Tuesday September 13th 2022: Downunderdogs + Supports
Like their music, Jack MacKenzie and Peter and Cathy Dyer are American born and bred.
Jack’s flat-picking is inspired by Doc Watson and is featured throughout their set, including his instrumentals “Waterfall” and “Mac’s Reel/Rangitikei Polka”. He has picked with Doc and a host of other stars at McCabe’s Music—the legendary venue Jack managed and performed at in Los Angeles from 1971 to 1980. Otherwise he keeps busy building his own line of Simian Ridge guitars.
Peter plays rhythm guitar and loves singing and yodelling Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers.
After years of listening to Peter and Jack play, Cathy finally added the big double bass and chimed in for three-part harmonies.
The Downunderdogs have been featured at Wellington Folk Festival, Kiwigrass Festival, the Auckland Bluegrass Club, and the Wellington Bluegrass Society and are delighted to announce their first CD!
Live at the Bottom of the Planet features eight originals and five covers of time-honoured Americana classics, with first-class flatpicking, stellar songwriting and heavenly harmonies. The CD includes two of Peter's best known compositions, “Go Ahead and Cry” and “The Immigrants Song.”
Planet
"Bagpipes, excitement and Rock n' Roll": words you don't often hear in the same sentence.
Planet mixes traditional bagpipe airs with post punk riffs and a dollop of vaudevillian good humour. It could be world music, it could be underground indie rock. It could be psychedelic folk music. But it's always approachable and certainly a lot of fun.
You're probably familiar with them as individual musicians. Nigel Parry is on voice, percussion and guitar. Barry Carter is on percussion. John Gray is on bagpipes and Vince Cabrera is on bass.
Robyn Lynn Trio
Robyn Lynn kiwi singer songwriter from Kapiti was inspired by pop and rock on the radio at an early age. It wasn't till much later in life she decided to follow her dream and sing. She seized the opportunity to write her own material and take to the stage.
Accompanied by Jarrad Payne and Barry Carter on guitar and bass gives the songs a fresh new groove.
The Bitter Brothers
The Bitter Brothers are a family band comprised of half brothers and sisters, who share a common father, a no good dastardly rascal of a man who traveled the world on the run from the law and the consequences of his actions, leaving behind in his wake a long string of illegitimate children.
Having never had a real sense of family of our own, we have finally found each other and have been reunited at last.
Coming from all ends of the earth, from the far off, most remote hills of American Wisconsin, to the sunny shores of Los Angeles California, and the frozen, Cantabrian wastelands of New Zealand's South Island, we are each from different backgrounds, yet we have come together and formed this family band, in order to come to terms with the sadness and resentment of our scandalous patrimony, while ever on the lookout for other brothers, and the occasional sister, to join us in song and help us vent the bitterness that often consumes us.
From Little Willy Bitter singing alongside his guitar and banjo, to Bobby Joe Bitter's driving drums, melodic voice, harmonica, and sultry musical saw, to Holly Jean Bitter's harmoniously dulcet vocal tones and her delightful accordion righteousness, the Bitter Brothers can be sometimes comic, sometimes deadly serious, yet always offering an entertaining show with a variety of original and traditional, old time, country, folk, and bluegrass hits; from good time Saturday night songs to Sunday morning repentance and gospel, we're on the spectrum.
