Luke Hurley Concert

Showtime Auckland – 7pm – 18th March

gigs, music

The show on Friday is gonna be Hi Fi.  The sound system is a top of the line Bose system. The soundman is Paul Crowther ex Split Enz drummer and inventor of the world famous hotcake effects pedal.

My guests are Duncan Gilles songwriter and Basant Madur – world renowned tabla player. The venue is a much loved long standing one. The show starts at 7pm and cost is $20 at the door or you can pay online to save time. There will be new songs played on the night. A new album is being mixed and mastered right now. Come along and be among the first to hear those songs along with some old favourites / different arrangements. Come along – save the canaries.

Trying to find a venue wasn’t easy. The auckland city art gallery auditorium was my first approach – such fond memories of doing shows there in the 80s. That venue is now five times the hire cost since Auckland (city) turned into a corporation.

So i had to look elsewhere. That’s when my very kind friend Audrey van Ryn offered to book the venue we are using on Friday. Note: The Pioneer Women’s Hall is on the corner of High St and Freyberg Place in Central Auckland right near Metropolis.

Luke Hurley in concert

Please try to make it and if you can’t then perhaps you could treat a friend to a ticket.
Be safe, talk soon
luke

ps please let me know what you are keen to read about as these blogs depend on your feedback.

For instance would you like me to post up lyrics to my songs/ or tips about places to play/
be part of this please and lets get a two way communication happening.

Busking is ‘the canary in the mine’ – concert Mar 18th

gigs, music, news

Very grateful for the support subscribers have given the somewhat difficult cause we are currently winning. It’s gone from the hopelessness of being stripped of my tools of trade to complete restitution largely due to your support.

Now it’s time for a celebration concert on March – Friday the 18th at 7pm. Please come along for an informal evening where I play for you and we take tea breaks and just chew the fat like in days gone by. Like in a folk club (but) without the formality and hushed Intensity In this event you are free to talk and take smoko breaks and holler and generally be yourself.

Luke Hurley Concert

Bring some bikkies if you wanna share food and your fav tea bags. Ha ha. We can supply the entertainment and hot water for tea. Venue is the Pioneer Women’s & Ellen Melville Hall in central Auckland – Freyberg Place.

$20 a ticket will cover venue and other costs. You will be emailed directly by secure PayPal P.S click on red buttons if you make a mistake & need to deduct amounts from the shopping cart.

Also appearing: Basant Madur & Duncan Gilles

Please use the buttons below for concert tickets

One ticket $20 (NZD)
2 tickets $40 (NZD)
4 tickets $80 (NZD)
Group of 10 -bring 9 of your buddies & you get a free ticket $180.00 (NZD)

Please book your ticket if serious about coming but there will be a limited number of door sales on the night.

If you feel like a beer then join us for a few drinks at the mezze bar close by right after the show.

Let’s do something simple easy going and fun and catch up to celebrate a new beginning. If it works we can easily make it regular. A cheap night out and a chance for us all to catch up without having to spend a fortune. Parking is relatively cheap if you use the Victoria St carpark or Downtown carpark.

I would really appreciate seeing all of you there…

Other news
Got interviewed by Vaughn Davis on Radio Live Waitangi Day day 10am to 11am. It’s on line if you wanna hear it.

Also TEDxAuckland posted up my river song. I introduced it with a dig at the mega supermarket that wouldn’t let me busk outside. The manager and assistant manager told me I couldn’t play & I told them I could. With a “we give up” they left me to it and I lost interest anyway. Ha ha

“Busking is the canary in the mine. If we are not allowed to play at the drop of a hat then that’s a sure indication of a dysfunctional operating system.”

“Impression without expression equals depression”

Try it wherever and whenever you can. Just play to people. It’s a benevolent human interchange and a basic human right

Marcus Turner died suddenly I went to his funeral in Dunedin. Very moving. His NHNZ TV colleagues shared some great insights about him. The guy was a genius. It’s hard to find the last album Marcus made. It’s called laid down. If you go to the kiwi folk website you will find a way to procure it. How can an album so great go unrecognised? It’s unbelievable. Find it. Play it. You will be astonished. What a great man. God bless his soul.

Call me if there’s anything I can do for you or if you need to know more about the 18th. 021 0259 2919
Be safe. Play soon. Come along on the 18th and “Save a Canary” 🙂

Luke

To Be Perfectly Honest

news, song lyrics, Song Stories

Honesty is an elusive quality is it not?

“You don’t make money telling the truth”

So what do you do? Confess  to anyone who will listen?

Pray?
Despair?
Deny?

I like the third option. My life in music has been one of a denial of reality in one sense and a keen awareness of it in another. It’s like there are two Lukes. The one who made Make Room and the one who made High Risk.  Working on the new album I discover a hybrid of the two.

The song – Honesty off the Reha album lyrics are below

Well I see you’re pretty young
And you’ve got a fine degree
And you look so beautiful
That you’d make the blind man see

When I saw you – I just knew
That you would be a friend to me
And I would be a friend to you
We could share some honest company

Honesty (honesty) means a lot to me
Honesty (honesty) means a lot to me

Cause a man could fall in love with you
If you gave him half a chance
But I wonder if this love is true
Or is it just romance

Just romance
Just romance

Honesty means a lot to me
Honesty, honesty means a lot to me

Honesty, honestly means a lot to me
Honesty, honestly means a lot to us – yes it does

Yes it does.

I wrote this song in the days when I visited Auckland to get a break from Dunedin. In those days no one busked. One day I was busking in Vulcan Lane  one very quiet mid afternoon in summer. When I say quiet…it was dead and I was playing at the High St end near the hot potato and yoghurt ice cream shop (a very popular lunch spot but it went broke on account of cash being extorted from the business on a daily basis).
A wonderful elderly gentleman was dancing to the music I played one very quiet mid afternoon in summer. When I say quiet…it was dead.

To give you an idea of how conservative Auckland was in those days way back in the mid 80s….The lady in the hot spud shop called the cops and had him arrested. The bottle he had been holding  was confiscated and left with her. She put it in my guitar case probably assuming it was a bottle of turps or something.Taking it out of its brown paper bag I discovered a brand new unopened bottle of Napoleon brandy.

Thank God things have changed. Nowadays you could dance naked  in Vulcan Lane and no one would complain
There was a girl who would often passed by  walking her dog .She was always friendly and appreciated the music. Few there were who did .So  bedazzled was I….and imagined her to be closer to an angel than a human. Young men worship beautiful women and this sometimes inhibits their ability to strike up a meaningful dialogue. Romance was out of the question….her being so perfect and unreachable.Just as well. Probably would hve been big trouble!

In the years since its dawned on me that society rewards  dishonesty. “You don’t make money telling the truth”…and commerce thrives on war.

But I wasn’t to know that then and still feel more drawn to the light than to the darkness but I’m just as much a creature of the night as the next guy…which leads to another song in another blog coming up soon

 

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
― Virginia Woolf

“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. “One word of truth outweighs the world.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Be safe and please respond if you have a thought for this little guy