Warratahs determined to keep their edge

Barry Saunders (centre) and the Warratahs use fiddle, a mandolin, harmonica, accordion, piano and a steel guitar

Barry Saunders reckons the first Warratahs tour around New Zealand went on for about seven years.

In the late 80s, after a string of singles, including Hands On My Heart and Maureen, and the success of their 1987 debut album, The Only Game In Town, the toe-tapping country band were in hot demand and didn't stop touring.

"We would come home for a few days and because we were on TV, we were making records, and we had a wide cross-section of people who were into us, we couldn't wait to get out the door and back on the road," says the singer-guitarist.

"We worked ourselves really hard for seven or eight years and that's how we cemented things."

It's been 20 years since the Warratahs started out, and while Saunders and violin and mandolin player Nik Brown are the only original members, the lineup has been solid for eight years. The band is celebrating the 20-year milestone with a nationwide tour and play two shows at the Dogs Bollix in Newton tonight and tomorrow.

For most of those early years they carted an iron-framed piano around the country..

"We used to lug it upstairs and up fire escapes, and for some reason we had it in our head that we had to have that acoustic piano sound," he laughs.

It was that sound, along with Brown's violin and Saunders' loping vocal and guitar that made the Warratahs unique. It was a style of music Saunders had always wanted to play.

"I had a feel for straight country music of the 50s style - the Hank Williams' style because I grew up with it, thanks to my parents.

"I wanted to pull everything back to an acoustic way of playing, with the brushes on the drums and the acoustic guitar, and make it rock, but in an organic way.

"Then Nik joined us and the violin gave us a real unique sound and I remember thinking, 'This is how I want it to feel'. It was really starting to sing. It was a breath of fresh air for us and the listeners."

Songwriter Wayne Mason, from 60s group the Fourmyla and writer of the song Nature, was also a member of the Warratahs and co wrote much of the music. Mason left the band 12 years ago. "We just parted company as songwriters," says Saunders.

The pair wrote Hands On My Heart, which started out as a rock song, but Saunders says he added the "lope" and it ended up totally different.

"It was a strange hybrid of country, soul and pop, and when we put the violin on it we had our sound," he says.

"Something happened quite quickly with the Warratahs and we weaved ourselves into the fabric of New Zealand deeply."

Although they haven't changed their sound much on their new album, Keep On, they do use a lap steel guitar - for the first time, which is odd considering they're a country band.

Saunders says "the steel" has never turned up in their music before because there's a vast range of instrumentation already. "There's a fiddle, a mandolin, harmonica, accordion, piano, so there's a lot of stuff going on you know and sometimes, when we get outside of our sound, it doesn't sound like us anymore."

One thing's for sure, the title of the new album is apt because that's what the Warratahs do - they keep on keeping on.

Who: The Warratahs
Where & when: The Dogs Bollix, Newton, tonight and tomorrow night.
New album: Keep On, out now.