Durban — Music lovers are in for a treat as two of the province’s most loved artists, Guy Buttery and Nibs van der Spuy, are back home and have teamed up for a series of concerts over the next few weeks.
It’s the first time in almost three years that the duo will perform together on home soil and Buttery said, given the multiple projects they were both involved in, it might be a while before they did it again. However, it's definitely not their swansong, he said.
“He (Nibs) phoned me at the end of last year and said, ‘hey, Guy, I’ve got this window of time here’, and I said ‘I’ve also got a window of time’ and he said ‘why don’t we put a KZN tour together?’” said Buttery.
Their first concert is at the KZNSA Art Gallery in Glenwood on February 28. Then they'll take their music to Westville, Salt Rock, Zululand, Botha’s Hill and Pennington.
The two first collaborated in the early 2000s when Buttery, who was still at school, headlined for Van der Spuy and his band, Landscape Prayers.
“When I think about starting off in the whole music industry itself, I always think about doing those tours with Nibs and we’d always end up driving up to Zululand and to strange little towns and then bigger towns. It’s always such an adventure and something that, since the early days in my career felt like a start, a very informative and influential time so doing it with Nibs again feels like sort of homely.”
He said over the next few weeks audiences would be treated to some of their familiar music and many new works too. Buttery said the music “feels fresh every night” and there’s a lot of improvisation on stage because he and Van der Spuy knew each other well, both as friends and as musicians, there was “strong telepathy”.
“I think the other reason is for our own sanity as well that we keep it free and loose so we are not just a jukebox, we are free and exploring and I think that’s also a healthy sign of a good partnership,” he said.
Buttery and Van der Spuy are highly acclaimed artists who have performed at major festivals and venues throughout Europe and South Africa.
Apart from their individual musical awards and successful careers, together they’ve also won the prestigious Standard Bank Ovation Award at The National Arts Festival.
After rave reviews for their live shows and their recorded work, they were invited to perform with the 52-piece KZN Philharmonic Orchestra and were later voted Top Live Show of the Year.
The duo have since released their follow-up Sama-nominated record Live in Lisbon captured on their most recent tour of Europe.
Buttery said it was recorded next to the Tagus River in Belém on the outskirts of Lisbon at their first performance as a duo in Portugal. They had no idea that the concert, which happened just before the Covid-19 pandemic, had been recorded and when they received the tapes much later they had the album mixed and put it out.
“It was a wonderful evening, one of those magical moments which you just didn’t know was going to happen and then the next minute there’s a record.
“It was nominated for a Sama, which we were happy about because we didn’t even know there was going to be an album because we didn’t know they were recording,” Buttery said.
Their debut album called In The Shade of the Wild Fig featured numerous instruments such as the cuatro, mbira, tanpura, sitar and various acoustic guitars, a sign of their interest in different folk styles from around the world.
Independent on Saturday