Dave Dobbyn- Australian Tour 2016

It's been many years since I last saw Dave Dobbyn play live so I was excited to catch his Australian tour stop at Max Watt's last night. The crowd was full of Kiwi expats, which was fitting for such a musical icon of New Zealand. The opening act was Jesse Sheehan, who played a solo set on acoustic guitar. Doing songs from his debut album (produced by Neil Finn), Jesse sounded great and got the crowd involved in a couple numbers. For his last song he switched to electric guitar and brought out his fellow Dave Dobbyn bandmates to play along with him.

Dave Dobbyn got a huge reaction from the crowd as he emerged on stage and started off the evening with "Whaling." Touring in support of his new album Harmony House, he played a few songs off of it but mostly delved into his extensive back catalogue. We got to hear Th' Dudes and DD Smash era songs "Outlook For Thursday," " Devil You Know" and "Be Mine Tonight." The Loyal album tracks "Loyal," "Love You Like I Should" and "Slice Of Heaven" had some of the biggest audience sing alongs of the night. The 1990s were represented by "Naked Flame," "The Lap Of The Gods" and "Language" from my favorite album Twist, and "Blindman's Bend" and "Beside You" off The Islander. Dave sounded amazing throughout his over hour and a half set and everyone in the crowd had such a great time as they sang along to every song. For the encore they played "You Get So Lonely" and finished the evening with "Welcome Home." This was such a fun and uplifting show to be at and just confirmed Dave's status as a New Zealand national treasure.

Here's the video for the single "Angelina" off Harmony House: