A last-minute addition to the southern leg of Andrew Wilson’s tour schedule for next week presents as a gig for the ages.
It will involve Wilson, now a veteran among post-punk noise wizards, supported by stonking Ōtepoti next-gen talent Sivle Talk and Seek Help! The latter not yet out of high school.
They’ll collectively be testing the masonry of Port Chalmers Art Deco treasure, Pioneer Hall, next Sunday afternoon during the "all ages" gig. So, while the support acts are not Wilson’s generation, they’re most certainly his kind of people. In fact, the connection with Tane Cotton, Sivle Talk’s frontman stretches beyond aural aesthetics.
"I’ve obviously known Tane since before he was born," Wilson says. "And so, you know, I’ve wanted to play a show with Tane. I’ve really enjoyed the music."
Wilson’s not exaggerating. Cotton’s mum, Natasha Griffiths, released the EP of Wilson’s early band Carriage H on her Turbine Records label way back in the day. All this before Cotton — who now plays with a guitar given to him by Wilson — was the remotest twinkle in anyone’s eye.
It was also Griffiths who recommended adding Seek Help! to the Pioneer Hall line-up — another road test opportunity for the Queen’s High band before their Foo Fighters outing next year.
"There seems to be a lot of really good bands down in Dunedin at the moment, especially in the all ages scene," Wilson says, clearly pleased to have added the second Dunedin show to his tour. It’s twinned with an Amped event on the Saturday, at which Wilson will work with some of the city’s young musicians.
Wilson, of course, kicked on from all-ages gigs in the southern city to form Die!Die!Die!, go global and build a decades-spanning back catalogue.
Now Tāmaki Makaurau-based, next weekend’s visit is a return to where it all began, including The Crown Hotel on the Saturday — the original Dunedin fixture on his tour schedule.
Wilson’s excited about the line-up for that gig too — Maxine Funke, Murderbike & Madison and Liam & Ro playing support.
Wilson is touring with his solo project AW, specifically AW’s first album The Nerve, which was released late last year, following a couple of earlier EPs.
Die!Die!Die! fans need not be concerned, the AW project runs in parallel to the band, and indeed Wilson says Die!Die!Die! has just begun work on new material after a recent outing at Ōhinehou Lyttelton’s Port Noise festival.
AW, variously pronounced as the initials or "Aw", Wilson hasn’t definitively decided which yet, is a quite different proposition, he says.
In contrast to Die!Die!Die!’s collaborative approach to the music, here Wilson is writing all the songs and playing all the instruments, save the drums — on the album, Stefan Neville (Pumice) handles that responsibility, alongside production duties.
The genesis of AW came a couple of years back when Die!Die!Die! was taking a break, but Wilson, recovering from surgery at the time, continued to write songs.
"I just just started working with Stefan Neville, who’s also lived in Dunedin for quite a while. We just went to our studio and I was writing them quite differently. I was writing them on the bass guitar, which is what I hadn’t done for quite a while. And then they just fell together really quickly.
"So, we recorded an EP in one night and then we did another EP another night, later, and then we did an album over a few weeks."
There was a seamlessness to it all, Wilson says.
"There was something quite freeing about just recording it really quickly and then putting it out."
That was also a break from past practice. Wilson says he’s been something of a music hoarder over the years, quite particular about what sees the light of day.
"There’s so much content now that it’s just going to get lost anyway, hey," he says, striking a typically self-deprecating note.
While fans will recognise the signature post-punk soundscapes of Wilson’s music, the process of putting The Nerve together was a radical departure from his work with Die!Die!Die!
"Die!Die!Die! you know, when you’ve been in a band for like 20 years, it can become quite big. For example, we recorded at Roundhead in Auckland on our last album. It always has to be these quite big studios or something. Whereas it’s been quite refreshing just working with an eight track recorder in my practice space to record an album."
That’s allowed the music to remain more open, he says, not over-polished.
"I mean, Die!Die!Die! is not exactly the most polished band in the world, but you can just leave it warts and all without having to worry about it too much," he says of AW.
That probably makes it a little bit more personal, he says.
"This is the first time I’ve published the lyrics. I guess because it is me, and not having to worry about the two other guys who have done Die!Die!Die! work."
For all that it’s been a solo project, Wilson says connection has still been central, initially with Neville then with the touring band, all of which has given him the confidence to press ahead with it.
"Because, you know, I don’t want to say it was a joke which went too far, but I didn’t quite expect to be playing gigs with it."
The genre vocabulary of Wilson’s work remains front and centre on The Nerve, the scorched earth and searing guitar, the light and shade, allied to the practised songwriter’s crafting of hook and chorus.
"Yeah, I mean, you know, I’m in my 40s, early 40s now, and I’ve been doing this since I was 14. So, it’s been quite a while of being around music, and especially this kind of niche music style."
"It’s pretty exciting when you come up with a pretty cool bass line, you know. I mean, that was sort of the whole AW thing."
He nominates a song from the album, The Same, on which the bassline gets a couple of bars to frame a melody before the guitar line skillsaws its way in beside Neville’s thumping rhythm.
"These are to me, quite interesting basslines and then when it kind of clicks with the drummer, it’s pretty exciting and then teaching another bass player how to play it and then pulling it off ..."
For the Dunedin gigs, it’s Morgan Leary who’s had to learn the basslines and Kim Martinengo stepping in for Neville.
Wilson says they won’t be as loud as a Die!Die!Die!, but there is another clue in The Nerve’s story that will allay any concerns AW might represent a retreat.
The in-the-moment approach to recording extended to the gear they used, Wilson says. Whatever was near to hand.
"I’m playing through a tiny, really small little Jansen amp on the entire album on next to no volume, and then we’ve just turned it up so it sounds really crazy. And I mean, when I did start doing this AW stuff, I wanted to make it really stripped back with almost no effects on it.
"But then a friend of mine in Melbourne sent me this really gnarly distortion pedal, which I put all over the album."
The gigs
• Crown Hotel, Saturday, with Maxine Funke, Murderbike & Madison and Liam & Ro.
• Pioneer Hall, Port Chalmers, Sunday 2pm, with Sivle Talk and Seek Help!
