Raglan is set to come alive this weekend with a feast of foot stomping entertainment.
The inaugural three-day Raglan Country and Blues Festival will showcase some of the finest established and emerging musical talent from Raglan and afar.
Rising local stars Luna Petzold-de la Cruz, 16, and Valentine Kunzler, 18, will take to the Raglan Club deck on Saturday, October 26 from 2pm. The duo, who debuted at Soundsplash earlier this year, is looking forward to performing for the Labour Weekend crowds.
“I like the idea of bringing music to the whole town over a weekend. Valentine and I work really well together, and we like working out what to do with the music,” Luna says.
With Luna delivering soulful vocals as well as playing keyboard and Valentine backing up with bass, the pair will perform an acoustic set of covers and original songs.
“We both have a very diverse range of genres that we like listening to, so we just kind of play around with a lot of stuff. But mostly, we do rhythm and blues, and soul,” she says.
Luna and Valentine will support established local musicians Shayn ‘Hurricane’ Wills (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Freddy Limbert (vocals, drums) who perform together as Handsome Giants.
The festival is the brainchild of Dave Maybee and Ray Diprose, who brought on local musician and marketer Teresa Michels to help with event marketing and promotion.
The trio came together over their love of music, and say the festival is timed perfectly to complement the Raglan Arts Weekend festivities.
“We got together with the Raglan Arts Weekend team to see if we could do this together, because most of the people who go to RAW will go during the day, but they’ve got nothing to do with the evening,” Dave says.
“It’s such a good idea – go and look at art all day and listen to live music at night,” Valentine adds.
By no means a one-off, Dave, Ray and Teresa are looking forward to many more and they hope locals will get behind the festival.
“We know there’s a lot of talent in Raglan and we’ve made ticket prices affordable to make the event accessible for everybody to come along,” Teresa says.
As well as ticketed events, there are also several free concerts including Luna and Valentine’s gig, and another upcoming local singer-songwriter Summer Diprose and band on the Raglan Club deck, ukelele band The Ragtimers at the Growers Market on Friday, October 25 from 5pm and the Ashley Knox Trio at ULO’s Kitchen on Sunday, October 27 from 2pm.
Other acts joining the mix with evening ticketed events are The MojoMasters (Feat. Dave Maybee and Pete Skandera) on Saturday, October 26 at 8pm, followed by the JamesRay Band, and iconic blues act Midge Marsden Band along with Penni Feather on Sunday, October 27 at 7.45pm at the Harbourview Hotel. Premier country, bluegrass and gospel ‘family tradition band’ The Trenwiths hit the Congregational Church on Sunday, October 27 earlier at 6pm.
Visit humanitix.com/nz and search Raglan Country and Blues Festival to purchase tickets.
by Janine Jackson
