‘Fairly Obvious’ choice for local act
Fairly Obvious gets set to open at the Summer Concert. From left is Ben Cranston, Paris Takarangi, Ashley Pirie and Sam Gale
When it came to Greenstone Entertainment choosing a local act to settle the incoming tide of summer concert goers the choice was Fairly Obvious.
Taupō musicians Ashley Pirie (vocals and guitar), Paris Takarangi (drums), Sam Gale (guitar) and Hamilton-based Ben Cranston (bass) are looking forward to appearing in front of what Pirie calls “definitely the biggest crowd we've played to.”
“This is one of the only festivals you can play where from the moment the door opens or the first band is on there’s generally three-quarters of the crowd there already.”
Between their set starting and finishing, Pirie estimates the crowd will have increased by about 5,000.
“By the time you've actually finished playing, there's a good 10,000-12,000 people there at least already.”
He is not unfamiliar with the Summer Concert stage, having opened on it with April Pirie as False Heights a few years ago.
“We did it acoustic, but this time being a full band, it's just a little bit more, I don't know, exciting.”
Pirie jokes that as they are first up the crowd shouldn’t yet have been affected by the sun or too much drink.
“Hopefully we’ll be the band that they remember at least.”
Fairly Obvious has been together for about nine months, he says, playing a few covers gigs and sessioning with False Heights, but are also currently recording in Mount Maunganui at Studio 11B, with material due to be released March/April.
“We're just putting the final touches on some stuff. I actually contacted Fleur (Wolstenholme) the other day because we're going to try and get the Taupō Strings on one of the songs… so trying to collaborate a bit more with locals.
“And we're talking to local artists for all the artwork. So as much as we're away recording, we're trying to keep it as homegrown as we can.”
With Pirie, Gale and Takarangi all tutoring local students through the Great Lake Music Co, Pirie says the band has good connections with musicians in town.
“It's nice to be able to call on your friends, you know.”
They will do a mixed set at the concert, he says.
“We're definitely going to play a few originals… and we’ve got our own spin on a few covers. We want people to warm up for the day, so if they can hear some songs that they know that's great.”
He is appreciative that Greenstone offers original bands some exposure alongside the rock legends later in the show.
“They don't have to do these things and so it's really, really cool to see them invite local bands in every year, so we're really thankful to Greenstone for that.”
Despite the announcement only just coming out, the band had been given a heads-up late last year after playing a private event involving some of the Greenstone crew but wanted to keep it quiet until all was confirmed. “They wanted to announce it a little bit later anyway…. we were quite happy to hang on and it was kind of a cool thing for them to help create some buzz two weeks out from the event.”
As far as where Faily Obvious fits in genre-wise, Pirie says they are exploring their tastes.
“We've been saying it’s like a progressive pop punk, but there's elements of New Zealand roots, reggae in there as well, so it's been a bit hard to describe. We really haven't pigeonholed ourselves to be one type of music at the moment… this has really been a discovery sort of year to figure out what kind of music we like and we're finding our little gap in the market at the moment…
“We'll let other people genre define us maybe.”