Don McGlashan has long been a study in movement, both in genre and geography. He went from the drum stool of Blam Blam Blam, the percussion-pipe racks of art-music ensemble From Scratch and the theatre stage of the Front Lawn to being the frontman microphone of the Mutton Birds then making it in a solo career. And that’s not all of it.
There was the year or so he spent in New York as the drummer in a dance company that toured behind the Iron Curtain. And being a ring-in on a Crowded House reunion that took him, via some very big audiences, to an even larger one at Glastonbury.
And that time he and Dave Dobbyn toured the country’s churches, then, a few years later he and Shayne Carter hived off through the nation’s arts festivals.
Late last year, he returned from Vancouver where he lives with Canadian wife Ann McDonell – not far from Stanley Park, biking distance to the community garden, he says – for a pandemic-postponed New Zealand tour off the back of Bright November Morning, his chart-topping fourth and fiercest solo album.
That one was with a band. Next month he’s back to start an 18-date jaunt through smaller venues in smaller places, accompanied by Anita Clark (who records and performs under the moniker
