{"id":438309,"date":"2026-05-21T12:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/438309\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T12:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:15:09","slug":"review-wayne-brown-sings-like-he-mayors-loudly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/438309\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Wayne Brown sings like he mayors \u2013 loudly"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not polished. He\u2019s often out-of-sync with his bandmates. But there\u2019s still a certain pizzazz.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wayne Brown arrived at his gig still disgruntled about the drongos<\/a> he has to deal with in his day job. Auckland\u2019s mayor was booked to play some tunes at Eden Terrace\u2019s The Corner Store as part of the city\u2019s New Zealand Music Month festivities, but he\u2019d been delayed getting there by a lengthy budget committee workshop. Some councillors have been getting cold feet about his proposed 7.9% rates increase<\/a>, almost all of which is going to be spent on running the City Rail Link. Brown spent the brief time he had before going on stage nursing a beer and regaling all-comers with a story about deputy mayor Desley Simpson wringing her hands over her \u014cr\u0101kei constituents<\/a> having to pull their kids out of private school if the budget goes through unchanged.<\/p>\n

The frustration dissipated on stage. Brown sings like he mayors. He\u2019s not particularly polished. In fact, the performance can get pretty ugly<\/a>. He\u2019s loud, sometimes overpoweringly so. He doesn\u2019t always listen well. Rhythms can be shaky. He\u2019s often out-of-sync with bandmates.<\/p>\n

But Christ, he\u2019s confident. Brown arrived on stage after a couple of warm-up songs by his backing band, the Door Jambs, and launched into an almost unrecognisable version of \u2018The Letter\u2019 by The Box Tops with the kind of gusto he usually reserves for complaining about David Seymour<\/a>. Enthusiasm makes up for a lot of musical sins, and Brown has it in spades. His performing style is a hybrid of singing and shouting, backed by workmanlike banjo playing, and it\u2019s honestly pretty enjoyable if you set aside technical proficiency and focus on pure vibes.<\/p>\n

\"TwoThings got loud.<\/p>\n

A hint of self-effacement would have sent the operation spiralling down in flames. But Brown\u2019s great skill is brazening through. He did it after the Auckland floods<\/a> and he did it on stage in Eden Terrace. After the opener, Brown took out his frustrations at the daily barrage of fools he\u2019s forced to suffer on the melody lines of \u2018Bad Moon Rising\u2019 and \u2018The House of the Rising Sun\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Brown was elected, he celebrated by singing \u2018Hit the Road Jack\u2019 with its chorus line amended to a jab at his outgoing predecessor, \u2018Hit the Road Goff\u2019. On Wednesday, he just sang the song as written. But he revealed he\u2019s been working on a version titled \u2018Hit the Road Act\u2019, which will include the line \u2018You like fake more than fact\u2019. He\u2019s hoping to debut it later this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AWayne Brown with The Door Jambs.<\/p>\n

It was a listenable cover. The impromptu version of Willie Nelson\u2019s \u2018Seven Spanish Angels\u2019 that followed was less so, threatening to spill over from lovably haphazard to just plain bad.<\/p>\n

After the show, Brown acknowledged he was a bit rusty. His old band, The H\u0101ng\u012b Stones, split up a few years back when one of its members moved to Tauranga. The Door Jambs were perfectly good musicians but developing chemistry would take time. \u201cWe played together for eight years,\u201d he said, slightly wistfully, of the erstwhile Stones. \u201cThe Beatles only played together for three.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That fact isn\u2019t technically true, but it was delivered with such gusto it was almost enough to make you believe. In that, it\u2019s a bit similar to the Wayne Brown musical experience and the Wayne Brown mayoral experience. Watching it can be uncomfortable. There are ropey moments. But the frontman has an odd charisma, and, in the end, he mostly gets the job done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not polished. He\u2019s often out-of-sync with his bandmates. But there\u2019s still a certain pizzazz.\u00a0 Wayne Brown arrived…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[156,106890,111,213967,139,69,135,1066,762,18130],"class_list":["post-438309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-music-review","tag-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand-music-month","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics","tag-pop-culture","tag-review","tag-wayne-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}