A great all-rounder of the New Zealand music scene, Rikki Morris has stepped out from behind the sound-control desk to again take the spotlight as star performer.
The singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, sound recordist and engineer, producer and mentor to so many, started the week with plenty of feel-good factor having played a massive sold-out concert with Th’ Dudes at Auckland’s Powerstation last Saturday.
Today, he’s Rikki Morris, solo artist again, with the release of his first solo album in 28 years, appropriately called About Time, and a six-date national tour starts tonight at the Tuning Fork in downtown Auckland.
“My wife Janey came up with that title. I thought that’s perfect,” says Morris.
“It’s slightly daunting because I haven’t released a new album in 28 years, the last being Everest in 1996. I’m proud of that record. It didn’t really do much but there’s some great songs on it.”
The Tuning Fork concert will be with a band, “but the other shows will be a lot smaller”, he says.
“I’m taking Chet O’Connell, the fantastic guitarist, and my youngest daughter, Oni Kidman. She’s opening the show.
“Oni’s only 20 and a budding singer-songwriter. She’s got a single and EP out and is working on another EP with my niece Maude Morris, an up-and-coming engineer producer. Oni’s great, she just needs some experience to get out there and play some shows.
“The songs I’ll be playing will definitely work in a stripped-back fashion. If you’ve got a good song it doesn’t matter how you play it. It’s going to stand up,” Morris says.
“The venues we’re playing are quite intimate, so there’ll be a lot of stories. I learned how to tell stories from Greg Johnson.”
He knows the tour will be a good opportunity to catch up with people he hasn’t seen in a while.
“Yes it is, and I’ve realised I’ve never done a headlining tour. I’ve played so many shows around the country with other people but never done my own shows,” says Morris.
“This is kind of new for me. It’s exciting but nerve-wracking because I haven’t done any original songs like that in a long time.
“Every New Year I would make the same promise – this is the year I start recording a new album. I had hundreds of songs sitting around. It can’t be that difficult?
“And therein lay the problem. Pre-production would take 10 times longer than recording the album itself. The process appeared daunting.”
Morris sought the advice and guidance of another outstanding all-rounder in Kiwi music, producer and multi-instrumentalist Wayne Bell.
“He’s an old friend who drummed on Everest. A fine producer, musician and an even better bloke.
“Wayne encouraged me to methodically sift through my favourite original songs, and concentrate on the ones I always seemed to drift back to when I picked up a guitar or sat at the piano.”
With four “definites” chosen, Rikki and the band went into The Lab studio in October 2018 and recorded four rhythm tracks, with Bell as producer.
The new album opens with The Saddest Sound, written by his late-great brother Ian Morris, who amongst many roles and achievements in NZ music was a member of a legendary Kiwi rock-pop band.
“The album is dedicated to Ian. Without his guidance especially in my youth I wouldn’t have had a career in music, I think.
“After Th’ Dudes broke up in 1980, Ian recorded a bunch of acoustic demos,” Morris says.
“He gave me a cassette tape of the songs he’d recorded and I fell in love with one in particular, called The Saddest Sound.
“During one of the Covid lockdowns, I found the cassette whilst clearing out some boxes. After dusting off my cassette player and reminiscing over these long lost demos, I knew I had to record The Saddest Sound. I’m fairly certain it would’ve been a Dudes’ song had they stayed together.”
The track has been released as a single, along with The One Thing I Can’t Live Without, and Before You Go, a song that got its first NZ radio play on East FM, based in Howick.
Morris’ Bandcamp page quickly encompasses his career, saying: “With over 35 years’ experience in the music industry, Rikki has won NZ Music Award Tuis, the prestigious APRA Silver Scroll, NZ Radio Jingle Awards, and written and performed a NZ number one single.”
That number one song, Nobody Else, was out in 1988 and re-released last year for a special 35th anniversary version featuring Anika Moa.
He’s also been an influential mentor, a part of his life that could also extend into a news feature story in its own right, with a few of the Kiwi musicians he guided in the early stages of their careers being Lorde (Ella Yelich-O’Connor), Gin Wigmore, Finn Andrews (The Veils), and Kimbra, to name but a few.
“I’m a bit of a jack of all trades,” says Morris. “I did a lot of radio [advertising] jingles down the years. I don’t do them anymore. That whole scene has changed. I’ve done TV and a few little radio shows as well. Recording studios – I’ve done a lot of stuff.”
The Morris family settled in Glendowie in 1966 after moving to New Zealand from England when Rikki was six.
He attended Sacred Heart College, a famous musical development ground for members of two of the nation’s greatest bands, Split Enz and Th’ Dudes.
“There must have been something in the tuck shop pies.”
His brother Ian was three and a half years older and his greatest influence and mentor.
Rikki remembers when Ian first encountered his future Dudes bandmate, songwriting collaborator and friend, Sir Dave Dobbyn.
“They met when they were 11 years old, the first day of first-form at Sacred Heart College. They became firm friends. Dave was the funniest guy, brilliant comedian, even at that age.”
Rikki recalls Ian, Dave and Peter Urlich as teenagers playing records and quickly evolving their songwriting and performance at the Morris family home in Pembroke Crescent.
“I was their biggest fan. I would go and see them whenever I could. When I first heard Be Mine Tonight, I knew they were going to be huge. That would have been at the beginning of 1978.
“That track, personally, as Th’ Dudes’ biggest fan, that’s my favourite New Zealand song of all time. I still remember the first time I ever heard it, at Windsor Reserve in Devonport.
“Originally it was called Quite Frankly, but they changed it to Be Mine Tonight. I was in the sixth form, there with some mates, and I thought this is going to get serious now.
“It just stands up today that song. Just beautifully recorded and superb musicianship. When you think about it, those guys were young. They were the real deal.
“Rob Aicken, who was producing, and Ian engineering, those guys were just breaking all the rules at Stebbing Studios just to come up with those amazing sounding records.”
Rikki was a month out of finishing high school when Ian and Th’ Dudes asked him to work for them.
“Talk about the university of life. I left school at the end of 1978, straight into working with Th’ Dudes in February 1979, and that year they were the biggest band in the country.
“In 1979, if you could have looked above the Earth about 10 miles up where are all the great bands in the world right now, who are they, definitely Th’ Dudes playing a Saturday night at the Hillsborough in Christchurch. On their day, they were probably one of the best bands in the world.”
Morris’ versatility has been consistent down the years, and just a brief glimpse of the variety of work is demonstrated by his stint as a backing vocalist for Jimmy Barnes during the legendary Aussie’s Soul Deep era in the 1990s, alongside Debbie Harwood and Annie Crummer.
He was a roadie for Th’ Dudes, then their sound engineer and when they broke up, he worked as sound engineer for The Crocodiles before ending up in the band when based across the Tasman.
There have been many inspiring collaborating players and producers, and even though he’s very experienced in engineering and producing for other artists, he’s open to ideas and suggestions from others.
“With my songs, definitely. I’ve worked with some great producers. My brother Ian was a brilliant producer and he took my songs in the past – he didn’t so much change them – he embellished them with different chords, different sections he would come up with. Didn’t change the melody or the lyrics, but he’d change the chords. I’m totally open to that.
“Eddie Rayner was the same. He’d say let’s see what we can do, let’s change it up. And Wayne Bell is the same.
“When I produce albums, I like to do that too. I remember when I was doing some demos for Gin Wigmore when she was just 16-17.
“There was a song called Hallelujah she wrote and I changed a few minor chords to a major chord and she was quite resistant.
“She was young and songs are your baby,” Morris says. “But she was open to it and we did this demo and when she finally recorded it and I listened back, those chordal changes have stayed. That song was on her first album.”
