WARREN Waide. PHOTO SUPPLIED
BLUESMAN Warren Waide wants to bring jazz and blues to Piopio by starting a new music club and is sounding out instrumentalists around the King Country to join.
He’d like to see new musicians using it as a springboard towards other performing opportunities.
“I’m a basic musician who has just done it and done it and done it. This is an opportunity to give it back to somebody.”
Warren has played for 40 years. His musical pedigree includes many years in bands like Nitework, and Supersecret. He has met many famous New Zealand music scene faces.
“We used to have band practice in Victoria St in Hamilton up above the Whacko Burger bar 30, 40 years ago. Guys came up there to jam with us. [Once] this bass player grabbed my bass and started rattling off a whole lot of stuff and I thought ‘Oh no, that guy, he’s overdoing it’, and that was Todd Hunter out of Dragon, April Sun in Cuba.
“So basically I’ve moved in the same field as some of those guys over the years. I’ve learned a lot,” he said.
He cites a Led Zeppelin concert at Western Springs as one event that sparked his lifelong love of sound. The other was his childhood in a musical family.
“My dad was a jazz guitarist, so it was always there. At night when you hop into bed most people had a story read to them.
“Most children. That never happened to me, it was Dad doing all these jazz songs.
It sticks in your head if you know what I mean. He’s been gone 25 years but I still can hear him, his chords.”
Warren’s King Country connections go way back. In the early 1970s, he played around Piopio and Te Kūiti with the late Riche and Mangu Mason (as well as his brother Mike Waide) and others in the band Back Alley. Richie was equally excited by Led Zeppelin, Warren said.
“That’s where Richie Mason excelled, is that he could sound like Robert Plant. He was awesome.”
People in the community love the idea of the club, Warren said. Piopio local Kimberley Cody said it would inspire her children by modelling what live music has to offer.
“My kids take a few drum lessons. [The blues club] might inspire my kids to go back next year and try, she said.”
She said the Piopio area was not well served for live music opportunities. “If some kids can actually see what drums could sound like, or the musical instruments sound like – not every kid would see that. My kids don’t because I don’t get out and go to live bands and anything like that. So if they were able to see exactly what it’s all about, it might sort of unlock and inspire musicians.”
Despite being named the jazz and blues club, all musos will be welcome, with a few exceptions.
“Punk doesn’t always go down well,” Warren said.
“It really depends on who is available to come to perform – I’d open it up to say country and bluegrass.”
Warren said Te Kūiti High School would like to send students playing in their battle of the bands next year to the club.
He has spoken with the Piopio Cosmopolitan Club, which he would like to use as the venture’s home turf, although nothing is confirmed. Sessions are likely to be on Sunday afternoons once a month, starting in early 2023.
When Warren isn’t playing blues bass, he moonlights as a school bus driver, taking kids in between the Aria district and Piopio.
For more information, call Warren on 027 406 7287.
