What an interesting time it’s been!
Lockdown for us was a house full of animals, a thoughtful arrival of the new season and a time to write.
Our 20 show tour through April with Arts on Tour NZ was cancelled a couple of weeks before we were to take off, living the van life again and gigging from Kaeo to Stewart Island with our friend Caitlin Smith. Though it was a shame, it was what was needed and had to happen. We decided instead, to get a kitten, as the lockdown levels were increasing… and what better a time to introduce a little ngeru to our little kurī!!
We had Emily’s sister Sophie move into our whare for the time too, and our home became a blur of feijoas, movies, fresh baked bread, popcorn, digging up the lawn and planting it, training our dog to be a good big sister, and writing songs. Looking back on the lockdown period, we feel thankful. To have time to slow down, be at home and enjoy the simple things. We feel especially lucky that it happened now rather than say last year, when we were living in our van Jamba.
The tour became a virtual tour, plus some Aro in your Bubble and writing new songs became a daily project. Emily set herself a mission of writing a song a day through April, and did so!
Connecting with people through a screen is so much different to connecting with people in the same space. We found the online tour was incomparable to an actual tour, but it was nice to have a way to share our music and stay connected through this weird time.
We are now mid project ‘He Manu Anō’ (some more manu), which is the follow up EP to our 2019 release of our debut album ‘Manu’. The EP consists of songs of the most requested birds that did not appear on our first album, and will be entirely in te reo Māori. We feel incredibly supported by Creative NZ who are backing us for a second time, this time to write, record, produce and release this new EP, paired with a virtual schools tour and educational resource. It’s all happening, and we’re excited to have new songs almost ready to share with you. We have a mini tour of 4 shows happening after our official release on August 27th, from August 29th to September 26th and cannot wait to be with you again, kanohi ki te kanohi.
