighbours weren't lawn mowing - so the sound didn't leak in to the recordings. And then we got it mixed. And mastered.


Related artists: Inside my speechbubble, Onanon, The Alpha State

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