Anthonie Tonnon visits New Zealand’s most talked about places to see music.
Photo: Leigh Sawmill Cafe.
LISTEN to Anthonie Tonnon's story about Leigh Sawmill Cafe for Music 101:
No matter how busy you think you are, there’s always someone busier.
Kelly Pram is a pilot, Jerome Drum tells me over a glass of coke at the Leigh Sawmill Cafe. Not just any pilot, but one of Air New Zealand’s top pilots. Apparently his job right now is to write the training manual for the new Dreamliner, but somehow he finds the time to manage the Hipstamatics - a nine piece jazz funk band - and travel with them up to Leigh today.
He’s working as we speak, sitting on the door, and organising a place for them to stay a little up the road so they can have a later night. Sal Valentine and The Babyshakes, the co-headline for tonight, are staying at the bunk rooms on site. The show is billed “Lawless in Leigh II”.
The first Lawless in Leigh convinced the Hipstamatics they needed to find their own cabin where they couldn't disturb tourists.
I travelled up here with Jonathan Pearce who is the Babyshakes’ pianist, and Ayisha Jaffer, an Auckland music manager who wanted to see the venue, despite having broken her leg at Chronophonium festival a couple of weeks ago.
Ayisha is enjoying meeting the locals. She says the broken leg gives her an excuse to join in conversations, but she asks if she can sit down, because she’s too tired to hobble further on her crutches.
At one point in the evening Ayisha introduces me to two local sisters, Xavier and Turea Helia-Dias who, despite treating me and my microphone with suspicion, eventually give me some of my best stories about playing in the sawdust when the site we’re on was a working sawmill in the 80s.
“People here thought it was a crazy idea - it’s a very small town. When this place opened, there were two dairies, a gas station, and a sawmill, and that’s all.” - Turea Helia Dias
I catch one of my favourite interviews while tailing Sal Valentine, tenor saxophone player Benjamin Sinclair and vocalists, Chelsea Prastiti and Shavaugn Grace on the lawn. Ellie Miller bumps in to them and gets talking after asking a question about Ben’s electronic nicotine pipe. Ellie is a runner for big entertainment acts, and before talking me through why she’s spending her one day off in Leigh, she tells the band members that she is not usually star struck, except for the time when she took Robert Plant for an impromptu road trip to Raglan.
Leading up to the show starting, I’m most nervous about interviewing the staff of the Sawmill. One of the things I’ve always noticed about the Sawmill is that the service is intensely good - the staff are polite and attentive, but move quickly and seriously. It could be a restaurant on Ponsonby Road.
It turns out that’s no coincidence. Benjamin Gratton Guiness, who co owns the venue with his brother Edward, tells me that before his family purchased the Sawmill in 1994, they ran Oblio’s restaurant on Ponsonby Road.
“The whole area’s just progressed, it’s quite amazing really - it really is a greater suburb of Auckland” -Benjamin Grattan Guiness
For the first few hours I’m there, I try to find a rare quiet moment to talk to Tim Mercer. With a black cap and grey t-shirt, and a voice that reminds me of Sam Hunt, he seems everywhere at once, but never in one place for more than a moment. That’s more true than I imagined since in the winters he spends half the week helping run Verona on Auckland’s Karangahape Road, and when I turn up for breakfast the next morning he will have driven to Auckland and back to pick up his son.
“It’s been built on the Guinness [family] hospitality, and their enthusiasm for good food, great music, and just their welcoming way. They’re a big part of the community.”
“It’s really lovely just to sit down with [the visiting bands] at the end of the night... a guitar will come out around the brazier, maybe a trombone or a flute, and it’s our time to listen to some music.” - Tim Mercer
I realise during the gig that while it feels like a country show - the city is always close. You can feel it in the snappy service, the quality of the food, the makes of the cars in the carpark.
It's also a part of why the Sawmill gets such a high calibre of acts, from Open Souls to internationals like Justin Townes Earle. If there's a down side to being close to the city, it's the sense that even the band members aren't quite able to leave their city lives behind. After the show, Sal Valentine himself is nowhere to be seen - he has work in the morning so has driven the hour or so back to Auckland.
But for those who do stay, it is still an escape. There's still little to no cellphone reception, and there's still that astonishingly clear view of the stars. The remaining Babyshakes and I hitch a ride up the road to The Hipstamatics' cabin, where there are a few band members and friends in the corner singing and playing guitars. Though I manage to walk back to the bunk room before it's too late, I'm told some of them are still going in the morning.