Not so for Invercargill musician Liam Fairbairn.
The electric guitarist has spent the past few years away from Southland, navigating his way through a "musical minefield" and has returned to his roots with material that created genre-defying music.
Bluegrass band Brenny and the Bushwhackers played their debut gig at the Southland Musicians Club in Invercargill last Saturday. The eclectic audience were wowed by a uniquely southern sound, thanks in part to the band’s unsung music hero.
"We were sort of writing some of these songs probably 10 years ago or so.
"I was pretty heavily involved doing other music ventures, playing in rock bands and punk bands and that sort of thing," Fairbairn said.
"I went away to Wellington for two or three years and didn’t do a whole lot up there musically.
"I kind of got over some of the exhaustion from being so involved in other musical ventures and then came back down to Invercargill pretty ready to have a go at doing something," he said.
Bass player Chris Chilton reached out to his mate when he heard he was heading back to Invercargill and his request to do covers or originals was the spark that lit Fairbairn’s fire to put out the new music that "was sitting there".
"It probably took moving away and not being exposed to so much of that to realise how much you enjoy it. Missing things like the Bluegrass Festival and the Catlins and going to halls in Southland and playing music and even just going to the rugby and that.
"When you’re away from that, you definitely grow a bit keener on it and some of the songs were probably evolved out of that as well," Fairbairn said.
He described the essence of the Brenny and the Bushwhackers sound as Southland and the genre as a fusion of "bluegrass, a bit of country, a bit of Irish, with a sort of underlying rural punk type flavour".
Brenny and the Bushwhackers are Liam Fairbairn (electric guitar, backup vocals), Brendon ‘Brenny’ Fairbairn (vocals, harmonica, bagpipes), Lachie Hayes (acoustic guitar), Chris Chilton (bass guitar) and Antonio Mercuri (drums).
The band will record their first album next month.
