Watch: Don McGlashan performs live at RNZ
Don McGlashan plays the fourth in a series of intimate acoustic concerts celebrating 20 years of RNZ's NZ Live music sessions.
Award-winning New Zealand singer, songwriter, musician and composer Don McGlashan has been making music for more than 40 years.
His musical career began at the Auckland Symphonia (now the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra), where he played French horn and percussion.
From there, he joined experimental ensemble From Scratch, and became the singing-drummer in art-pop band Blam Blam Blam.
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His subsequent work with The Front Lawn, The Mutton Birds and as a solo artist culminated in him being inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame in 2023.
McGlashan, who is now based in Canada, has also forged a parallel career composing TV and film scores.
This part of his creative life is “burgeoning”, he told Jesse Mulligan.
“The kids TV stuff with my old mate, Harry [Sinclair] is blossoming and burgeoning in all kinds of different directions.
“We're doing a feature film of Kiri and Lou which is really fun.”
His creative partnership with Sinclair goes back 40 years since they formed The Front Lawn together. He has fond memories of travelling the country together, he says.
Don McGlashan performing in the RNZ studios for NZ Live. Accompanied by Anita Clark.
RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
“Just traveling up and down, particularly in the early days of The Front Lawn, we had an old Holden Kingswood or Belmont or something like that, and we'd just charge up and down the country.
“We had a show called The Reason for Breakfast, and it had a table, and so we had the table upside down on the roof of the car, and we'd just drive around, and we'd just argue about art and argue about performing, and what it means to write a song. What does it mean to write a book? What does it mean to make a dance? It was just like an art school or a performing school with just two people.”
Audience members in the RNZ Auckland studio shared stories of how McGlashan’s songs had affected them over the years, which he describes as the “biggest gift to a performer”.
“I was just thinking of all the of all the wonderful times that people have come up to me after gigs and said, 'such and such a song helped me through a rough patch', or 'such and such a song reminded me of home when I was away'. And it's the best part of this job, really, because you get something from the audience. You get a lot of warmth from the audience when you play.”
Don McGlashan joins Afternoons host Jesse Mulligan in the RNZ studios for the fourth of a series of intimate concerts to a small group of fans at the RNZ studio to celebrate 20 years of NZ Live on RNZ National.
RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Songs played
'On My Way to You'
'Charles Kingsford Smith'
'Anchor Me'
'Nothing on the Windows'
'Miracle Sun'
'As I Walked Out'
