Brought to you by Muzic.NZ's Lisa Jones, Muzic Speak is a fresh new interview series which pays homage some of the best up and coming acts this country has on offer.

First up is Wanaka locals Powder Chutes, a band which has recently taken the NZ music world by storm with their rock version of Shapeshifter's Dutchies. Described by Radio One 91FM as "already punching well above their weight", Powder Chutes have a bright future ahead of them.

Starting with introductions - who are the members of Powder Chutes, what instruments do each of you play, and how did you all get involved in music?

Kia Ora, we’re Powder Chutes and the band consists of Archie on drums, Clarke on guitar, Henry on vocals, and Otis on bass, and we’ve all been involved in music from a very early age.

When and how did become Powder Chutes become a reality?

The band started at primary school believe it or not. Once we hit high school, the music department was really active, and we were lucky to have Mat Doyle as our Head of Music, who’s a genuine legend, and was pretty influential in the band’s early journey.

Otis came across from another band in 2019, and then during the first Covid lockdown in early 2020 we wrote some of the songs that started to define the Powder Chutes sound we know today.

For those that have never heard of Powder Chutes before, how would you describe your music?

In reviews we’ve had comparisons to everyone from Tool, Highly Suspect, Silverchair, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Stooges… all of which we’ll take as a compliment, but honestly, we just make music that feels right to us.

We hold ourselves to a pretty high standard when we’re songwriting, and whilst we’re clearly a rock band, we don’t feel the need to restrict ourselves or conform to any conventions.

We’ve grown a long way away from the main musical centres, and that’s great, because we’ve been able to develop our own sound without being influenced by any specific scene.

What is the music scene in Wanaka like? Are you part of a tight-knit community?

There is a surprisingly vibrant music scene in Wanaka, but obviously, it’s a smaller pool than the bigger cities, so the rock bands rub shoulders with, the singer songwriters, DJs and ukulele orchestras more than they would in Wellington or Auckland.

It’s definitely a supportive community, and tight-knit in the positive use of the term, but welcoming and not cliquey at all.

Being the kind of town it is, there’s an interesting and eclectic mix of creatives and some interesting locals, such as P.Digsss floating around.

We also consider Queenstown to be part of our community and there are some incredible bands and musical talent over there.

Being based in Wanaka while trying to make a name for yourself must come with its own challenges. What are some of those challenges, and how did you overcome them?

There’s obviously challenges being so far away from the main cultural centres, but for every downside, there seems to be an upside.

There’s a ‘Studio Stories’ podcast with Minuit here, in which they describe moving to Auckland and how to that music scene it appeared they’d arrived fully formed, whereas they’d actually been playing live for years honing their craft in the provinces... and that’s kind of what we feel like, people are often surprised by how solid we are live.

The main challenge is getting our name known and gaining a following from afar, and to be honest we’re just plugging away playing live shows, writing the best music we can, and promoting ourselves in as authentic manner as possible.

Recently our headline shows in Wanaka have started to sell out, which means that we must be doing something right… and this gives us a   lot of confidence when we’re starting to play shows further afield where we’re not as established.

If our home crowd have turned into early adopters, that’s a huge achievement.

You have already achieved such a lot in your relatively short time within the music industry. What are some of your stand out moments? 

Yeah, we feel as if we’ve been pretty fortunate that although we’re all still aged 17 to 19 we’ve had some huge moments. In no particular order, some of the Powder Chutes highlights would be:

·  Recording at Studio Sublime in the Waitaki Valley. This is a really cool, completely unpretentious, and entirely eccentric studio that’s welcomed us since 2020 when none of us were over 16. Steve (Harrop), Fenella and Tom have been very instrumental in capturing our sound, and a visit there is just good for the soul. Steve recently chose Dutchies as a song that defines what their studio is capable of in an article in the Otago Daily Times, which was a massive compliment.

·  Having our Dunedin show at The Crown Hotel be reviewed positively in the international print edition of Classic Rock Magazine. This might not seem that huge, but there were only five live reviews that month, The Black Crowes, Janes Addiction, Nickelback, Sir Rod Stewart… and… well… Powder Chutes! We were blown away by this. We’ve also had two tracks be chosen as one of their international Tracks of the Week, alongside artists such as Foo Fighters and Joan Jett.

·  Our track Moths making it into The Rock 2000 at #1730 in 2023 was pretty crazy, and they’ve just picked up on Straights too, which is cool.

·  Opening for ZZ Top, Pat Benatar, Stone Temple Pilots and The Angels in front of 18,000 people made us realise we’re comfortable on stages big or small.

·  Making #9 in the NZ Hot Singles Charts with Moths To The Flame.

·  Working with Joe Murdie of Bunker Street Film Co, to create music videos for Moths, Merchants and Straights has been incredible, and we’re shooting the video for next track Scalpel with him very shortly.

·  We’ve also valued collaborating with friends and whanau wherever we can, such as our friend Nat Warburton putting together the visualiser for Dutchies and using friend's photos for cover shots.

·  Powder Chutes being shouted out by Johnny from Highly Suspect at the Christchurch show was pretty mental.

·  Being chosen by Alien Weaponry, who are idols of ours, as the winners of the first Thrash More competition was mind-blowing, and also gave us a much needed cash injection to complete our album.

·  Having Merchants used as the end credit song for a short film called Planet 13 is also very cool. This is currently winning awards and doing really well on the Film Festival Circuit, and should be out sometime next year

·  Finally, selling out home town headline shows is incredibly humbling and rewarding for us… we’d like to start doing that wherever we go!

There was some tough competition in last year's Thrash More Competition. How did it feel when you were announced as the winners?

Absolutely blown away, because yes, there was some seriously stiff competition

Alien Weaponry are massive idols of ours, both musically and because they’ve done things their own way and never allowed their youth to define, them or their music.

One pretty cool thing was that when the Top 3 bands were announced, Powder Chutes, Fan Club and Rumpus Machine (the top 3) had a group chat going, sharing knowledge and generally supporting each other, and that was one of the subtle, yet really positive aspects of that competition. We’re glad we won but would have been stoked for either of those guys if they’d won too.

The Thrash More competition, run by AJ Hackett Bungy NZ (AJHBNZ) is actually pretty unique, in that it’s aimed at the 13 to 25 age group, meaning school bands, university bands, but also any bands with members under 25 can enter. There are not too many other music contests that are that broad.

The $3000 aspect of the prize that we could feed back into the community was amazing, and we were able to purchase a beautiful Gibson Les Paul to donate back to the Mount Aspiring College (MAC) music department that’s done so much for us over the years.

Dutchies is one of Shapeshifter's most popular tracks, and it has fast become one of your fan favourites. What inspired you to cover such an iconic EDM track, transforming it into a rock masterpiece?

We weren't planning on having a cover song on the album at all, but one day Otis and Archie were driving over the Crown Range to a gig in Queenstown and Dutchies came on the stereo. There was a full lightbulb moment where Otis and his dad Murph simultaneously said that Powder Chutes would do an amazing version of Dutchies.

That idea then sat there, was mentioned at rehearsal a few times, and slowly took root. When Clarke launched into the main riff for the first time, we all knew that we could do it justice.

Dutchies is just such a classic Kiwi anthem, and it was appealing to us that the original is entirely EDM, with no guitars, or analogue instruments in it at all as far as we know... so we thought that it would be fun, and also challenging to approach it from the opposite perspective of being entirely instrument based, without any digital element.

We do know Diggy, as he lives locally, so our paths cross here and there, and we've also spent time with some of the other Shapeshifter boys as part of YAMI, so there was definitely an element of paying homage to a band that we look up to and consider to be Kiwi Royalty.

Trying to do the original justice was obviously the main challenge; early on we mentioned that we were going to tackle it to a few people, and the raised eyebrows always projected disbelief, but we knew we could pull it off.

The vocals in particular were quite a mental challenge, as Diggy's voice is so iconic; so early on we just encouraged Henry to not worry about singing like Diggy, or about being compared to him, and to just sing it like himself, and once that challenge was tackled, the rest fell into place.

We follow the structure of the original reasonably closely, except for the intro section which was something we already had for another of our own songs, and is entirely Powder Chutes; once we decided to start the song with that we realised that our version of Dutchies could stand alone from the original, and compliment it, rather than be a simple cover version.

We’ve been blown away by the positivity and words of support from the Shapeshifter boys, as well as Tiki Taane:

“Wow. I'm blown away! This is so wicked. You guys have put so much work into this, the arrangement, finding ways of playing the textures in the track using your palette. Amazing, I really love it. I'm a big fan of guitar based music, and I think this sounds sick. Really well played. Vibing. Tight but raw. Shot boys!” – Sam Trevethick

”Wow lads. Great bloody work. You boys have a bunch of killer tunes to be well and truly proud of, and absolutely love what you have done with Dutchies. Honoured to be honest. Diggy.”  – P.Digsss

“Holy F*%k this slays! I opened up the file while making breakfast in the kitchen and the first thing I wanted to do was kick the chairs over, jump onto the table, and dive onto the couch like a nuttah. I can’t wait to see you guys play this live, it’s such a sick and fresh version.”  – Tiki Taane

It would have been easy for them to dismiss our communications and efforts, but instead they threw back unreserved positivity and encouragement, and for that we are extremely humbled and grateful. 

You’re heading to Wellington next month to finish up your co-headline tour with Haast Hunter. What have you enjoyed the most about touring with Haast Hunter, and is this a partnership we may see more of in the future?

It’s been a very positive alliance with Haast Hunter, and it all sprang from simply digging each other’s music and interacting on socials. The whole tour has seen a complete lack of egos, and that includes the bands we’ve had onboard at the various gigs such as Achilles Complex, Red Weekend and Cheap Thrills.

It’s kinda cool that our music is pretty different, as we like that kind of musical diversity, and love playing with different artists such as Big Sima (hip-hop), or Left Behind (reggae), as well as similar bands such as Dolphin Friendly.

On a very practical note, it also meant that Haast Hunter could use our backline and resources on the South Island, and we could use there’s on the North Island. As a young band paying our own way, and with little in the way of funding available for national touring, that kind of common sense trade-off has been really cool.

Catch our Welly debut at Underworld Tavern on 30 November with Haast Hunter and The Bravo Uniform Mikes.

We’re also playing Cabana Bar in Napier on 29 Nov supporting The Bravo Uniform Mikes.

All tickets are available at Under The Radar (nudge nudge).

What NZ bands and musicians would you be keen to collaborate and/or tour with, and why?

There’s so many but joining the forthcoming I Am Giant tour would be a dream come true.

New Zealand has such a rich musical texture… so off the top of our heads, and in no particular order we’d love to play with Kora, Alien Weaponry, Dolphin Friendly, Sea Mouse, Troy Kingi, Shapeshifter, Head Like A Hole, Little Bushman / Trinity Roots, Shihad, Pull Down The Sun, Sidewinder, Devilskin… the list could just go on and on.

Collaboration wise, Kora, Tiki Taane, Shapeshifter and Tom Scott would be incredible, but we wouldn’t say no Neil Finn or Lorde either LOL.

What can we expect to see from Powder Chutes in the coming year?

We have 3 more tracks to be released before our debut album, the next of which is Scalpel on 29th Nov, followed by Vendetta and The Other, the last of which might surprise a few people.

The debut album’s complete, and we just need to do all the design work and figure out the details to organise a physical release to coincide with the album drop.

We’re really proud of the album, and hope it finds a place in people’s hearts.

An album release tour for April and May 2025 is in the works.

Before then we’re playing a few local shows, plus Napier and Wellington for the first time at the end of November, and in Jan will be paying a couple of shows with our friends East York. We’d love to start getting on some of the bigger festival line-ups, and we’ll work towards this.. Electric Avenue, Rhythm & Vines and Homegrown one day soon hopefully!

We’ve all just moved in together, which is a new frontier for all of us, so hopefully that will make us more prolific; we’ve already got new tracks in the works for the next album, and just plan to keep producing music that we’re proud of.

Basically… keep doing what we’re doing as best we can.

As up and comers yourselves, what advice do you have for other up and coming musicians?

Stay true to yourselves, work hard but keep things positive, aim to be the best you can, but put egos aside and stay humble.

Contests and competitions such as Smokefree are almost unavoidable, but don’t ever feel less of yourselves if you aren’t chosen by whatever judging criteria they impose; Powder Chutes never really fitted what Smokefree were after, and that’s ok, just walk your own path and find your people…

Play the music you want to hear!

Thanks so much for the questions Lisa, and for everything that Music.Net.NZ does to support kiwi music of all shapes and sizes!

Photo Credit:
Photo 1: Nat Warburton
Photo 2: Downunder Photography
Photo 3: Nat Warburton
Photo 4: Murph.30 (at Big Fan, Auckland)

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