Ringmaster musician is flying high

Barnaby Weir, founding member of Fly My Pretties, the Wellington music collective whose live shows have captured the imaginations of audiences around the country. Picture / Richard Robinson

Barnaby Weir would like you all to know that he's not just the "white boy reggae" guy. True, he is frontman for the Black Seeds, but "I'm into different kinds of music".

"And so are me mates," smiles the leading light of Wellington music collective Fly My Pretties.

Twelve of his friends are in the Pretties, and their second album, The Return of Fly My Pretties, shows there's more to Weir than that skanking reggae soul. The album moves from the beautiful opening piano solo of Oh Fair Moonlight by Module, to the thudding rock of Nato's Theme, to the bent psychedelia of Flight of the Owl, by Samuel Flynn Scott from the Phoenix Foundation, and much more in between.

"The music is so diverse. You get a real diverse crowd so it's not just your reggae-heads. It's actually people who have a slightly broader appreciation of music and want to sit down to enjoy it," he says.

One intrigued punter - who will remain nameless - deliberately sat in the aisle at the first Pretties' gig in Auckland. He wanted to be able to make a quick and discreet getaway just in case he got bored. "They're from Wellington," was his reasoning.

Weir expected a few doubters when confronting an Auckland audience for the first time with his concept.

"Aucklanders are a different type of crew," says Weir. "Slightly harder to loosen up," he continues carefully. "And I think we forced the looseness a little bit for the first Auckland show, which had to be done."

He need not have worried - the gig at the Hopetoun Alpha in central Auckland was a sell-out, and so were the following two nights.

Those September and October concerts, which included three at the Paramount in Wellington, were recorded, and all the best bits put together for The Return of Fly My Pretties, the follow up to last year's Live at Bats. The latest CD and DVD set features 14 new tracks and is out on Tuesday.

Weir started making an impact on the Wellington music scene when he formed the Black Seeds in 1998.

The 27-year-old was born in the capital and has lived there all his life, in suburbs like Kelburn, Karori, Highbury, and with a stint across the harbour in Eastbourne.

His dad is Dick Weir, storyteller extraordinaire and voice behind kids' radio shows Space Station Z and Ears.

"He was a great dad."

His interest in music really took off while hanging out with his dad, who recorded his radio shows in studios at Broadcasting House in Bowen St, near the Beehive. One of his father's workmates was Kevin Roberts, from local industrial band Trash, who was the first person to introduce Barnaby to musicmaking and recording software, Protools.

As well as the Black Seeds, Weir is also known as Flash Harry (his solo project), and a member of the band Dub Connection, with the likes of Bret McKenzie (Black Seeds, Flight of the Conchords), Toby Laing (Fat Freddy's Drop), and Lee Prebble (Black Seeds).

While it's fair to say the Black Seeds is still his main, and most successful, project, the idea for FMP came about at the beginning of 2004 when Weir was disillusioned with the live music scene.

"I felt a wee bit fed up with the bar scene. We'd done heaps of Black Seeds gigs, and I was feeling like it'd be really nice to do stuff in the theatre and I knew [the theatre Bats] would probably be into it. It's quite small, so [I knew] there wouldn't be as much pressure in filling it."

Another inspiration for the project is his love of live albums, including Bill Withers' 1973 album, Live at Carnegie Hall, and Donny Hathaway's Live from 1972.

"If you do it well you can capture a really good energy that you can't replicate in a studio. So the idea was there."

And FMP is also about friends playing music with friends.

"I wanted to play with Age Pryor. He's an old mate of mine. We'd played guitar round the campfire, but we hadn't performed together," says Weir.

The FMP guests are recruited simply by Weir asking if they want to do it. As drummer Brendan Moran puts it: "Barnaby just asked me if I wanted to play drums."

For the second album Weir wanted some new blood, and also more women, since Tessa Rain was the only female on the debut.

It still baffles him why people turn up to the Pretties' gigs when they don't know any of the songs, and, in some cases, what the concept is about.

"These people are giving us big ups for songs they've never heard before. It's pretty good. I can't complain about that.

"They don't really know what to expect. They know there's some folky stuff, and that it's a collaboration, that's about it."

But, says Weir, that mystique is one of the selling points of the Fly My Pretties' show. And the word-of-mouth marketing, similar to that other Wellington success story, Fat Freddy's Drop, has also worked a treat for the Pretties.

While he admits the first FMP album is still reasonably underground (selling 7500 copies), the popularity of the latest concerts could be a sign of bigger things to come.

While last year's three concerts in Wellington were seen by just 400 people, this year nearly 3000 people attended the six shows.

"I reckon that's funny. It's almost absurd, 1500 people in Auckland who don't even know what they're going to see."

You can tell he is proud - stoked even - that Fly My Pretties is his idea and no one else is doing anything like it.

He seems relieved, too, that the second instalment is more of a group project.

"It's grown into a much bigger cultural thing.

"This time round it is less about me. People knew it was coming up, I asked them to be part of it, and bring some tunes along.

"We destroy the cool-factor thing. That barrier between the audience and the crowd is not there. This is a real transparent project where part of the performance is that we tell the audience what we're doing. We're filming it, we're recording it, you're part of it, and there's an album coming later. It's bigger than just a performance."