Barry Saunders‘ fifth solo album ‘Zodiac’ was released on November 17, 2008, with precious little fanfare. There was no industry party, no showcase gig, no online campaign, but as Shaun Chait, who talked with him in Wellington on the day reports, there was for Saunders a certain sense of pride and personal satisfaction in releasing an album 22 years after he started on the journey.

On passing through its gates, The Lyall Bay Bowling Club immediately lends itself to Barry Saunders. It’s not hard to see a passing connection between the location of our chat and the songs of the man doing the talking. Unassuming and low key, these walls have stories. Lived in, slightly rugged.

A little older now, yet appealing to a whole new generation who connect with the generous slice of Kiwiana it represents, and the camaraderie of the tales its four walls can tell. It’s timeless, and there’s a part of New Zealand’s history somehow tied up in it.

For a guy who hasn’t released anything since 2002’s excellent ‘Red Morning’, Saunders seems to maintain a profile which speaks volumes for the fondness this country has for his brand of country pop. His name remains in the public eye largely thanks to the touring he does with former (and arguably current) band The Warratahs. Last summer he also joined forces with Samuel Flynn Scott (The Phoenix Foundation) and Julia Deans (Fur Patrol) in a very well received national tour.

Saunders currently divides his time between Wellington and Greytown, living out of both. “I can’t live in the one place anymore – I’ve spent too much time travelling,” he reflects honestly.

He still does a lot of touring, but also spends a fair bit of time with his eight year old daughter Sarah – perhaps his greatest current influence. “I get to do a lot of things a person my age [he’s 57] doesn’t normally get to do. I get introduced to a lot of new things – like music.”

While he is familiar then with bands like the Ting Tings, many of Saunders’ own new songs have been floating around for years.
“I had songs but they didn’t have a voice yet. You need to give a meaning to them yourself first.”

The ‘Zodiac’ project was originally intended to encompass only four new songs for a proposed best of compilation.
“It was going to be a solo best of through Mana [Music], but it started gathering steam and Chris Gough [at Native Tongue, his publishing company] said ‘Go for a full album’.”

Rightly satisfied with the sound of ‘Red Morning’, Saunders once again turned to producer/musician David Long to get the show on the road. As well as adding plenty of colour with his own playing and instrumentation, Saunders also gives Long full credit for the inspired choice of backing band featuring on the record. ‘Zodiac’s house band features a swag of Wellington’s rock and alt country best including ex-Muttonbird Long.

Others are Craig Terris (Cassette), Jules Desmond (ex-Letterbox Lambs), Steve Gallagher (ex-Breathe), Warratah Nik Brown and additional backing vocals from Caroline Easther, Sam Flynn Scott and Cassette’s Tom Watson. With each of those musician’s multiple bands featured in these pages over the past few years, it’s a prestigious roll call.

“That was all David Long. I had never met Steve, Craig or Jules. He said, ‘Let me put a band together and see how it goes’. I was really in the mood to take a chance, so we played at the Car Club (The Phoenix Foundation headquarters in Berhampore). I had never played anything like they play. Many of them play country-ish songs in a rock way and I play the other way round.”

The other name Long brought back into the mix was Mike Gibson, Trident Studios’ knob twiddler, so reprising the Long/Gibson partnership that oversaw ‘Red Morning’.

“We seemed to work really well together. Dave likes to work fast and so do I. If it doesn’t come together quickly then it’s not meant to happen. But first you’ve got to make sure there’s a song there. I’ve never recorded (demos of songs) onto tape, but I do now. I like to play them back and think I’m listening to them for the first time – are they talking or not?”

Expressing my astonishment at this revelation I recount a story Dave Dobbyn once told about getting drunk after writing Loyal and spending the next day trying to remember how it went. Saunders understands.

“I’ve got a really good recall of songs, but I nearly lost the lyric of To Roberta as I didn’t write it down. I was driving to Masterton and just started singing it. I thought it up in the car in about 10 minutes.”

The dark country/Irish jig/yodel lament to younger days is typical of Saunders’ devotion to real life stories, this one triggered when he stumbled upon an old photo of a friend. It features a memorable cameo from Warratah bandmate Nik Brown on violin – “He plays with fire”.

‘Zodiac’ was recorded at engineer Gibson’s Trident Studios with additional recording at producer Long’s own Swearing Room. Most of it was done over June this year, Saunders largely playing live with the band.

“I put some vocals on, and there were a few keyboard overdubs. It was all so smooth – I’m getting to believe if you get someone who’s good to work with let them do it. Once upon a time I would’ve had to be there.”

He says he was amazed by some of the musicianship he heard, (“I can’t believe how in tune they can all sing!”), but the old dog also brought a few new tricks to the table, playing a lot of electric guitar himself in a departure from his previous records. He also tickled the ivories for the first time, his new talents on show on the haunting, reflective, almost spoken word closer Walking New Year – a track that speaks of a silent walk with The Warratahs at Waitangi on New Years Day.

“I had never played piano in my life, but I’ve been playing a year now. It’s the king of instruments. I’ve been playing it all winter. I didn’t play harmonica this time. I don’t know why, just nothing suited it.”

Saunders has sold close to 100,000 records in combination with The Warratahs and as a solo artist. It’s a significant feat considering that the country pop genre has never enjoyed popular acclaim here, and also in that they were a decidedly Kiwi band at a time when the local industry was devoid of much of the support it enjoys now.

With genre and country of origin counting two strikes against them, he must surely be proud of his success with The Warratahs, against a backdrop of the popularity currently afforded to local alt country/Americana bands who plough neighbouring fields. Saunders is way too modest, offering only that they “… got something right. We really knew the sort of music we were playing. I guess we were a breath of fresh air. The country scene at the time was more Harper Valley PTA. Our music had the blues in it. It had a darkness. We were rocking out in an acoustic way.”

I throw up the main reason he’s been successful as being because Barry Saunders is a very good songwriter with an ear for hooks and melodies – the key ingredients so often missing in songs today. He nods.

“I believe in pop music. The greatest country music has great pop aspects to it. It’s an age thing – I grew up with melodic folk and rock music – old fashioned playing and writing. An awful lot today is just groove and you often can’t hear what people are saying. You’ve got to see a song before you hear it. A song has to have some sort of transportation to it – it has to take you somewhere. I believe in (creating) a picture, a landscape you can be in.”

Asked about the blues, folk and Irish tinges to his country pop music, he claims it’s just him being natural.
“A lot of people who came here brought Irish instrumentation with them – what people call folk. Country music has strong Irish roots. Then Jimmie Rogers was a real pioneer, a real bluesman. He could yodel through everything, it was a punctuation for him. That’s the lonely part of someone’s voice – reverb before reverb was invented. People like me can only make music loosely based in the blues, even English folk. Blues is country music with soul in it and strangely folk. I call good country music folk music. Country is white man’s blues – they’re intertwined.”

Amongst the gems on ‘Zodiac’ are an instrumental, and a cover of The Phoenix Foundation’s Going Fishing. Dark Star harks me back to Bruno’s Last Ride – a rarity as one of the few instrumentals to make the charts here in the last 20-odd years.
“Dark Star originally had words, but when I heard it without the vocals I realised it was actually the melody talking. Instrumentals put up a frame for people to get up and walk around in.”

His first solo effort was an album of covers but choosing to cover Going Fishing is a revelation, and stemmed from seeing the TMP clip on TV one night.

“Every now and then a song gets inside you head and you sing it for six months. I just loved the lyric and another aspect of it was it’s very singable as a country song. Many songs really breathe when you slow them down – a lot of people don’t realise that.”

With a new album in tow it’s time to get back on the road.
“I’d like to do a really good tour. NZ is a great country to tour – lots of landscapes with lots of space. When you grow up in NZ with space, you get head space as well. I think that comes through in a lot of the music we as a country make.”

With about a dozen albums under his belt Saunders realises he’s done “… a lot of albums, and an awful lot of miles. Every now and then I take a look back at things and make a note to myself. It’s good on this day to have a new album out – very satisfying. I’m sitting here doing the same thing I was doing at 17. By and large I’ve made a life of music. That’s quite a thought.”