Moa flies solo around the country

Anika Moa is nervous about being the main musical event

At 26, Anika Moa is already a bit of a veteran of the New Zealand music scene, winning most promising female musician in the Smokefree Rockfest at 17, a United States record contract at 20, and having her first album reach double platinum at 21.

She's also world famous in New Zealand for, at the ripe old age of 21, raising a one-fingered salute to the major US record company that set her on the path to world domination, by saying goodbye to the bright lights of New York and heading home to do it her way.

She has spent the five years since travelling around New Zealand and beyond with some of the country's best known recording artists - Bic Runga, Dimmer's Shayne Carter, and Neil Finn.

In the past month or so she's figured in the nominations for the Apra Silver Scroll and the New Zealand Music Awards. So it's difficult to imagine Anika Moa feeling nervous.

But Moa is quick to admit one thing that's long had her quaking in her boots - the idea of touring solo.

"Having a band gives you more confidence," she says. "I've always wanted to [go solo] but I've always been quite scared."

However, Moa has plucked up her courage and jumped in the deep end with a New Zealand solo tour which hits the northern region this week, having played as far south as Invercargill.

"I'm ready to do it now," she says.

The tour will see her playing to smallish crowds, which will give her the chance to play nice intimate gigs, she says.

"I just want it to be like it's my house and they've all come along for a feed and a singalong."

Moa was 20 when the seemingly impossible happened - a young New Zealand artist, with only a Rockquest nod behind her, won a record contract with a major US record label, Atlantic Records, in New York.

The result was Thinking Room, a pretty, slick pop album which debuted at number one in New Zealand in 2001, when Moa was 21.

Despite its success, criticism of its over-produced mass-appeal swirled, with even Moa now acknowledging the album as "over-polished, over-produced and over-cooked".

From such swish beginnings, a visit down the well-worn path of newly found stardom beckoned - promotional gigs, parties, vaguely exploitative photo shoots ...

But Moa rebelled at her loss of creative autonomy and turned her back on the US, leaving for a meandering tour around New Zealand on which she penned the songs for her second album, Stolen Hill.

Does she regret it? "I don't even think about it," she says. "It would be a waste of my time.

"I would have hated to live that life in America. It's just bullshit."

Moa has just returned to Mt Eden, Auckland, from a "crazy whirlwind" tour of England and Ireland with Bic Runga. Runga sold out nearly every show, with concerts attracting expats hungry for sounds from home.

Moa says she loved the tour, loved the travel.

"It was pretty non-stop, but as soon as we could we got on a plane and headed to Spain. It was amazing, and hot, and full of hot people."

The trip fits in with her goals for the year, which involve travelling, and writing, as much as she can.

Moa says that creatively Stolen Hill was a significant shift from Thinking Room, musically mixing what she calls "bluesy, jazzy roots" while examining her Maori heritage and her home nation.

Songs from both albums will feature on her tour, with new material she has written for her next album.

The new songs are a shift again.

This time she's going a bit country and - ominously - Moa hums the theme tune from Deliverance while considering how to describe the sound.

"It's pretty country," she laughs.

"A little bit squeal-like-a-pig stuff. I went through a really heavy country music phase. It's sort of country folk stuff, real alt-country."

Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell all played their part in what she describes as a "very, very personal" album.

"The songs are all about love and loss and heartbreak and pain," she says.

Asked to what extent the songs draw on personal experience, she laughs. "No comment."

She hopes the album will reach people, saying everyone's suffered losing people they love.

She says she just wants people to love her music.

"I just want to play my guitar every night and want people not to get too drunk and to listen and to love it and laugh at my stories in between songs and laugh at how dorky I am."

Who: Anika Moa, singer-songwriter

Where & when:

The Centre, Kerikeri, Nov 1
Deluge Bar, Whangarei, Nov 2
The Grand Hotel, Helensville, Nov 3
Sawmill Cafe, Leigh, Nov 4
Tabac, Auckland, Nov 9
Masonic, Devonport, Auckland, Nov 10
Eggcentric Cafe, Whitianga, Nov 11

- NZPA