Power of three prevails
Last year three of the county’s most accomplished female singers got together over a glass of wine.
Soon Anika Moa, Boh Runga and Hollie Smith came up with the idea of combining their talents and the first result of their collaboration, the single Be Mine, was released in August.
The trio’s debut longplayer Peace of Mind is out this week but Stuff is giving readers the chance to have a listen today.
When first together they were three solo artists jamming but have since grown together as a band.
‘‘Initially . . . we had our own backgrounds in music but when we decided to do this project we had to think what our roles were in each song, who would sing what and how we would perform it live,’’ Runga said.
At times it may not have been easy to take a step back and let the others meddle with your material but in the end it worked well as they all respected each other and enjoyed working together so much, she said.
Often they would start out jamming on a song one of them would bring along.
‘‘When you’re collaborating with people, you have to be willing to strip your song apart because there are two other people you’re working with.’’
But the singer, who used to front Stellar* before releasing her solo album Right Here in 2009, admits that letting go of the reigns can also be hard.
‘‘ Sometimes it is something you may not necessarily do yourself, something you may not necessarily sing yourself but we treated each song as an individual, as its own beast’’.
In the end working as a band had a lot going for it.
‘‘You can ask the others what they think about something and you can share the responsibilities of everything that comes. It’s not just you,’’ she said.
After October’s acoustic church venue tour, expect a different vibe at this summer’s winery concerts.
‘‘ With the church tour it was a much more stripped- back sound . . . but with the winery tour we will have a full band with a full drum kit and three people playing guitar, there’s a bass player and there’s keys. It’s much more up-tempo and it will be more raucous,’’ she said. ‘‘ Our main goal is to make people dance.’’