KEY POINTS:
Respected record producer Greg Haver slipped out of a recording session with one of the Manic Street Preachers to play drums for Kiwi rock band Tourist at a gig in London.
Tourist had gone to Wales to record their debut album Minutes Last For Years with Haver and because they didn't have a drummer he offered to fill in. When the band scored the London gig he obliged again and that meant leaving a studio session with Manics frontman James Dean Bradfield.
You can tell Tourist singer and guitarist Peter Rudd knows the band were lucky to have just made his acquaintance let alone get both his drumming and production services.
"Yeah, he's a shit-hot drummer," agrees bass player Rob Ranger wryly.
Haver's got good credentials: he produced the Manics for years, he did the feelers' Playground Battle album, and has worked with odd-ball Welsh band the Super Furry Animals, among many others.
The band first hooked up with him in 2004 when, with the help of NZ On Air, he was recruited to record the song Do You Feel the Cold? at York Street in Auckland.
"I didn't even know who Greg was at that stage," laughs Rudd. "But when we met him we thought he was a good guy and he listens to cool bands, like a lot of British rock bands that we like. We thought it would gel and it really did in the studio."
They returned to York Street to record some of their debut before heading to the "the cold wet streets of Cardiff" to finish it off at Stir Studios on Haver's recommendation.
He got the band a good deal on the studio, gave them a bargain producer's rate ("because he knew we were releasing it on our own label," smiles Rudd), and they used some of the Manics' equipment.
"So all we needed to take was a guitar pick and we hammered into it. It's great, because he doesn't mess too much with your stuff yet he gets it pretty spot-on, really," says Rudd.
Tourist, along with new full-time drummer Simon de Vere and guitarist Scott Gamble, play the Pohutukawa Festival in Tairua tomorrow with Goldenhorse and Pluto and next Friday at the Dog's Bollix with Goldenhorse.
The Tourist sound is a mix of melodic rock anthems (they make no secret of the influence early Manics and Blur records have on them) and washes of sonic squalls, that recall British indie bands like Ride and Swervedriver.
Rudd, Ranger, and Gamble knew each other at Rangitoto College and did music right through high school.
"We were always kind of close, you know - the nerdy geeky music students at school who were always in the practice room at lunchtime," laughs Rudd.
In late 2000, after both Rudd and Ranger had come back from their OE, they hooked up again and Tourist was born.
"We just wanted to write our own songs and play indie pop rock," says Ranger. "Because," continues Rudd, "before we went overseas we were in a band doing trashy lo-fi stuff, a Pavement sort of thing, and it was good to get it out of our system because we wanted to write, not so much commercially popular songs, but songs with more melody and songs that are memorable."
Their goal is to head overseas again - most likely to Los Angeles and Europe - to showcase their music further. But in typical laid-back fashion, Rudd says, "We'll just see what happens really."
With hook-ups like Haver, surely something's got to give.
PERFORMANCE
Who: Tourist
Where & when: The Pohutukawa Festival, Tairua, tomorrow from 10am with Goldenhorse and Pluto. Then, the Dog's Bollix, Friday December 15, with Goldenhorse.
Album: Minutes Last For Years, out now
