He wanted to start a swing band to perform in the third annual Harbour St Jazz and Blues Festival.
The stop into the music shop owned by Deirdre McNulty and her partner Mark Renalson bore fruit and Dee May and the Saints are now preparing to play today, tomorrow and on Sunday as part of the fourth Harbour St Jazz and Blues Festival.
"I thought it sounded like a great idea,'' McNulty said.
"I needed an excuse to sing somewhere.''
Dee May and the Saints are a six-piece swing and rockabilly outfit that only jelled during their first 45-minute set on the Harbour St stage at last year's festival, McNulty said.
McNulty takes vocal duties, Renalson plays the upright bass, Chris Ormandy is on guitar, Conrad Dobrowolski plays the soprano and baritone saxes, Rick Loos plays tenor sax and keys and Park is on drums.
"We were all new as far as getting together went,'' McNulty said.
"It's gone down really well ... No-one else was doing it.
"Having the saxophones ... I feel really lucky to be singing with such a great group of musicians that have such a great sound. It's a nice big full sound.''
Her appreciation of swing and rockabilly only came as she grew older, McNulty said.
Gone were the days when her head was filled with head-banging tunes by AC/DC and Metallica and now it was more along the lines of Squirrel Nut Zippers and Wanda Jackson.
Exposure to new music could do that to people and the Harbour St Jazz and Blues Festival was making jazz fans out of Oamaruvians, she said.
"People who may not have been hugely interested before will go along and think, ‘Oh, that's pretty cool','' she said.
Oamaru's Harbour Street Jazz and Blues Festival organiser Julie Barclay agrees that good music does not have an expiry date.
"That is so true,'' Barclay said.
The theme of the fourth annual jazz festival would be "the influence of jazz in wartime'', she said.
And from today until Sunday, 60 musicians would perform, dancers would shake, rattle and roll and festival-goers in wartime-inspired attire would populate the Victorian precinct, Barclay said.
Closing Harbour St and running two open-air stages, one in the street and one at the farmers' market, would make Sunday a big day.
She expected the lunchtime concert tomorrow at the Steampunk Playground featuring Dunedin's Chocolate to be popular with the picnic blanket crowd.
Talent quests, music and dance workshops, buskers, and costume and dance competitions would fill out the weekend, she said.
Calder Prescott and the Dunedin City Jazz Orchestra, Alexandra's Les Richardson, Oamaru's Vanessa Kelly-Brown and Dunedin's Chocolate would cap another big weekend for the Waitaki town.
The festival had grown a lot in its first three years, she said.
In its first year, the grand finale cabaret drew a crowd of 60 people, the next year 120 came, and the crowd hit capacity at 200 last year at the Loan and Merc, punters dancing until late, Barclay said.
This year, she expected the town to be very busy for the long weekend.
"There's so much happening up here this weekend,'' she said.
