Shona Laing, 1987 Photo: Shona Laing collection
Singer-songwriter Shona Laing , around the time of the release of the album Roadworks in 1997, talks about her career-to-date for the Radio New Zealand series Musical Chairs.
25 years after she lurched into the spotlight with her performance on New Faces Shona Laing’s returned to basics with the acoustic album Road Works. Having rediscovered the troubadour within, Laing delivers many of the songs she recorded during an earlier era, accompanied by the first acoustic guitar she’s owned in years. For the woman who seemed destined for international fame, the release of her latest album was spectacularly low-key.
"Well it was to be a live album because I have been working quite extensively for the last three or four years out there, in the provinces, and enjoying it very much and actually earning a living, which, makes a difference. It’s different from the other albums, and that the other albums were the beginning of something. We’ve got the record, now we work it, and we do this, whereas this one; I’ve been doing the work, and it’s really just a recording of the last couple of years. Mainly for the people who come to the gigs, because I think the people who come to the gigs like that, they like Shona with a guitar, rather than, full on sequences and rock ‘n’ roll." - Shona Laing, 1997.
Presented by David Knowles, written and produced by Kaye Glamuzina, sound by Gareth Watkins.
Music details
White Colonial Middle-Class Anarchist (Laing)
Neutral and Nuclear Free (Laing)
1905 (Laing)
Welcome to the Whirlwind (Laing)
I Love My Feet (Laing)
Don’t Tell Me (Laing)
(Glad I’m Not) A Kenndy (Laing)
Soviet Snow (Laing)
Should Have Been For You (Laing)
I Don’t (Laing)
Mercy of Love (Laing)
Highway Warriors (Laing)
