Auckland Now
BRIDGET JONES
How long does a band have to spend overseas before they aren’t considered locals anymore?
A month? A year? More?
For Evermore, also known as the three Hume brothers from Feilding, it’s been about eight years since they upped sticks and made the move to Australia.
But Jon, Peter and Dann made sure they maintained some of their roots while making their new album Follow The Sun – or at least kept out too many Aussie influences.
“We’ve taken off all the songs about kangaroos,” laughs Peter during a whirlwind trip home.
“But New Zealand’s a big part of where we came from, our sound, the way we write.
“Definitely, our origins as a musical group are here, it’s where we started out and all our formative time was spent in New Zealand,” agrees singer (and big brother) Jon.
In the end though, the band’s fourth studio album was born even further afield than their Melbourne base.
The trio packed their bags – plus a few instruments and portable studio – and jumped on a plane with round the world tickets in their back pockets. The plan was Morocco, Buenos Aries and Jerusalem and the result was more than they expected.
“We didn’t really know what we were making – we didn’t want to make a world music thing, that’s not what we ended up with. But the funny thing is we spent a lot of time just playing acoustic guitars, doing harmonies together, playing Follow The Sun over and over again,” Peter said.
Jon thinks in the end, it got the three of them back to where they started from.
“It was an amazing trip, so many experiences I’ll never forget: getting patted down for weapons by cops on the side of the freeway outside Los Angeles after we ran out of gas, getting completely lost in the maze of ancient streets and incredible food that is Marrakech. The trip added musical richness to the album and songs.
“And I think we rediscovered the chemistry of just working together as brothers and just what got us excited about music in the first place.”
It has been a wild ride since the home-schooled brothers emerged in 2004 with their first album Dreams, the album that spawned the massive radio hits It’s Too Late and For One Day. There have been ARIA Award nominations, New Zealand Music Award wins and even a Greatest Hits album – all before the eldest hit 27.
And how many Kiwi bands can say they have toured the world and played more than 70 shows throughout Europe and the UK alongside pop icon, Pink?
“It’s life isn’t it? You follow this little opportunity and that little opportunity and then you find yourself somewhere completely different to what you might have thought of previously,” Jon said.
Evermore New Zealand Tour:
October 26 – Juice Bar, Auckland
October 27 – Bodega, Wellington
