Ask Andrew Spraggon what he thinks will be the highlight of 2010 for Sola Rosa and he says without hesitation "playing on top of the mountain in Queenstown".
Sola Rosa are playing at the Queenstown Winter Festival on Saturday, and Spraggon is looking forward to playing the Jazz Night at the Skyline Gondola on Bob's Peak, as well as checking out New Zealand band Eru Dangerspiel, who are also playing that night.
The show follows a four-gig tour, which Sola Rosa started last Friday in Raglan, followed by Black Barn vineyard in Havelock North.
They are set to play at Opium in Wanaka tomorrow (Thursday) followed by the No 8 Wired Bar in Timaru on Friday.
So why did they decide to play in smaller towns, rather than the larger cities?
"We've toured in the main centres over the past year. We've been to Raglan twice already and we've always had good gigs there," Spraggon said.
"We'd already heard really good things about Black Barn, and lots of bands have had good gigs down there.
"We've never played in Wanaka as a full band, and I personally like playing in the resort towns over winter.
"The No 8 Wired Bar in Timaru has had some good gigs, so our booking agent recommended different towns and venues and we figured it out and went from there," Spraggon said.
"People in the smaller towns would never have seen our live set unless they'd seen us at a festival, so it will hopefully be pretty fresh to them.
"We're basically playing everything from our back catalogue and our latest album Get It Together. We change things up every time we play, really."
Sola Rosa were touring with Wellingtonian songstress Iva Lamkum for a while, but she wanted to go off and do her own thing.
"Iva wanted to go and focus on her album, which she's doing at the moment. So we had to scramble around and find a vocalist to sing Turn Around, Humanised and various other tracks on tour.
"Rachel Fraser was recommended by a friend and she'd recorded with Recloose and Isaac Aesili so we went and checked out her Myspace page and got in touch."
Sola Rosa are known for their funk, soul, reggae, latin, lounge and jazz sounds.
The band is made up of founding member Spraggon, singer/DJ Spikey Tee, drummer Will Scott, bassist Matt Short and guitarist Ben White.
On July 16, they play the USCA Ballroom in Christchurch, followed by Khuja Lounge in Auckland on July 17.
They will play the Waiohika Estate in Gisborne on October 24.
