Mission venue big hit with Avalanche City

Avalanche City (Dave Baxter) is looking forward to taking the Mission stage this Saturday.

Hawke's Bay is pretty familiar territory for musician Dave Baxter.

As are the New Zealand music charts, although his name may not be the most familiar territory for many people who have heard and been hooked by his catchy indie folk songs - which he will unleash before a crowd of more than 20,000 at Saturday's big Mission Concert.

He is better known to audiences through his performing moniker of Avalanche City.

He is set to open for the Dixie Chicks and is looking forward to returning to the Bay and to a venue he has heard plenty about but never been to before.

"It's going to be incredible - I'm really looking forward to it," he said from Australia where has also been appearing with the Dixie Chicks for their tour over that side of the Tasman.

He recalled the Christmas in the Park concert last December and the June concert he put on for a more intimate audience at the Century Theatre in Napier.

"That was an amazing venue," he said, adding he enjoyed the smaller stages and the larger ones equally.

He has just done a series of "little bar" shows after mainly larger-scale ones and enjoyed it.

He said the larger ones, especially on the big outdoor stages, were "a real buzz" so he was looking forward to rolling through the songs from his recent albums We Are For the Wild Places and Our New Life Above the Ground.

"I've got an hour so that gives me plenty of time to do a lot of songs from the albums - it'll be a pretty even mix."

Mr Baxter said the large crowds inspired him to give it plenty and said he generally gauged how well a gig had gone by the crowd's reaction.

Those reactions so far on his present tour had been right up there.

While he has done solo tours this one has the full band effect of guitars, drums, trumpet - "the lot".

Mr Baxter said he had been back on the songwriting trail recently, along with doing production work with other artists at his home studio in Auckland, and is now planning to get "some new stuff" out.

In the long run his ambitions are pretty straight forward.

"It's nice to keep busy - to keep doing music and keep enjoying it - that's the main thing," he said.

And playing places like Napier's Mission Estate natural amphitheatre.

"It's going to be good - it's going to be great to be there."