Liz Breslin and Eliana Gray trot south for the 2024 NZ Gold Guitar Awards and find maybe all that glitters is gold after all.
Eliana: “We haven’t quite finished the renovations.” An email, approximately a week before Cowboy Genius saddled up to ride through the Gold Guitars like an outlaw wind, or a trio of ducks in assless chaps.
Or rather, jeans embroidered to look like assless chaps, which is what Liz actually did wear for most of our three-person three-day journey into the heart of Aotearoa country music. Liz and I have yes anded ourselves into some pretty serious situations, but none more so than on that bright summer afternoon lounging around Anna’s chaos garden, spliffs and canned margaritas strewn amongst the pavers like renegade herbs popping from the cracks. Neck deep in a conversation I can’t remember the start of, I turn to them, “are we about to start a country music band?” The answer was yes, and. The regularity with which I disseminate pictures of the band Boy Genius*
Liz: who we are named after
Eliana: kissing each other, coupled with the fact that we are three sexy queers, makes the band name a no brainer. If this doesn’t make sense to you, google “Boy Genius kissing” and thank me later.
Liz: Let’s get this out of the way. Some might say Gore has, at times, got itself a reputation. There is still at least one campground I don’t recommend googling.
We did, but that’s not the only reason we didn’t end up staying there. For one week a year the town is packed to the brim with country musicians and seeing as we were competitors, we were given the choice of renting a local house.
Liz: It’s not very cool, I know, but I have long loved country music. Give me a catchy chorus, a simple chord progression, a fantastic shirt and a battered pair of cowboy boots. Yes yes yes and I’m singing along.
Some might say that country music has, at times, got itself a reputation and mostly I find that reputation true except for a whole tonne of queer country singers including Brandi Carlile, Paisley Fields, Mya Byrne, Lavender Country, Amythyst Kiah, Orville Peck, and does Lil Nas X count as country? OK, none of these artists are from Gore, but we’re here.
Eliana: “We haven’t quite finished the renovations” ended up meaning “our house is an active building site and our dog who is constantly wet has slept so much on every soft surface that the smell has fused with the textile fibres.” We’d rented the house sight unseen, as is the custom during the Gold Guitars, since so many out-of-towners descend on the tiny town that most locals vacate their abodes and chuck a caravan at the cousins’. Not quite the lush holiday we had imagined, but, as long as I slept with the windows completely open, in all my clothes, with my arms and head locked inside my hoodie, I couldn’t exactly sleep, but it didn’t smell so bad.
Eliana: Havoc and Newsboy declared Gore the gay capital of Aotearoa and we were there to uphold the legacy. The universe stepped up the plate by sending legitimately endless (five) rainbows arcing through the clouds to terminate directly on Main Street all throughout the Saturday. We pilgrimmed to the giant trout, it was large and I felt sufficiently gay standing underneath its mottled belly.
Liz: It was 1999 when Mikey Havoc and Jeremy ‘Newsboy’ Wells went on their Sellout Tour around Aotearoa, which was on the TV and a lot of people watched it because that was what happened with television in 1999. Getting to Gore horribly hungover, they started riffing about “the healing properties” of the rocks under the trout statue and followed this up with a bit of ha ha haaaaa about the gays. Presumably because of Gore’s aforementioned reputation.
Newsboy: It’s also the epicentre of the New Zealand homosexual community. The first gay man in New Zealand was born here in Gore in 1872.
Havoc: And there’s still a huge, thriving underground community of gay people who just don’t tell anyone.
Newsboy: Gore
Havoc: Gore, the g’s for gay.
Liz: This episode was chosen in 2020 as one of NZ on Screen’s 60 best televisual moments of the last sixty years, but some Gore dwellers didn’t feel that way about it. There were disgruntled articles in the Southland Times along the lines “of course there are no gays in Gore”. Some local outings. And when Newsboy went back to cover some different, less gay actual news in Gore in 2008, he was accosted by about fifteen dudes at a petrol station who took exception to his gaying of Gore and mayor Tracy Hicks said he was either very brave or very stupid to show his face in town again. Ooof.
Eliana: Our song was called ‘Three Bottle Moon’ because it had to be. The improvisational gods demanded it and I’m nothing if not a devoted acolyte and earnest pastichiér. “We’re a cold glass of jitters, getting the shakes and the shiveeeeersss, in that golden tone, three bottle moonlight”. Classic C major resolving to G. A song about a restless night and drunken romance under a full moon.
Liz and Eliana (singing):
Mother help me I forget
what is thought and sacrament
when I’m deep into it
devil’s far from dry
when everything is looking glitter
you across the bar know better
it’s time to throw our arms
around the night.
Eliana: Miley Cyrus was instrumental in our navigation of the unexpected time-warp of the Māruawai plains. We were absolutely trying to Hannah Montana ‘Best of Both Worlds’ our way through this. We bought a room spray and soaked the couch, the floor, and all other offensive smelling areas regularly. We had our second-ever band practice on the outside picnic table in the dog-shit-confetti yard. We lit scented candles. We had our third-ever band practice inside with all the windows open after we finally figured out how to loop Hannah Montana on the gargantuan TV. We smoked a LOT of weed (medical, thanks), and reminded ourselves ‘It’s the Climb’ anytime the realities of fitting this trip into our already busy and exhausted lives pressed too close.
Eliana: Back in town to watch the truck parade (which is, marvellously, exactly what you think it is) and the busker competition, we encountered an eddy in the time loop.
Three sexy babes in a band together, playing some goddamn country music. “I wish I was a freight train baby, I wish I was a diesel locomotive, flying off the train tracks, running through your heart.” Was this us in a timeline where we wore cowboy hats more frequently than we already do? Yes, and. That they were the highlight of the buskers competition (shout out to you number 401), is only partially a reflection of my self-centred tendencies and, more truthfully, a reflection of the other content: off-key Taylor Swift covers, bad moons rising, and a man who attempted to explain what a metaphor was (we stopped listening immediately, so are doomed to forever wander the Earth blind to symbolistic intent).
Liz: Climbing the walls for want of fresh air and vistas, Cowboy Genius went on a wee road trip towards the Hokonui Hills. At Dolamore Park, we walked around the edges of the disc golf course among big trees with sturdy wooden signs. Sat at a sturdy wooden picnic bench next to a spindly tree donated by the Scouts. Walked for five minutes up a dappled track with mixed-up lyrics in my head. “I can almost see it, this dream I’m dreaaaaaming but there’s a voice inside my head saying Three Bottle Mo-oon. Faded light in Ju-une. One hand on your heart and the other in mine.”
Liz: The busking festival was called Freeze Ya Bits Off. As a fan of catchy names, I keep wanting to call what we’re here for the GGGs but there are in fact only two G’s in the NZ Gold Guitar Awards. They’ve been going since 1974, with Junior, Intermediate, Senior and Classic sections, with categories including Gospel, Traditional, New Country, Country Rock, Male Solo, Female Solo, Duet, Vocal Group, Singer songwriter, NZ Song and Instrumental. 2024 saw 790 people entering over the three days of auditions. These three days are at the end of the averagely-catchily-named Bayleys Tussock Country Music Festival, which this year ran for ten days from May 24 to June 2, with the not-GGG’s as the culmination.
Also included, the Gore Truck Show, still going strong after more than forty years. We saw more than a hundred trucks do the main street loop that day, competing for categories including Best Curtainsider, Best Lights, Best Tip Truck, Furthest Travelled, Best Female Driver and King Rig. We didn’t go to the bar crawl or the karaoke. We were here to play, not play.
Eliana: We had our fourth-ever band practice.
Liz: Competing was … a surprising choice. We’d been talking to Bray, a musician friend who’d auditioned in eight categories – “everything except gospel” – for the not-GGG’s in 2018, since Bray’s friend Hadley from Mosgiel had come back from Nashville in love with country music. Bray made the solo song final with ‘Moving On,’ an original tune about a break-up being like climbing down a giant’s body. The winner did a cover of ‘Tennessee Whiskey’. Bray also made the duet final with partner Leea, but Bray, Leea and Hadley together did not make the band final since Hadley had never played the drums before and didn’t know a snare from … another kind of drum. (I am also not a drummer.) We talked about folksy manners, pageantry and glitter. Everything was looking glitter.
And then Bray casually mentioned that at the finals after party, a Topp Twin appeared from the heaving crowds to shake Bray’s hand and congratulate them on their song. A Topp Twin shook Bray’s hand. If it’s the climb, then that’s the pinnacle. Sign me up.
Eliana: Below the rollicking “what’s next?” of our ill-researched jaunt was my own narrative cloud. I hadn’t written a song in two years before ‘Three Bottle Moon’ and hadn’t performed in public since 2019. On stage at a New Year’s festival with my band, I felt the flame wink out as “this isn’t fun anymore” looped beneath the beats. What followed was a full retreat from musical life. No more gigs, no more practice, no more fucking social media posts thank god. But at 8:08 am on the Gore RSA stage, flint struck, and I remembered. As easy as seriousness kills joy, silliness can bring it back. I don’t mean silliness as in, “how silly to go to the Gold Guitars,” we were taking this seriously, but only in the sense of “a seriously good time”. This slogan sheltered the trip like angel wings. Stinky-doggy-sticking-out nails house? What a silly time we’re having! Feeling stage fright? We’re just silly friends here for fun.
Liz: When we arrived (at 7.43am, almost but not quite the requisite half-hour early) around seven of the 790 contestants were also in the warmup area. A strip-lit room with pool tables and military photos on the walls. A spray can of Lynx on top of the doors around the dartboard. The floor squeaked like a high school gym.
The day before, we had sat in the audience to check the vibes. We listened to a lot of covers and a few originals including The Sparkles, eleven-year-old cousins in sequinned shorts who sang a song called ‘Hardworking Man’ about their grandfather. Sample lyrics: “Grandad’s a hard working man, when he gets home he has a can / Grandad’s a hard working man, he likes to give his family a hand.” Later, I read that The Sparkles, Georgia and Meila, have been competing at the GGs since they were four or five. Georgia’s mother, Kayla Mahon, has competed since she was seven years old and is now on the event organising committee.
This is an event with a lot of intergenerational love. Some of it set in concrete. While we were busy refreshrefreshrefreshing the NZ Gold Guitar Awards Facebook page to see who had placed in the Senior NZ Song category, I used my audition pass to slip into the back of the Classics finals. The Gore Town & Country Club was lit up like a night sky diorama, twinkles on deep blue. Someone was belting a Brandy Carlile number from the stage.
Then I got to see the hands in the making. The Hands of Fame handprints are a whole lot of concrete rectangles with handprints of famous country musicians in them, dotted around the base of a confusingly silver coloured guitar almost as big as Gore’s trout statue.
The closest I’ve ever got to a Topp Twin hand was pressing my own into both Lynda and Jools’ Hands of Fame handprints, and now I got to see how the hand-making works in real time. Tiny on the stage, massive on the TV screens on either side, Jodi Vaughan was inducted into the hand gallery while being interviewed about her country music career. The concrete heavy, wet, sticky in a rectangular tray. Her bare hands in it. A packed auditorium, cheering.
Eliana: Like all good cowboys, we knew when it was time to hang up our hats. Facebook results pages sufficiently refreshed, we knew we would not be competing in the finals. We decided to cut ourselves loose. We sacrificed our last night’s worth of prepaid accommodation, extinguished the scented candles, loaded up, and rode off into the proverbial midday sunset. There was a feeling of satiation in the 4WD as we waved goodbye to the trout.
We’d played and listened to some goddamn country music, saw a bunch of trucks and picked up the perfect pair of pink floral flares at the hospice shop. As we loosened our kerchiefs and unlaced our chaps, we talked about all the joints we were gonna smoke and cats we were gonna snuggle once we got home. Will Cowboy Genius ever ride again? Surely. Did we have a good time? Yes, and.
LIZ BRESLIN & ELIANA GRAY
*Boy Genius is an indie rock supergroup (currently on hiatus, but legends live forever) consisting of indie superstars Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. As well as kissing each other regularly, they write just the best songs and you should buy their music.