Elevated heights within his reach
Taite Music Prize finalist Anthonie Tonnon has gone from writing songs about New Zealand’s public transport to working to improve it, writes Vicki Anderson.
Anthonie Tonnon regularly travels into a hillside in a 103-year-old elevator. The musician won a tender last year and now has a part-time day job operating Whanganui’s Durie Hill Elevator, New Zealand’s only public underground elevator, that travels more than 60 metres into the hillside, connecting to a pedestrian tunnel.
‘‘The previous operators had been there in one form or another for 50 years,’’ Tonnon said.
‘‘You go into the middle of the hill and take the elevator up. It works like a tiny two-stop metro. It can go every three minutes, it gets people from the city up to the hill. People take their bikes.’’
It used to be that a songwriter could inspire societal change just by writing a song – someone would hear it and take up the cause.
But the self-described public transport enthusiast said he has recently been ‘‘involved with writing the new regional public transport plan for Manawatū -Whanganui’’.
‘‘The old way as a musician or any kind of artist was to be a social critic and hold a mirror up to society and say ‘this is what you look like’ and then leave it to the politicians, engineers, to go and build it. That model doesn’t work any more – you have to get behind the pipes.’’
It’s not the first time Tonnon has combined his art with the real world of public transport.
On his Rail Land tour in 2019 he sought to highlight New Zealand’s on-again and off-again love affair with its railways, and began each of his shows with a communal journey by rail.
The Auckland-based musician embarks on a thrice Covid delayed national tour for his latest album, Leave Love Out of This, performing in Christchurch tonight, Dunedin tomorrow and Auckland, Wellington and Whanganui later this month with a full band – Stuart Harwood, David Flyger, Brooke Singer, of French For Rabbits, and Sam Taylor.
‘‘On the positive side when you reschedule a
‘‘On the positive side, when you reschedule a tour three times you get really prepared.’’
tour three times you get really prepared,’’ he said. ‘‘I feel we are adding lots of layers to the show following on from Rail Land and A Synthesized Universe. We are touring with a lighting engineer, and we have been rehearsing in a proper theatre in Auckland.’’
Originally from Dunedin, Tonnon’s 2015 album, Successor, was an APRA Silver Scroll Award finalist for Water Underground, a catchy tune about water management in Canterbury.
Many songs on Leave Love Out of This, produced with long-time collaborator Jonathan Pearce (The Beths) and which hit No 2 on the New Zealand Top 20 chart when it was released last July, were crafted during four tours of the United States ‘‘playing dive bars to 30 people’’.
However, others are closer to home and combine art and advocacy. ‘‘Mataura Paper Mill was the last song I wrote on the album. It was only in 2003 that the paper mill was closed. Now we have a serious paper shortage in New Zealand.
‘‘It was 300 jobs lost and then of course it became a dumping ground for toxic waste. It was important for me to try to tell a story about that process,’’ said Tonnon.
‘‘A lot of the album and a lot of my work has always been about the switch from the mid-80s, not just on pen and paper on political policy but a mindset shift to convince everybody we must be rational calculators. We need a more humanist approach.’’
An APRA Silver Scroll finalist last year, Tonnon was also nominated for an Aotearoa Music Award for Te Kaipū oro Manohi Toa / Best Alternative Artist.
Leave Love Out of This is a finalist for the Taite Music Prize to be announced on May 29. Named for respected New Zealand music journalist the late Dylan Taite, it is open to all genres of music and judged solely on artistic merit.
‘‘I spent a lot of time with the music on the finalist list, and I am delighted to be part of it.’’
Other finalists include one-time Radiohead collaborator Dianne Swann; French For Rabbits; Lips; Luke Buda; Sheep, Dog & Wolf; Team Dynamite; Troy Kingi, Vera Ellen and last year’s winner, Reb Fountain.
For Tonnon riding a hillside elevator offers time for reflection. ‘‘Public transport is something that art has led me to. Taking on this role is a way I can set the things I have learnt in my art practice into something that is used every day,’’ he said.
‘‘While I am a musical artist and I like the change and chaos of going on tour, I also love the idea of something that happens every day that is kind of beautiful and boring. The elevator has become that for me.’’