Bent Horseshoe presents The Mason Brothers

Mason Brothers tour comes to the Manawatu

Kiwi music icon Wayne Mason is hitting the road to Palmerston North with younger brother Paul Bowers-Mason on 20th August on the second installment of their Covid-delayed NZ tour celebrating 50 years of the song “Nature”. It was the late 60s when Wayne wrote the song that became a no. 1 hit for the Fourmyula in 1970, and an anthem for NZ music lovers. Covered by the Muttonbirds in the 90s, it was voted NZ’s best song in the “Nature’s Best” poll of NZ songwriters in 2001.

The Fourmyula were the top NZ band of their day with many other Top 10 hits like “Come With Me”, Ï’ll Sing you a Song” and Ötaki”, all co-written by Wayne, but he has been in many bands since then. The best known of these was The Warratahs where Wayne played piano and wrote more great songs including their first hit “Hands of My Heart”. He left the band in 1994.

These days Wayne plays in a number of bands across various musical genres with touring musicians like Andrew London, Rob Joass and Laura Collins, and he has played his own gigs here too. He can mix it up with easy listening pop, blues, rock and country, and plays a mean boogie woogie piano. Two years ago he teamed up for the first time with his brother Paul who is otherwise found in the double bass section of his local Taranaki orchestra or playing worship music at church in New Plymouth. They played their first gig at the 4th Wall Theatre in that city, and it went down a treat.

Paul, who organises their gigs, moved to New Plymouth recently, and that’s where Wayne was born, so their “NZ tour” started (last year!) on home turf in Taranaki. But Palmerston North is the next stop on the road, and it has a distant family connection. Their mum’s Hughes family lived here in the 1920s in Boundary Street (Tremaine Ave) before farming at Rongotea. And in those distant days their great-grandfather was living in Ruahine Street where the Aztec Motel now stands.

For Wayne and Paul with their new combo, it’s a matter of finding places where at least one of them is already known and Wayne has played here many times for Bent Horseshoe events. In fact he has a long history of playing gigs in this city. Öur promoter remembers him playing in the band Rockinghorse at

the Awapuni Hotel in the 70s”, relates Paul. “We’ll message a few friends relations too!”

The brothers play the whole range of Wayne’s decades of songwriting, from the Fourmyula, to the 70s style of Rockinghorse (“Through the Southern Moonlight”), to the Warratahs, to Wayne’s beautifully poignant solo music of the last twenty-five years, to some stunning solo blues and boogie piano playing from Wayne. With Wayne on vocals and playing guitar or piano, and Paul on string bass and backing vocals, the effect is an ear-pleasing eclectic mix of melodic and rhythmic material, whether you want to sing along, get up and dance or just listen to some mellow sounds.

“We don’t really know where this brotherly adventure is heading”, says Paul. Ït’s taken on a bit of a life of its own. I have always been a huge fan of my brother and at last we get the chance to do some music together”.

Ït was two or three years ago that I realised the only musician who really knew all of Wayne’s amazing music was me, so I guess my goal is to make people aware of just how good he is, and how impressive his songbook is. He does the humility thing very naturally – sometimes too well! Many of the songs are really well known especially if you are over 50, but there is lots of other beautiful stuff too that is absolutely worth hearing”.