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Warkworth music lovers will get the chance to enjoy a piece of New Zealand music history when Railway Pie plays at the Tahi Bar on Sunday, March 30.
Formed in 1969 in Palmerston North by a gang of mates who shared a love of old-time blues music, Railway Pie is New Zealand’s oldest surviving jug band and traditional blues group.
A jug band typically combines conventional instruments with improvised or homemade ones such as washboards and jugs – hence the name.
Railway Pie has seen a few line-up changes, but three of those original friends are still with the group – harmonica player and lead vocalist Jack Craw, guitarist and fiddle player Terry Toohill, and jug player, guitarist and singer Jim Crawford.
Bass player and singer Garry Trotman has been with the band since 1972 while Warkworth’s Al Young has also been on board for many years playing guitar and mandolin as well as sharing the vocal duties.
Railway Pie is named after a long-gone delicacy of NZ train travel – the classic meat pie – and was once one of several Kiwi jug bands that formed when the folk music explosion of the 1960s brought with it a revival of interest in traditional roots music.
The folk boom is long over and the other bands have all faded away, but Railway Pie remains with its roots still firmly in the 1920s sounds of leading African-American jug bands, especially the Memphis Jug Band and Cannon’s Jug Stompers.
Young says that was the pop music of its day in the Southern US.
“Many people think of the blues as sad music, but the old jug bands were playing dance music to people who were out for a good time at pubs, clubs and parties, and the music reflects that,” he says.
Railway Pie’s own up-tempo, driving style of jug music has won over many audiences not to mention accolades with its recent CD release, Caution 15, a finalist at the 2024 Aotearoa New Zealand Folk Alliance ‘folk album of the year’ awards.
Now Warkworth has the chance to try a taste.
Railway Pie at the Tahi Bar, 1 Neville St, Warkworth, Sunday, March 30, 4-6pm.
