The Auckland-based musician, who has amassed multi-platinum sales, won more awards for songwriting than any other New Zealander and been honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by APRA, was on a whistle-stop book launch tour of Central Otago that also included performances in Alexandra yesterday afternoon and at Northburn Station, Cromwell, on Wednesday night.
As well as performing hit singles Loyal and Welcome Home at Paper Plus Queenstown, Dobbyn spoke of the inspiration behind both his music and his book, which has taken a year to produce and been released in conjunction with Beside You, a retrospective CD and DVD package featuring the same 39 songs detailed in The Songbook.
"The publishers were thinking of lyrics and photographs. I wanted to do something more useful so thought I'd go the whole hog with guitar chords and notation as well as a bit of background, so it would flow as a read.
"I tried not to repeat myself from song to song, to get a different little take on the whole process. I thought I would talk about songwriting."
- Dobbyn will return to the Wakatipu early next year, performing with Tim Finn and Bic Runga at Millbrook Resort on February 15.
