Tim Freedman

Tim Freedman is coming to New Zealand, and Wellington, for the first time! Who is Tim Freedman? He’s the frontman of Aussie band The Whitlams, who hit fame, fortune and grief in the 90’s. He’s the only survivor of the original threesome, the other two members having killed themselves in 1996 and 2000. He carried on with new musicians, keeping the name The Whitlams for most of his career, but also touring as himself (I saw him in London as Tim Freedman). The band have recently reunited and released new material under the name The Whitlams Black Stump, but for his current tour of New Zealand he is performing just under his name.

He's playing at the San Fran, one of Wellington’s smaller venues with a capacity of 500. As it’s in Cuba Street this gave us an opportunity to gain another stamp on our Mosaic passport by dining at Kisa, where we overordered to the extent that we took some of it home in boxes. We then headed up the street to get there in time to stake a place at one of the few tables at the back of the venue. But wait? What’s this? The whole venue has been set out with tables and chairs! Apparently they’re not expecting the youth crowd for this gig, even though we’ve seen previous performers there who attract a somewhat vintage crowd of punks, goths etc. So we staked a place upon one of the benches near the back. Maybe the fact that the doors opened at 6:00pm was a clue...?

The support act came on about half an hour later: Tyson Smith is a local Wellington musician, and played a set of songs old and new (he released an album in 2014, and another last year) with his acoustic guitar. The songs are very long so he only got through five of them. 

After a bit of clearing up and tuning up, Ollie took the stage, shortly followed by Tim Freedman. Together they make up 40% (he’d done the maths for us, and told us this) of The Whitlams Black Stump, who tour and produce albums under that name. their latest, Kookaburra, is what they’re promoting with this latest tour, which is also visiting some of the main centres in Australia, playing with symphony orchestras rather than the small venues they’re playing in New Zealand. Unfortunately they've yet to make it available in New Zealand in CD format, so I haven't bought it.

He started out with Charlie No. 1 and Charlie No. 2, both familiar tunes to the cognoscenti, before diving in to new material. Tim sat at his keyboard throughout, and Ollie variously played pedal steel guitar and other guitar parts. At no point did he wield “one of those keyboard axes, wanted to get out and dance away from the piano”. They played a mixture of songs, but definitely leaning to those that featured a piano-based arrangement, rather than some of the more guitar-oriented tunes of yesteryear. 

They wrapped up the set by around 8:30pm so us fogies could take ourselves off to bed.