Rebuilding a Kiwi music legend
James Reid played the biggest concert in New Zealand. Now, he’s without a working guitar and without a plan, writes
James Reid arrives at one of the biggest venues he will play this year with a stringless guitar. He steps off a plane at Gisborne Airport, into an awaiting van, and is whisked across drying fields to the Waiohika Estate homestead. He’s without his band, The Feelers. And he is without much of a plan, too.
What will Reid do?
‘‘I don’t know. I’ll probably just play the hits, just The Feelers stuff I’ve written,’’ says the 43-year-old Cantabrian.
He released his first solo album in 2013. A second is yet to arrive.
From the outside, it may appear that Reid has been quiet over the past few years. He says that isn’t the case, at all.
‘‘There’s so much stuff going on, it’s hard to keep up,’’ he tells us, in between sips of an apple cider back stage. He says he has a new album ready for release at any moment. ‘‘It’s just sitting there, waiting.’’
Reid has also been busy painting and producing for other people, he says. And he likes fishing.
‘‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I like fishing, you’ve got to be relaxed,’’ the artist responds, when asked how far off his next album is.
But Reid says he doesn’t get to go fishing as much as he would like.
Apart from the 2013 album Saint, and The Feelers’ single One Man Army in 2014, there’s been little more than zilch most of us have heard from Reid and the band after their 2011 bonanza.
During the 2011 Rugby World Cup they had a new album, Hope Nature Forgiveness, and controversially covered British band Jesus Jones’ song Right Here, Right Now for the competition’s official promo song.
It is then, a surprise that Reid was booked to play Rhythm and Vines at the end of 2017. It’s a young crowd listening almost exclusively to hip-hop and EDM (electronic dance music). ‘‘If they like it, they like it. If they don’t, they don’t,’’ he says between sips.
We’re talking only half an hour before Reid is due to perform. He plays on the biggest stage the festival has to offer, but to a very relaxed crowd.
The mosh pit mostly clears out after Nomad, the young band who
"There’s so much stuff going on, it’s hard to keep up. It’s just sitting there, waiting." James Reid
sung Oh My My, departs the stage.
The dozen fans lined up against the stage layer Reid with overzealous compliments. ‘‘You’re a legend,’’ shouts a young man in stubbies.
‘‘We love The Feelers,’’ screams another young woman, over and over again.
Reid does the same to his small group of devotees. He talks in platitudes, seemingly in autopilot on stage. ‘‘You’re too kind, too kind,’’ he says, before cracking into Venus.
Before his show, Reid seems almost calm, careless even, but still nervous. The skin beneath his chin shakes as he talks, his hands equally jittery.
The Gisborne sun is bright, the drinks back stage are flowing and Reid is effectively on a one-day getaway if not for his 40-minute set.
It’s a situation he’s been in countless times before, an interview, a performance. Nothing new.
It’s different this time, however, because the man who even critics used to say is one of the biggest names in New Zealand rock travels mostly under the radar now.
‘‘We’re still playing,’’ he says with his startlingly soft manner. ‘‘We’re all doing projects. We’ve got some shows, too.’’
Reid pauses when asked what he plans to do, if he still enjoys this work – ‘‘I’ve never worked a day in my life,’’ he says. The silence becomes almost awkward, beckoning one of us to just speak. Then, the interview takes a short break as he stands up to pull out his phone.
All his lyrics are sitting in the Notes app. ‘‘My life’s like a hurricane, it leads to disaster everywhere I go.’’
There’s more, too. But the musician gives us only a taster.
He says there will be a Feelers tour this year. ‘‘It will be extensive, I suspect. The plan is I’ve got to go and write a song for that, I’ll go do that now, maybe.’’
The Feelers, he says, are far from over.