#8 Reb Fountain, Tuning Fork

15 September 2017

Walking to the Tuning Fork tonight I called in to see the redesigned Freyberg Square. It's become an elegant multiuse public space, perfect for the lunchtime coffee and the evening summer concert. White Chapel Jak were performing some seriously get down and boogie acoustic numbers and the small but appreciative crowd were lapping it up. 

As I walked from there via High St, the shared space on Fort St and Fort Lane, and the Matuku Park by the arena, I realised how much the public spaces in Auckland have been transformed over the last 15 years, thanks to some great design and a lot of determination. When the Linear Park is built along Victoria St, and together with the bike lanes crossing the city, Auckland will be footing it with great cities like Montreal, Barcelona and Melbourne, which have all used public spaces as key platforms in reimagining city centres. 

Sorry, did you think this was only going to be about music? Bless... 

On then to see Reb Fountain, with Hopetoun Brown. The duo of Nick Atkinson and Tim Walker, with the aid of Finn Scholes, performed their soulful merriment to the delight of all. Reb joined them for an especially southern number that was sultry and dark, and which presaged her own powerful performance soon after.

I set myself the 52 gigs challenge because way too many great performers were passing me by, and by crikey I'm grateful to have been alerted by Under the Radar to Reb and her band.

What a stunning artist in her own right, and what great support she gets from the band she has brought with her. There was a poignancy to the concert with the launch of her album Little Arrows, which she had initially recorded some years earlier with the late Sam Prebble. 

Describing her music is not straightforward, she has the story telling of Emmylou Harris with the intensity of Gillian Welch, and the strength of Vika Bull, with an alt country vibe. But the songs are entirely her own, beautifully crafted and passionately delivered. Her live performance on RNZ is well worth a listen, but doesn't capture what a self-confessed badass she is on stage. She swore like a trooper and spoke from the heart, about her appreciation of the people she performs with, of being a single parent and her hope for a Green-Labour government. Hers was an enthralling performance that left none disappointed.