Date Night
with Jim &
Roni Perkins
By Glenda Tuaine
When two musicians, meet, find love, marry, relocate to
Rarotonga and start playing gigs the best way to describe
an evening watching them play is “Date night with Jim and
Roni”. But let’s introduce them to you so you get a feel for
how much you will enjoy an evening with these two, you
see both are great singers and musicians which I can testify
to having seen them perform many times including in my
lounge! Jim and Roni Perkins are both equally talented
musicians that met while studying music at Whitireia
Polytechnic in the early 2000’s. During that time both were
playing in different bands pursuing slightly different genres
of music. Jim fills me in.
observing, jamming, creating and composing. It is at that time
that the pair started playing with David Grace and Injustice.
Jim as the guitarist and Roni as a backing vocalist. This is when
they started sharing the stage and went on tour with Andrew
Tosh, Reggae legend Peter Tosh’s son. Jim and Roni realised
they sound pretty good together. I have to chuckle to myself
when they explain this revelation to me! You see having only
seen these two in a band together I can’t imagine them ever not
realising that they would sound amazing so when they earnestly
tell me in the interview “yeah we sounded pretty good” it made
me laugh. My take on this is that these two are natural muso’s
immersed in music with genuine love and passion for it. They
do not have the ego that sadly some musicians acquire and are
knowledgeable and truthful about where they sit in the scene
and the directions they want to take, so the discovery that they
sounded great would have been genuinely exciting for them.
Living the life of musicians in Wellington with a successful
band that is touring something was niggling Jim. “The music
scene in Wellington is awesome but everyone is working for
everyone else. So to lock people down to playing your stuff in
your band you have to: 1- consider how difficult the material is
to play; whether people have time to do it and can they commit
to the group. I wanted to push myself and realised that it would
be impossible to do this unless I pay everyone heaps to secure
them which of course I couldn’t do. So I thought stuff it! I just
thought I will find something to really challenge me and do on
my own and it was right under my nose.” He laughs.
“Roni was already in a band and so was I but we had totally
different paths. We were together as a couple but just out
playing in our bands all the time! She was always out and so
was I and then we would meet up afterwards.” On that note
Roni gives me a wink and adds “We had wind downs after
wards they were the best part” She says, “We were always
doing separate genres I was doing RnB, Soul, Funk and Top
40 stuff in a band called ‘Soul Cake’, an 8 piece band with
dance moves, front and back line. It was hard work but a lot of
fun.” And fun I could believe it would be. You can tell these
two musicians love what they do. They have a natural wit and
humour that only comes from knowing each other’s strengths
and talents and being able to have a laugh or take the Mickey
out of each other when they perform. Jim followed a passion and started to get into Bluegrass music.
He then decided he was going to start singing. One of his
big heroes is Tony Rice who is said to be one of the most
significant living acoustic guitar players in bluegrass, new grass
and flattop acoustic Jazz. In 2013 Tony Rice was inducted into
the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame. Inspired Jim
thought it was high time to learn to play and sing at the same
time. For non-muso’s newsflash, that isn’t as easy it looks! Jim
lets me know it was an absolute nightmare. He laughs and
says “Some of it was quite complicated especially when you do
the finger picking stuff! Anyway so I started singing and then
I said to Roni… Hey darling we are going to play Bluegrass.
I am going to sell all my gear and quit all my bands and let’s
be in a band together!” Jim already knew she could sing and
working on his voice which he jokingly says took a bit of time
but he credits his wife Roni with her singing that gave him
confidence. Her smooth rich voice that moves easily through
the songs she sings with a relaxed style is a pleasure to listen too
so understandably Jim had a great mentor. The next challenge
was
for Roni when Jim advises not only will they be playing
DJ Bais
Bluegrass but she needs to learn the mandolin! Roni’s response
was “What!!! How many strings does it have?” So a couple of
mandolins later which Roni informs me she played for probably
one week, she put it down and picked up the ukulele, a natural
fit for Roni. She did eventually buy a mandolin that she felt
comfortable playing and the ukulele took a back seat.
So as Roni was playing RnB, Soul, Funk and Top 40, Jim on
the other hand was deep in the Rock and Jazz scene playing
in a number of bands and in music terms paying his dues, Fast forward to 2016. Jim and Roni are now a gigging duo.
They came over to Rarotonga for Roni’s brothers’ wedding. On
returning to Wellington they joked that if a teaching job came up
20 • Escape Magazine