When: Sat 4 Jun 2016, 11:00am–1:00pm
Where: Mercury Bay Area School, 20 South Highway, Whitianga
All Ages welcome
Workshop: $40.00 (Additional fees may apply)
EVENT WEB PAGE ON EVENTFINDA (For ticket sales, ticket outlets and complete information.)
Mercury Bay Music Festival
Listed by: Creative Mercury Bay
Don McGlashan’s website
As part of the Mercury Bay Music Festival, Don will be running a two hour workshop on songwriting. Spaces are strictly limited, so early bookings are highly recommended.
Don McGlashan, one this country’s greatest song writers and singers, came to fame as a member of music/performance art group From Scratch with Wayne Laird and Geoff Chapple in the late 70’s.
At the same time he was drummer and singer with Auckland band Blam Blam Blam, which had a string of top 20 singles and an album “Luxury Length” which went to No. 4 nationally. His song “Don’t Fight It, Marsha, It’s Bigger Than Both Of Us” won Song of the Year in the 1982 New Zealand Recording Industry Awards.
After a year living in New York – and touring the world – as a drummer with avant-garde dance company Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, he returned to New Zealand and founded The Front Lawn with Harry Sinclair. As an acoustic group combining theatre with songs they toured Australasia, Europe and America while picking up many awards and rave reviews, including the UK Independent Newspaper Award for a show at the Edinburgh Festival and being called “a superb duo” by New York Times music critic Jon Pareles. Their 1987 record “Songs From The Front Lawn” won three New Zealand Music Awards.
From 1991 to 2002 McGlashan was singer and main songwriter in The Mutton Birds, releasing four New Zealand top ten albums (two platinum) and two top five singles, including one No. 1 single “The Heater”. His song “Anchor Me” won the A.P.R.A Silver Scroll in 1994.
Since then he has scored a number of movies and in 2009 he was part of Seven Worlds Collide, a collaboration with musicians including Neil Finn, Johnny Marr and members of Wilco and Radiohead.
In 2012 he was also made one of the year’s five Auckland University Distinguished Alumni.