The drinking mood was stern and stand-offish at the Grand Tavern in Te Aroha, but merry at the RSA. There was a good-sized crowd under the bright lights; a poster read, ‘We are looking for a guitar that can be kept behind the bar for those party nights.’
Club president Russell Smith stood at a table near the bar. A former army man, he still had a military bearing. He worked as a purchasing officer for Fonterra. His sons Greg and Shane were outside on the smoking balcony. Shane was in the navy; he had returned home for his twenty-first, which was the next night at the RSA. Greg had stayed in Te Aroha as a training jockey. His hours were six a.m. to ten a.m., racing 20 or 30 horses, contracting his services at ten dollars a horse. He said, ‘Mum’s into country music.’
Mum was Jean Smith, tiny, blonde, very pretty. She had an unusual quality about her. It was as though she carried a secret, was hiding something. Russell said Jean had a story; he suggested I come to their house in the morning.
The next morning Jean said, ‘We were brought up on country music. We had a family band – banjo, piano accordion, mouth organ. It was just part of our everyday life. As a kid I thought, Oh god, here we go again! The instruments would come out, and so would the booze. But boy could they play. Country music is a beautiful thing. I realised how special it was as I got older. The melodies, the words – I often think country music can relate to your own life.
‘But it was my adopted grandfather who got me into it. He was an amazing old man, George Scanlon. He took me all over the countryside – talent quests, country music clubs. I really liked to sing and I started writing songs.
‘I was spotted one night at a club and taken to see Jack Riggir, Patsy Riggir’s dad, who was a singing tutor in Cambridge. About fifteen of us went to him for lessons. He would listen and give advice. He was a quiet, well-spoken man. Blind, but you could walk into a room and he’d know who you were, just like that.
‘At fifteen I was chosen to make a record in Australia. It was a contest: I made a demo tape at 1ZH in Hamilton and I was the one they picked. People had so much faith in me and that was really important because I was quite shy, had low self-esteem and all that rubbish. I had been raised in foster homes. Mum had died when I was five. Dad’s whole life had crumbled and he had turned to the bottle, but he took me back when I was eleven and he got a job at Waitoa.
‘When I won the contest, he said, “Wonderful, wonderful!” But then he had one of his moments and decided that no, I wasn’t going to do it. “Waste of time.” Maybe it was resentment. Jealousy. His drinking. I don’t know.
‘I lost all my confidence. He crushed my whole world. A month later I left home and that was that. I’ve never played in public since. I sing for my daughter and I sing for myself.’
Russell said, ‘Go on, Jean.’ He handed her the Epiphone acoustic guitar she had owned since she was twelve. She said, ‘No. No.’ But her husband persisted, gently, and she picked up the guitar and sang in a pure beautiful voice for three intimate and exquisite minutes ‘Dust on Mother’s Old Bible’, a sentimental country ballad about a child who has lost her mother: ‘The night the angels called her…’
That afternoon, while Bernie Eva and his crew were running around backstage setting up the national country awards show for the benefit of the general public, the Hauraki Country Music Club held its monthly show at the war memorial hall in Kerepēhi. Kerepēhi has a marae, a general store, a creek. A little boy said, ‘I go eeling, eh. They like sheep guts.’ The dairy factory closed down about 20 years ago. There were boarded-up shops, abandoned houses, an empty fertiliser shed. But it was hard to find a park outside the war memorial hall. The club was hosting South Auckland country music club members, who had chartered a bus. Inside, the hall was packed, every seat taken, only a bit of room at the back for four women who line-danced, scuffing the wooden floor with their boots.
The door fee was three dollars, the raffle tickets two dollars. First prize was a small hamper that included saveloys, a packet of chicken coconut rice, and dishwashing liquid. It bore out the unkind words of Bernie Eva: ‘Country music club people get their country music very cheap.’
On the low stage, a tight five-piece backing band played behind a succession of nearly 30 singers. It was amateur hour for about four hours, music from the wide open spaces inside a hall full of workers and beneficiaries. The applause was vast and noisy – it was an afternoon of country and western. Kerepēhi raucously defied Eva’s edicts and yee-ha’d. There were rhinestone and rawhide, cowboy hats and cowboy boots, plus a lot of black.
First up was Dave Carson, 85, in black hat, black trousers and black checked shirt, who wheezed out a melody from his squeeze box. He said from the stage, ‘This’ll set you right for the day. Or wrong. One of the two.’
There was John Randolph, 62, a large, sombre man dressed entirely in black, who said, ‘I sang with a rock band. Then a mate asked me to look at country music. I never looked back. That was 35 years ago. The way I see it, he introduced me to the fellowship.’
There was Brendon Ramsay, 29,
