Levin country music singer Teresa Herewini has kept singing and performing, fulfilling her late husband's wishes.
There was always magic in the air when Geoff and Teresa Herewini were on stage. Love filled the room.
The Levin couple just always sang ... together. So when Geoff fell ill, he made Teresa promise him she’d keep singing after he had gone.
Geoff Herewini died in May last year of kidney failure.
Teresa has kept that promise, even though it was the toughest thing she’d ever had to do.
Last weekend she entered the Arapera Award regional competition at Pukekohe, singing Letting Go Wasn’t Easy for Me To Do, a song she wrote herself.
She won the Veterans Section Award, gaining automatic entry to the NZ Country Music Awards in Pukekohe on October 12.
“Ever since I have been with Geoff, I have sung with Geoff. That was the toughest thing I’ve had to do, go out on my own on stage without him beside me. He told me to carry on - don’t you dare give up - so I’ve got to ... I don’t know what else to say,” she said.
“Geoff had a love of people. He had a love of music. I had a beautiful husband. He was a loving man. Things are still really hard but he wanted me to carry on.
“And I want to, too.”
The couple’s love for country music was infectious. Always as the duet Double Blend, the Herewinis won numerous awards including the 2017 New Zealand Entertainer of the Year Award. But it’s not what gave them their biggest buzz.
That had come from sharing that love of country music with others and seeing others perform and achieve.
When they moved to Levin from Tāneatua, Whakatāne, some 20 years ago they helped set up - with a group of like-minded locals - the Pounamu Country Music Club.
It all came about after Geoff was singing along one day at work as security at The Warehouse and struck up a conversation with a stranger.
One thing led to another and the Pounamu Country Music Club was born, with the club motto “E hara takutoa i te toa takitahi, engari takutoa he toa takitini”, which translates to “My strength is not of mine alone, but the strength of many others”.
After posting flyers around town and through word of mouth, the club launched at Kereru Marae in May 2004, attended by more than 350 people from all over the North Island. Vanloads came from places such as Te Teko, Ōpotiki and Whakatāne.
Since then, the club has continued to meet every month. It’s probably Levin’s best-kept secret but every Saturday evening more than 100 people gather to hear visiting and local artists perform.
The genesis of the Pounamu club, and the biggest motivation for the Herewinis, was to promote talent and give people - young and old - a chance to perform in an encouraging environment.
When interviewed by the NZ Herald a few years before he died, Geoff said he wanted the club to continue to encourage new members, especially youngsters, to keep the club and country music alive.
The vision was to “foster, promote, encourage, and enhance the citizens of our community, and the wellbeing between the youth and the elderly together under the banner of music, dance and choreography”.
“There are so many talented kids out there and music can give them a sense of pride and open up so many opportunities. There seems to be a lot of funding for kids once they get into trouble – our focus is on helping them before they get into trouble,” he said.
The club has been represented by the likes of Ainsley Allan, Francis Boyd, Cazna Thompson, Gordon Fletcher, John Timmer-Arends and Roimata Neilsen at national competitions. Sometimes they have taken a bus to different festivals.
The club has moved around a bit. Club night was first held at Savage Hall, then the Scottish Society Hall, then the Senior Citizens Hall. They moved to Levin RSA in 2018 but, to fit everyone in, they hold their annual birthday celebrations at Levin Cosmopolitan Club.
And so it is with the 20th birthday this Saturday, with a large crowd expected to enjoy a full day of entertainment with the first performers due on stage at 9.30am. There will be breaks for lunch and dinner before guest performer Raymond Solomon takes the stage.
The club continues to hold performance night on the first Saturday of every month at Levin RSA, where local club members can join visiting performers on stage for a night of music.
The annual membership fee is $15.
“We are deeply grateful for their service.”