18/10/2025

Adam Hattaway & The Haunters – Whammy Bar: October 17, 2025

Adam Hattaway brought his Hot Variety Show to Auckland last night…a pulsating, passionate concert played in front of a criminally small audience.

Adam had recently performed an acoustic show at Frieda Margolis last month with Haunters guitarist Elmore Jones and I’m guessing that audience tonight was about the same as that more intimate setting.

Which is a shame.

To be fair, there were other things going on…Shapeshifter at The Powerstation and American Shawn James…whose band was, conincidenally called The Shapshifters…was playing next door at Double Whammy.

Dave Weir

In fact, James had booked Whammy for an after party, and so things got started a bit earlier than usual at Whammy with opening act Dave Weir taking that stage at about 8:50pm.

Dave is an Auckland-based artist who has been knocking around for some years now. We was a member of acts such as Space Creeps and New Gum Sarn, but has been releasing solo music on Bandcamp since at least 2019.

The rough and ready singer/songwriter played a 25 minute set, accompanied by his own electric guitar playing and featuring songs mostly from his most recent release, Copycat Killers, starting with Almost June Time.

While introducing Love Goes Blind, Weir revealed that the first verse was a reference to getting arrested and that he, indeed, had been arrested, “nine times and counting”.

The set ended on a somewhat upbeat note with Goldfish Man, with Weir chanting, “We can make it”. Let’s hope he stays out of the hands of the law long enough to make more music.

Adam Hattaway & The Haunters

After a very brief break…10 minutes, if that…Adam and the band took their places and wound up the machine, starting their set with I Don’t Believe In Love, from last year’s High Horse album.

Unfortunately, the “crowd” such as it was, hadn’t really grown…there were maybe 50 people in the room.

But Adam, to his credit, pressed on, announcing that we were in for, “a better time than usual”.

And he was right.

The band…guitarist Elmore Jones, bass player Sam White, drummer Thomas Isbister and keyboard and sax player Reuben Derrick… were tight, focussing in on Adam, who is prone to spontaneous “improvisation”.

I had met with Adam earlier in the day, and he talked about trying be be more “concise”. And to his credit, he and his band did pack 17 songs into a seventy-minute set.

But also, to his credit, he was anything by “concise”, musically.

Yes, his sound can loosely be called “Americana”, but there’s a lot going on in Adam’s brain and on the stage and one gets the feeling that when he allows himself to be overtaken by the music, that’s when the real magic happens.

If happened tonight several times.

The most notable was during Big Night, a track from 2021’s Woolston, Texas, where Hattaway seems to suddenly go “Into The Mystic”, channeling Van The Man and taking the band and the audience in a place no one expected to find themselves.

When Adam Hattaway is possessed by the music, he is truly at his best.

Other highlights include the Rolling Stones-inspired The Last To Leave and show closer/stopper Small Town that proved what a strong and passionate vocalist Adam can be when he allows the music to take him Into The Mystic.

With Shawn James booked for an after party, Adam Hattaway, The Haunters and the fearless few who made up the audience were out on K Rd much earlier that the usual Whammy show, but happy in knowing we had caught the magic at least for a moment.

Marty Duda

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Adam Hattaway & The Haunters: