One guitar and four voices, the songs of John Davies & Bayadere are in their bones Country, not gritty bar-room Country music but Rural Country, evocative of sky, wind, hills, and rivers. Singing because song is currency, song is fellowship.

Singer and guitarist John Davies is a seasoned troubadour whose songs have been heard on the streets of five continents. In 1976 he and poet Alan Brunton formed a song-writing partnership and travelled the world with theatrical road-show Red Mole Enterprises until 1985 and their songwriting collaboration continued until Brunton’s unexpected death on tour in Amsterdam in 2002. Alan Bruntons poems are now widely regarded among the greatest written by a New Zealander.  The recent publishing of an anthology of poems, “Beyond the OhLaLa Mountains” (Titus Books May 2014) inspired John to revisit the fertility of the verses, and 15 new songs were born. Telling stories real and imagined, the Beat sensibility of Alan Bruntons lyrics illuminate the songs in exotic imagery.

The silken vocal polyphony of the harmonies of Jessie Lawrence, Valda-Anne Shadbolt and Aymee Karaitiana, aka OhLaLa  weave rich textures, elevating and punctuating  the lyrics , washing them in atmospheres that delight and mystify

Throughout 2015 John Davies and OhLaLa have worked at “the Area”, in collaboration with veteran electronica producer and pop artist Mike Weston (of Weston Frizzell), recording and documenting the development of a very special body of work they now present in a compelling live show .

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