On tour with Bic Runga

By ELEANOR BLACK

Bic Runga is dancing a little jig to the side of the stage, elbows at right angles to her body, knees pumping in time to the applause. First-night nerves before the launch of her first solo New Zealand tour in four years? No, excitement, she says with a grin. Plus, she likes Invercargill. "There's a really good second-hand clothes shop."

Runga gets her cue, walks into the lights and as soon as the crowd's roar hits, pulls her shoulders up to her ears as if to protect them, before settling behind the shelter of a keyboard. Maybe just a few jitters, then.

But they don't interfere with her voice, which floats over the audience, sweet and strong as she begins her set with Precious Things, from second album Beautiful Collision. Things get a bit gruntier when she takes the guitar and moves into Get Some Sleep, but are soon back to the mellow ground Runga treads so well.

All smiles and shyness, she sets a sharpish pace, not pausing for a lot of chit- chat between songs. She tells the crowd how much she likes their city (smart move) and how she drove to Bluff that day to see the legendary paua house.

After playing harmonica, which she is still learning, and keyboard simultaneously for Listening for the Weather, she says, "I cut my own hair, too. Did you know that?"

Sister Boh, lead singer of Stellar, is providing backup vocals and playing the bass guitar, prompting Runga's manager (and Boh's fiance) Campbell Smith to whisper, "You gotta write how hot Boh looks with the bass. I'm kind of biased but she looks hot."

Boh moves forward and takes the mike next to her sister for some smoky duets - Velvet Underground's Femme Fatale and the Stellar song Tenderhook - which work well. The crowd certainly likes getting two Rungas for the price of one. Boh gets in on the oddball commentary, too. "I bought a dinner set today," she says. "It's gorgeous but I don't know how it's going to go up the country." Boh's presence is just one of the comforts Runga has managed to incorporate into this 12-concert tour, which winds up on December 22. Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly, with whom she has collaborated in the past, is performing, and the opening act is Goldenhorse, who toured Australia with her this year.

And then there's Smith, who paces backstage like a nervous parent, craning his head to estimate the crowd's size and gauge their reaction.

"I'm completely irrelevant and know nothing," he says by way of introduction.

A few hours earlier Runga and Kelly are sitting backstage, behind a black curtain and a stack of boxes which were until recently filled with sound equipment. They're teasing each other. He complains that she hasn't asked him to sing on her album after she sang on his. She wrinkles her nose when he mentions his admiration for Sway, from which he "stole" a line.

"I didn't get any royalties from it," she says. "But I guess it was quite nice."

They met in 1999 when Kelly, having listened to Runga's multi-platinum debut album Drive, invited her to tour with him. Despite the 21-year age gap, they found they had a lot in common - a January 13 birthday, admiration for hip-hop and pop, a love of language.

"Chicks like him," she says with a smile. "He's Italian."

"I've written a lot of songs for women over the years," explains Kelly. "Just writing from a point of view of a character, you don't need to know what other people think or feel, just what they say. I don't understand women, but I know what they say."

Runga: "Then you're no closer than anyone else."

While Runga is breezy and chatty, Kelly is tense. He admits to some pre-performance jitters. He and nephew Dan Kelly, whom he writes and tours with, are trying out some new material tonight. More unnerving, he has nothing to wear. "My luggage took a holiday in Coolangatta."

Twenty-four hours after landing in Invercargill he is wearing a borrowed T-shirt and getting tired of talking on the phone with Qantas representatives. The airline gave him a toilet bag to apologise for the inconvenience. Inside were a white Qantas T-shirt and shorts. He tried them on to see if they might work on stage.

A chill wind scoots down Invercargill's wide streets, sucking at the Beautiful Collision tour posters which are pasted on buildings like Post-it notes. Two hours before the concert is to begin, the pink adverts are the only sign that one of the year's most-anticipated Kiwi music events is imminent.

But then, it is only the odd hardy local wearing shorts - startling among the majority wearing knitted caps and windbreakers - which indicates summer is imminent.

Inside the Civic Theatre, a charming but faded relic decorated with cherubs and harps, dinner is set out on a trestle table. The musicians and crew are expected to eat together pre-show, to de-stress and to make sure they've got sufficient energy for the night's marathon.

Tour manager Merlin Mills is grumbly, in a quiet sort of way, about the absence of Goldenhorse. Bass player and vocalist Ben King, also in Runga's band, is here - leading to jokes about whether there is enough dessert - but the rest of the five-piece are late. When they do turn up for a hurried soundcheck, nerves are frayed. Lead singer Kirsten Morelle, looking pale and out of sorts, still feels sick after the flight to Invercargill. They run through three songs and head back to the motel to change.

Later, they look refreshed and amped when it is time to open the show. They perform five songs, four from their folksy debut album Riverhead, with the uptempo Maybe Tomorrow standing out as their best.

It seems Kelly's relationship with Qantas has improved when he lopes onto stage in a fresh, striped shirt, cool as a glass of water. No introduction necessary here, and he's straight into Change Your Mind, a sort of tribute to Runga featuring the "stolen" line from Sway. "Maybe you could/Sway my way."

Kelly avoids chit-chat but has an ease on stage. He segues from one beautifully crafted song to another, nodding occasionally to nephew Dan, who is curved over his guitar like a question mark.

A series of lovely tunes emerges, seemingly without effort. The Oldest Story In The Book and These Are The Days are particularly welcome, as is his last choice, the heartbreaking If I Could Start Today Again

Bic Runga turns to the crowd and holds up her hand, asking for five minutes. She has been singing and playing virtually non-stop for well over an hour. There is some restless chatter when she escapes for water, but Smith, leaning out of his opera box above the stage, starts cheering, and the rest are close behind.

"Funny game, the encore," he says.

Runga returns to the stage alone and, haloed in blue light, sings Suddenly Strange. It is haunting and utterly gorgeous. But it is after the band have ambled back on for Sway- which the audience have been waiting for - and left again that the night reaches its high point.

Almost hesitantly, Runga, now highlighted in a pink glow, delivers the song that started it all, Drive. It is marred only by two women who decide to get up and slow dance, which leads to snickering.

"Someday I'd really love to smash a guitar or something," Runga says, laughing.

"Yeah, do it," yells a guy in the audience.

The singer pauses and looks out into the darkness. "But then it would be broken."