The Barry Saunders Interview

There is a new Warratahs collection - timed to celebrate the band's 25th anniversary. I caught up with Barry Saunders, or "Barry Warratah" as he put it ("that's what I get called"), to discuss the upcoming tour, the band, the occasional threat of his solo career, country music, rock'n'roll and life as a songwriter in New Zealand.

"In some ways, and it's a bit of a cliché and it might sound trite, but it's gone quickly - 25 years." This is Saunders' opening reflection. "It's meant a lot of things but it has meant a canvas for my songs and voice and I'm extremely grateful. It's been a ticket to ride as John Lennon said. It's been perfect for us."

The Warratahs formed in the late 1980s, Saunders laughs thinking back to the initial plan, possibly wondering if there ever was one beyond "playing a few songs". "I'd had a band in Sydney, it didn't really get off the ground so we got together here as The Warratahs and decided to play some covers, amuse ourselves and maybe chuck in a couple of originals."

From there the band's original bassist, John Donahue, booked two nights at The Cricketer's Arms. Saunders remembers, "it was very clear then that there was something - these songs wanted to live, wanted to carry on and we found a vibe, we found something that we just had to continue. It really just went from there." A residency at the same venue and word spread, from there the band started to visit New Zealand towns to spread its music.

In 1987 the debut album was released, The Only Game in Town. It features the band's biggest hits, Maureen and Hands of My Heart. Saunders says, "I still play them, every gig. I wouldn't not play them - band and solo, they're in there. But I'm pleased that they haven't turned cheesy, people still want to hear them and that makes it worthwhile, keeps them fresh for me. That makes them worth doing."

Saunders is known now as the band's voice - both vocally and as the songwriter - but when The Warratahs  formed he shared songwriting duties with Wayne Mason. Mason had been a member of The Fourmyula and Rockinghorse (Saunders had joined Rockinghorse as it was settling up.) Mason was ultimately unhappy at sharing the songwriting with Saunders and decided to move on from the band.

"We never wrote together," Saunders explains. "But we showed each other the songs. And we would add things. He might have three-quarters of a song and I'd add my bit or make a suggestion and sometimes the other way around but we never wrote together." He carries on, "I think Wayne didn't expect that I would have songs too - and perhaps he saw the band as his songwriting vehicle but I had these songs I'd been stockpiling. Also, Wayne wanted to make a type of music that was not related to what we wanted. He left over difficulty relating to the songs."

Mason's leaving caused the first hiatus. "And I was very sick," Saunders picks up. "I was sick with hepatitis - which I didn't know at the time. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. I recorded my solo album, Weatherman, and then the band decided to do another record. Then we got Sam Hunt on board for some touring and Alan Norman was in the band [keys and accordion] and we carried on up and down the country."

The Warratahs might be more of a part-time thing these days, the members picking and choosing when to reconvene, solo albums and side-projects filling in the space between recording and touring, but Barry says "we are still very connected. We all talk and songs are bandied about often. We are still creative too and there are new songs and ideas for songs to cover - which is why the new collection comes with an EP of unreleased songs, picked for their performances."

And as far as Saunders is concerned the songs continue to come.

"It used to be from moving - from touring up and down and being on the road, movement brought songs with it. Now it's the complete opposite, being solitary and being alone and I get those moments to create and the songs still arrive."

He was raised on Chuck Berry and rock'n'roll as well as the commercial country music that was, as Saunders puts it, "the pop music of the day" - he namechecks Don Gibson and Johnny Cash and Jim Reeves - but one of the big ones for Barry was Hank Williams. "It's obvious and everyone knows who he is and what he did but he took hold of this simple form of the blues and he made it his own, so he was one of the big ones for me."

But Saunders was also a rock'n'roller and continues to be a fan of the early Who and Stones, of Chuck Berry who he calls "one of the greatest rock'n'roll poets" and from working in Australia in the early 1980s he picked up a love and respect for the Australian bands of the 1970s and 80s.

"I think the big thing I got there was the work ethic - but there were some really great bands there. The country music in Australia was never an influence but these rock bands were great workers, great showmen and they worked hard. So I learned how to handle a crowd there, how to do the time."

He also served an apprenticeship in the UK and Ireland where he played "the folk scene" for two years. "The music got into me, it was there genetically too of course and so that informed my views on country music when I returned to New Zealand and when I was in Australia."

In England he began "writing notes on paper, not songs as such but ideas, just thoughts, really." These were worked on in Sydney and that is where he started "putting them into songs". He adds, "life was simple, I was pretty broke. That allowed me to do it."

The Warratahs have been part of the country clique and then existed outside of it. The band has worked through a time when there was very little interest in country music - or at least in the country music that they were performing. And has carried on now, through the alt-country years, finding a younger audience as well as keeping the old fans; "we were accepted by the country fans and part of the circle, then we weren't, I think some people don't quite know what country music is but it's a form of blues, it's the white man's blues and we are always happy to have an audience. We've had audiences of country fans only and then audiences that might not listen to other country music."

Saunders says that at the end of a tour he will often think about how hard it is to keep it going.

"You wonder if you'll ever do it again. I sometimes wonder that right as a tour is ending; I wonder if that'll ever happen again, what we just did. And it's not insecurity, but it's the idea that you'll never quite repeat what you did and whether you'll get that feeling." I suggest that it's almost an instant blast of nostalgia as it happens. "Yeah, that's it. It's something like that. Exactly. And the best thing is that you do find a way to just go out there and play and you try for it again. And you know when it's at its best it's joyous, and there are just so many good aspects. So that gives you reason to want to try again.

"And," he continues, "I realise that only songs can keep it going. We won't go out if we don't have something new, so we'll always work up a new song even if it's a cover."

Saunders will include some of his solo songs with The Warratahs but only "if they suit the band. Some of them aren't right. Some are." He says he writes a lot "for better or worse" but he always has his ear out for a cover version.

His most recent solo album, Zodiac, features a sublime cover of Going Fishing by The Phoenix Foundation.

"Well it's a great song", Saunders says simply enough. "It was a song that got under my skin. Songs do that. And one of the wonders of music is that people keep coming up with new ways to say something with the same notes - this supposedly finite set of ideas. You find something new. So with that song it just resonated, I loved the line 'done with all this thinking' and that was the hook for me. I knew that I could do something with that song. So I gave it a go."

And Saunders' own writing displays an almost unique ability to celebrate the New Zealand landscape without sounding cloying or desperate, without the song losing its way for the sake of a name-drop. There is also a deft understanding of the country idiom, of where country music comes from, of what it is meant to be. Saunders manages this and gets to put his spin on it, putting his voice out there. He is, to my ear, one of our greatest writers of songs about New Zealand.

"When I returned from England I just noticed how poetic some of the names are in New Zealand. A place like Taranaki - it just felt right to me to write about it. The first eight years of The Warratahs' life we travelled so much, we worked hard, the road was our home so a lot of the songs come from there. Well, they did then."

Sam Hunt has called Saunders one of New Zealand's great poets.

"Well first of all," Barry takes a pause, "Sam is just one of those people that is very generous." He leaves it there. I prompt him to pick up the thread.

"I'm very lucky to have a great friendship with Sam. We worked together on those tours and that was a great time, he had his audience and he brought so much to it and we were very lucky. And I have this friend now of 25 years - we speak to each other all the time. Although it's seldom about poetry and music these days, it's usually to share recipes or parenting tips. That sort of thing."

And speaking of 25-year friendships, the other founding Warratah who has lasted the distance is Nik Brown (fiddle player).

"In many ways he is The Warratahs," Saunders proudly states. "I mean it's my voice but in as much as it's my voice it's his voice too and Nik deserves the spotlight when he takes it. His playing is so much a part of the soul of the band and we have a great friendship."

There are sparks too. "You have to have sparks to make a band work. And there are sparks between me and Nik, we play off each other and it's not that we're competitive but we both work for the space and we both care. And that's important. You've gotta have sparks." The influence of Brown's playing has informed Barry's writing.  "I'll write now with an ear for how Nik will play a line, I'll hear his fiddle as I'm writing a song. It wasn't always that way, but that's what's happened, we've played together for so long."

Saunders says he's "really proud" of the 25-year mark, of making it the distance.

So after this tour what happens?

"Well, I really don't know. There might be another solo album. There might be more from the band. But there'll be more, I hope. There'll be more songs. I don't tend to think too far ahead."

In one of many sideline conversations, discussing The Who - the band's dynamic, its superb early work - Barry announces, "you know Substitute makes a great country cover. You just slow it down, add some steel. It works a treat."

He's talking about the steel guitar - but I like that image of Barry Saunders slowing things down, adding some steel. Taking things at his pace, determining the speed, showing grit, adding some "steel", some might say, some backbone. (And some steel guitar too.) It seems the perfect accidental metaphor for Barry's approach and career (and approach to his career). He's just slowed things down. Added some steel.

Happy 25th anniversary to The Warratahs. The tour starts next Thursday in Wellington, Bodega, May 3.

So are you a fan of the band and/or of Barry Saunders' solo career? Will you be checking out the new collection and/or seeing the band live?

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