Concert Review: Chris Priestley and the Unsung Heroes at The Bunker, 2 August 2021

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Chris Priestley and the Unsung Heroes take us on a musical trip through history and the stories of New Zealand heroes and outlaws. This band are the Kiwi incarnation of that celebrated Last Waltz one. They present these tales wrapped in Folk and Americana.

Chris Priestley is a long time Folkie.  A highly regarded writer of story songs and a long-time supporter and mentor to many local musicians. Cafes and Folk music were Sixties Greenwich Village. Here Priestley was doing similar things with Atomic Café, out of Java Jive, and currently Café One2One. Bohemians of Ponsonby.

Chris Priestley and the Unsung HeroesThe rest of the Heroes band. Nigel Gavin seven-string acoustic guitar and who plays here, there and everywhere with everybody. Sonia Wilson, chanteuse and who could be the Emmylou playing with the Band. Cameron Bennett dobro, Weissenborn and acoustic guitars and writer of several of the songs tonight. Peter Elliott who does play the cajon, but tonight is the narrator and costumed as the Town Crier.

The Bunker itself, located on Devonport’s Mt Victoria is an important bit of New Zealand history. The North Head of the Waitemata Harbour and military fortifications dating back to the mid 1880’s. Fortified Maori Pa sites before that. Full of memorabilia on the walls and entitles it to be classed as a museum.

Whilst it’s a night of broad-ranging Folk and Country music, it is also highly theatrical and performed in a special space, complete with a montage of images which may the first time that Priestley has presented it this way. Each song is presented with its story by Elliott, in carnivalesque style.

Darling Jennie revolves around a train disaster late nineteenth century. Country with a Bluegrass swing from the dobro.

Huria Matenga was a young Maori woman who performed a Victoria Cross-worthy act of courage and bravery in the wake of a shipwreck disaster off Nelson. Three acoustic guitars play and the song has some of the spirit and sound of Paul Simon’s Graceland.

Tiger Lil was a wild woman from Boganville in the West where there was a Don Buck’s Camp. Lives on now as Don Buck Road. A place of orgies and merriment and she was Queen of the camp. Distinguished by some tasty slide on the Weissenborn. A lap guitar created in the 1920’s as a dobro without a resonator. currently highly prized and sought after.

Vulcan Hotel is written and sung by Bennett. Gavin launches out with some flying Gypsy Jazz guitar and evokes a cinema montage of images. Around a story of a young woman strangled in a hotel room and the subsequent haunting. Some St James Infirmary at the heart of the tune.

Bennett also wrote and sings Damn the Gold. The Burgess gang sound like a murderous bunch of Aussie thugs who terrorised the Gold Rush times around Nelson before being captured by Police. A spirited Country Bluegrass reel with a Sweetheart-era Byrds sound, accented by fast solo breaks from Gavin.

(Williamina) Minnie Dean has the unenviable reputation as being possibly New Zealand’s equivalent of American Ed Gein. The inspiration for Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A child-minder and linked to several deaths leading up to her execution. The only woman to suffer this here. Written by Helen Henderson, a singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles who grew up in the Southland. Part of the legend has it that no flowers would grow on her grave. How Gothic and Old Country. This becomes a Folk singalong led by Priestley and really does sound a bit like the Band’s Evangeline.

Revenge and jealousy. Murder and mayhem. The heart and soul of Folk and Country. Also, the way to transcendence and the uplifting of the human spirit. All stories end in death says Priestley.

I mention High Flier, the story of an amateur dare-devil stuntman, only because he died after slipping on an orange peel.

Larnoch’s Lament. Wealth, incest, intrigue and suicide around New Zealand’s second-only castle. The first is Mt Eden prison. A Folk tune with Gypsy Jazz notes and Gavin makes his guitar sound like a piano.

Weeping Waters has Wilson taking the lead on an Old Country song. Melodic and peaceful story of tragedy. A train off the rails and into a river.

Hokonui Moonshine Blues is set to the chords of Route 66. A blend of Jazz, Blues and Henry Thomas/ Canned Heat so it’s probably Rockabilly.

The Black Doctor is a new one written and sung by Priestley. The subject a herbalist healer of exotic genealogy. The guitars sparkle and ring and evoke Seventies Woodstock Van Morrison.

Notorious cop-killer Stanley Graham. Richard Pearse the first man to fly, we think. All the source stories are compelling as well as grisly and macabre.

The Unsung Heroes band lays it out superbly and swings with the ancient airs of Folk and the spirit of Roots Americana. The Bunker was sold out tonight, and just as many again missed out. Another show at Grey Lynn Community Centre Theatre within the next few months. Keep an eye out.

Rev Orange Peel

Rev Orange Peel
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