On stage and off the grid in the Pisa Range.
A single bulb hangs from the roof, casting direct light on the musician below, his eyes closed, his face contorted. The crowd, if you can call it that, sits on wooden benches in near darkness just a few metres away. They are completely silent.
At this particular moment, high on the Pisa Range, more than a thousand metres above sea level, there are only two sources of sound. There is the fireplace and there is the man in the light. His voice is raw, stripped back. There is no static or feedback coming from a microphone or amp because there is no microphone or amp. There is no electricity. No cell phone coverage. No distractions. Just a single bulb powered by the sun, a guitar, and a man singing his first song of the night.
Oh telepathy can you break a path through this foliage we’ve been focusing on instead
When the song ends, the people on the benches respond, releasing their own energy, creating their own sound. They fall silent again. They wait. The fire crackles on.
“This is pretty great, I reckon,” Monty Bevins says, with a grin.
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He fiddles with his guitar, pauses, and then shares a story. In 2012 he was living in a flat in the Wellington suburb of Berhampore. It was not long after a breakup and he was at a fork in the road. Monty was working in a bicycle shop, playing music with his friends, going to a lot of live shows, and gigging whenever he could. He felt an underlying urgency, however, to leave it all behind and get going.
He wanted to write his own songs and tour. To hit the road properly. Permanently. He wanted to commit all his time to his music and be out there “really doing it”. “On the way in, I realised I still am,” Monty says.
He made the decision to set off more than 10 years and hundreds of gigs ago. Since then, he has played all over the country, in tiny town halls, pubs, sports clubs, cafes, in lounges and back yards, on ferries, in theatres and hotels, in breweries, ski fields, village greens, festival fields, and just about every other kind of venue imaginable. But never in a hut.
That’s why the 36-year-old folk singer-songwriter is here. He’s been dreaming of this gig for awhile now. A chance to disconnect from everything except for the music and the people in front of you. And this location ensures that.
A few hours ago, one by one, cars pulled off Cardrona Valley Road and wound their way up the dusty unsealed route to Snow Farm. There was no snow (it was off season), but 3.4 kilometres on from the top car park, accessible only by foot, there was going to be a gig in a hut. The ticket holders set off in dribs and drabs and walked for about 45 minutes along a dirt track, surrounded by golden grasslands, faded fence lines, blue sky, a smattering of clouds and rocky outcrops.
The walkers were small in number – that was by design. The Meadow Hut only sleeps 20, and each ticket to the gig came with a bunk. This will be an adult sleepover, Monty had explained. Bring a pillow and a sleeping bag and after the music we’ll have a potluck dinner.
Each newcomer introduced themselves as they arrived, put their bags down inside, and joined the others around the table for a beer or wine in the last of the day’s sun. The shadows crept in closer and the surrounding hills lost their golden hour glow, the cold came quickly. The fire was lit and the sparse furniture rearranged. Monty scribbled his setlist on a piece of paper – 10 songs – and wandered off to collect his thoughts as the Roaring Meg babbled nearby.
Now, the gig underway, he is about to play his second song of the night, ‘Traveller’, written about that crucial Berhampore juncture and the lifestyle he chose to chase.
Traveller travelling out on my own two feet
Through the picture I drew from my window seat
That was strewn with my favourite things
I’ll see if I have wings
Traveller travelling yearning
The acoustics are good in here. The absence of background noise obviously helps, but also the hut, with its wood-panelled walls, quality insulation, and high-density flooring, turns out to be a near perfect space for this type of performance. There is a clarity of sound, and the listeners are close. They catch every detail, every note, every word. Although several people in the room have heard Monty play before, some of them many times, his original songs, although still familiar, do sound new tonight.
It’s not just the setting. The style is different. The interpretations are different. His delivery is different. He is picking quietly, deliberately, giving each note room. Sometimes he changes the tempo entirely. He changes the key. The volume. And then there is that silence. Monty uses it. He lets it hang there, heavy, in between notes, and no one feels the need to fill it. It’s almost like people are holding their breath, waiting.
“It was beautiful,” Debi Mander says the next morning. “It was just totally in the moment of his music.”
Debi and her husband Paul travelled all the way from their farm in the Marlborough Sounds with their two daughters, 11-year-old Hope and 15-year-old Lucy, to attend the gig. “We just like to give the girls experiences and this is a different cultural experience,” Paul says. “The walk in, the hut, the staying together, the chatting with everybody, the shared meal, the environment, the whole package is just awesome.”
There were moments during the show where Paul had his eyes closed, just listening, feeling. He and Debi were holding hands for a couple of the songs. “As soon as you hear his voice, it resonates,” Paul recalls. “It was magic. Just the simplicity of it was amazing. In a stunning place, a hut with no power and no amplifiers.”
Sam Hoskins is also reflecting on the night. The 30-year-old building apprentice from Wānaka has watched Monty a handful of times before and brought a workmate along to experience his music for the first time. “It’s cool how different this is and it’s not what I’m used to hearing. You never really know where the song’s going, it might just take a random turn within the song and it’s like, ooh, okay. Keeps you on your toes, you know?”
Monty says the gig in a hut felt like the culmination of years and years of effort; not that it was an endpoint of any kind. In fact, he is already looking for the next hut. “But it just made me realise how proud I am to still be touring in this way. Still playing originals, still trying to engage people, trying to earn some fans. Still trying. I’m proud to still be trying, still be doing it.”
He says he had a moment of pure contentment on is way in along the dirt track. “It’s just a beautiful thing. I simply had a guitar, I was in the mountains heading to a hut, and I was going to perform some of my original songs to people who had paid money to tramp in and experience that.”
I think I was walking through the picture I drew from my window seat. I think I was walking through the theme that I dreamed of, literally.”
Words & photos: Scott Yeoman
