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Southland Times

Bic's back on tour

Original content copyright 2002 to Southland Times

Original article is at:    Stuff.co.nz

Date:                          7 December, 2002

By:                             Michael Fallow

"IT can be bad if you're not used to it. Really distressing, you know? But I've been doing it now for about six years, so I know how to make it good."

Touring well is less about stamina than about the environment, human as well as natural. The prospect of the South Island in its summer splendour is agreeable in itself, but then there's the company.

"When you're surrounded by good people on your tour, they seem to attract more good people for you to meet."

This from the woman who played hooky from her difficult-to-make, but quite lovely to hear, second album, Beautiful Collision for the feelgood tour of 2000, with Tim Finn and Dave Dobbyn.

And now she's on the move once again with the agreeable company of lovable Australian songwriter Paul Kelly and, oh yes, her stellar* sister Boh.

The momentum of touring is not easy to give up, Runga reflects.

"I guess when you live like that for long periods you wonder how people live in one place for long periods. When you come off the road and have to organise your own timetable you can flounder ..."

The road is also the place where she can socialise her songs.

"When you write a song in your bedroom, it has its own life. You think it might be good. But it's hard to tell until you get it out of your house and introduce it to your audience ... just to ensure that it is as good as you think it is. Because sometimes you're wrong."

Truth to tell, the test is more than whether other people like it.

Sometimes there's a song, or even just a line, that she has been happy to sing at home, but when she opens her mouth to sing it in front of 300 people, suddenly she realises she doesn't want to say it after all.

"It might be too intimate ... or just plain corny. You never can tell until you put yourself on the line and put it to people."

"It's the difference between having a thought and saying it. Some people don't think before they speak."

This tour has already drawn acclaim in America, Canada and Australia. And Beautiful Collision, a more polished album than her debut Drive, has a wealth of beautifully crafted and performed songs, its singles providing soundtracks to the summer.

Runga loves that idea.

The Finn boys and Dave Dobbyn write what she regards as New Zealand folk music.

"It's music for the people, and people are really moved by it. They get married to it. Meet their sweethearts to it. They go to the beach to it. It's part of growing up in New Zealand."

She doesn't include herself in this company – even though they include her in theirs – but loves to think that her music might move so freely and naturally among us.

It's no secret that, as an album, Beautiful Collision was beset by difficulties, then helped to conclusion when Neil Finn showed up and gently persuaded her to let go what had become paralysing perfectionism.

Not every song can be improved by each extra day spent working on it, she agrees. As a student painter she would add paint one day and take it off the next. Her old teacher used to challenge that. Why was a good idea yesterday a bad idea today? Good advice. She wishes she had held it closer during the making of the album.

"Most often the first instinct is best. I have learned that the hard way. My first instincts were good, then it was just three years of doubting myself."

Including, we are told, a plan to record it as hip-hop.

"I know, I know ... I don't know what I was doing or what I was thinking. I thought it would have been a nice idea but it was so difficult."

"I feel relatively lucky to get through the experience unscathed. I think that the record is good."

Bic Runga, Paul Kelly, Boh Runga and Goldenhorse will play Invercargill's Civic Theatre on Tuesday.