We say:
A Wellington super-group!…..
Barry Saunders of ‘The Warratahs’.
Samuel Flynn Scott from ‘The Phoenix Foundation’.
Julia Deans of ‘Fur Patrol’.
Barry Saunders grew up in Taranaki and Canterbury. The sound track to his childhood was his parent’s records; mostly country, in the vein of Hank Snow, Hank Williams, The Tumbleweeds and folk records such as the Kingston Trio. He left for the UK in the mid 70s, and spent 3 years playing the Irish and country circuit, and also a brief stint with pop music in Australia. In 1986 in Wellington he formed the now legendary band ‘The Warratahs’, whose albums have chalked up nearly 100,000 sales, and has released a slew of successful solo albums…
Samuel Flynn Scott performs and writes songs with ‘The Phoenix Foundation’. In 2006 he released his first solo album ‘The Hunt Brings Us Life’, which received excellent reviews and from which the single ‘War over Water’ was nominated for best pop song at the B-net awards. Another solo album followed in 2008, and after a break he recently revived his solo career in 2014, with an album under the ‘Bunnies On Ponies’ moniker. He has also made music for television, theatre and film, including editing and composing music for the soundtrack of the Miramax feature film ‘Eagle vs. Shark’ directed by Taika Waititi.
Julia Deans was the voice and front person for the band ‘Fur Patrol’, the band that brought you the number one single, ‘Lydia’ to the crunching rock stomp of ‘Precious’ from ‘Collider’. Self produced EP ‘Long Distance Runner’ produced the single ‘Hand on an Anchor’ which was in the NZ top 25 airplay charts for the 10 weeks. Their final album ‘Local Kid’ was released in 2008, and since then Deans has released her first solo album, ‘Modern Fables’ and joined up with fellow musicians Jon Toogood, Shayne Carter, Tiki Taane and Ladi6 as ‘The Adults’.
‘The Cook Strait Social Club’ played mall to medium sized venues the length of New Zealand in September 2007, in a series of intimate acoustic 3 hour show that were one of the year’s musical delights. They didn’t release an album, but did record the live session below for Radio New Zealand…
Live from RNZs Christchurch studio, ‘The Cook Strait Social Club’ played some songs before kicking off their NZ tour – From ‘New Zealand Live’, Friday 14 September 2007
Photo & text adapted from Amplifier. Used with permission.