Tami Neilson "Dynamite" 2014

...It finally came to a head and after a family meeting they decided they would go on the road full time, so they sold their home, bought a large motorhome for living and touring in, and lit on out. “We packed up everything and went on the road.”
Betty, their mother, who had trained as a schoolteacher, home-schooled them and advised them on costume and presentation, and Ron taught them any instruments they wanted to play. For Tami it was acoustic rhythm guitar. Littlest brother Todd chose the drums and Jay, bass. “From when Jay was nine my father taught him and at first he had to play everything with a capo because his arms weren’t long enough to reach the headstock.”...
...They played stage concerts, country fairs and festivals, and all manner of gigs in between, across Canada and into the US, opening for such major acts as Johnny Cash.
The concentrated touring was a perfect grounding for life in the music profession, providing them with vocal agility and muscle strength, honing of tuning and tone, the subtleties of harmony singing, stage presentation skills, and qualities of endurance, diligence and punctuation. Most of all they learned a basic hard-work ethic.
“Just the reality of the music business,” Tami says. “At a very young age I realised it was not glamorous and I didn’t really have big stars in my eyes. It was just a lot of hard work. I guess it was like being in a family business, really.”
Married to a New Zealander since 2007 and with two young sons now, Tami is based permanently in Auckland, touring from there, flying south to record in Lyttelton, and visiting Canada frequently to see her family and work on songs with brother Jay.
Tami met Grant, a police inspector, when she visited New Zealand for the first time to see a friend in 2001, a month after 9/11 (“I was terrified to go on a plane”). They married six years later after the emotional rigours of a long-distance, cross-Pacific relationship, and had ceremonies in both countries for all their friends and family to enjoy.
While marriage was the primary lure for Tami’s life-changing decision to relocate down under, the move has been a major step forward for her career. She struck paydirt in Lyttelton when she linked up with the cohort of simpatico professionals there who have helped elevate her ever-widening oeuvre to the next level. Chief among them are singer-songwriters Delaney Davidson and Marlon Williams, and producer-engineer Ben Edwards of The Sitting Room recording studio where the extra magic is created.
This portside connection is fruitful and ongoing, and thanks must be given to a certain catastrophic rumble – the massive Canterbury earthquake of February 22, 2011. The quake was centred beneath Lyttelton and while it brought down much of that township, it also somehow released a concentration of creative magma, and the nationwide music scene has been the unexpected beneficiary...to be continued... - audioculture
trax:
1. Walk (Back To Your Arms) 2. Come Over 3. Texas 4. Cry Over You 5. You Lie 6. Dynamite 7. Woo Hoo 8. Running To You 9. Honey Girl 10. Whiskey And Kisses

…served by Gaius…