Who is Clay ?

Some times you just don’t really know what you have got and how good it is until you leave it …or it leaves you….

If you were fortunate enough to be born in New Zealand then thank your lucky stars and never grizzle about a thing because as Fred Dagg rightly coined it…
‘We don’t know how lucky we are mate, we don’t know how lucky we are!’
As a kid I was lucky enough to have grown up in Able Tasman National Park and then Fiordland where my father was a ranger.
At 27 I left NZ for Europe where I performed 3159 shows over the next 13 years as a solo entertainer under the show name of ‘Spider’. Playing guitar & harmonica with harmonica being my strength. I did some stand up comedy but mainly just worked as a singer/musician. 
Sex, drugs and  rock & roll was all part of buzz  but I use to have these recurring  dreams about hunting and fishing back in NZ and I missed our great out doors.

 After 13 years and flying around the world 13 times I could no longer deny my roots. (I am not talking about the groupies here) I am talking about
the abundant fishing and hunting that New Zealand has on tap for any one with an adventurous heart.
To be honest it was hard to come home and suddenly have my income and audience numbers both reduced by about 90% and the quiet life
of living in the sleepy little sea side village of Mapua made me go a bit nutty so in the first year I invited half of Europe back to come stay at my house.
I got a bad reputation from the locals for all the parties and foreign women staying with me and eventually I pulled my head in and kept quiet. 
Then going from one extreme to another  I would spend days, weeeks alone back in the bush with my 3 pig dogs and pack. It was the first time in years where I was alone with out distraction…for the first time in years where I was truley still.
 My second home was a hut up the Pearce Vally. No power, no internet, no phone cell or other wise. But filthy with pigs, goats, deer and trout.
My value system completely change and my old rock & roll life became a distant fond memory.

 I now found  real pleasure and contentment in laying a  dry fly out on a back country river on the evening rise and watching an eager brown trout snap at it . I got more pleasure with this old simple life than I ever got walking out on to the stage looking like I had had a flower bag over my head due to the copious of charily that I had just snorted up my nose in the toilets with some groupie.
 Simple little things like boiling the billy on the camp fire while there’s fresh kill hanging up and sharing a brew & good belly laugh with a fallow hunter after a hard day on the hill… now that leaves a man feeling content.
 Waking at 5am instead of going to bed at 5 am makes a lot more sense for your body clock.
 Waiting on a clearing as the day breaks gully with my dogs scenting the cool morning breeze gave me time to think…time to ponder…and time to create…
And that is where the new CD Quarry Treed was born. The songs were written in the bush in all sorts of odd places.   ’Dog and knife’ was written out in charcoal on the door of a long drop
up the Pearce Vally.  ‘ Yes dear’ was written at the tin shelter up Holy Oak Clearing while I was sun bathing in the nuddy on the roof where I got snapped by two middle aged women from Germany
who were out hiking. I felt very venerable but it gave me some inspiration. The one that sicks out the most is single man….but that is another yarn…

The name Clay has a few meanings for me. It was the name of a great pig dog that I went on a hunt with when I first came back to NZ.
It is also the nom de plumm  that I use on various hunting forums.
But the main reason is its the ground on which I was born and where I live to day and signifies being grounded. Yellow in colour and known as the Moutere clay

So if you don’t take your self too serious and like me you get enjoyment out of the simple little things in life then get your self a copy of Quarry Treed or flogg it off a mate and burn it cause I don’t mind either way

Damon        AKA Clay