Wilson Dixon, taking the stage at Te Auaha Tapere Nui, hails from Cripple Creek, Colorado. At least, that’s what his accent says. So does his appearance – his face partly obscured under a large Stetson, dark glasses and a moustache. And then there’s his guitar. He’s a country singer, and we’re going to get large doses of that between some delicious repartee.  

Purporting to have visited New Zealand during Covid, “this pandemic thing”, he is pleasantly surprised by our arrival arrangements. The audience revels in his take. It’s the first of many similar send-ups of subjects supposedly serious. Waiouru, our military base, comes in for dry humour.

We are treated to the first song, apparently featured in one of Dixon’s many albums. I’m impressed with his audibility, given both accent and microphone. With slow plucks of his guitar to accompany words we can all hear from his perch on a high stool, our artist is at his seasoned, relaxed laconic best.

Much of Dixon’s humour displays linguistic mischief. Not for him a reliance on vulgarity or possibly offensive jokes to get laughs. He flips the roles of a grandmother and her dog, offers a new definition of an ass and expresses entirely believable astonishment at the naming of an iconic building?

Characteristic, also, is making us laugh when we really feel we shouldn’t. With his hands clasped woefully on his guitar, Dixon tells of his wife’s desertion – a situation giving rise to some of the loudest laughs of the evening. And now we get a rendition of the eponymous ‘Love Don’t Live Here Any More, You Do’.

His ex-wife dispensed with in an anecdote that’s the nearest he comes to risqué, Dixon turns his attention to animal antics, including a remotely skilled horse, what’s odd about the Annual Cripple Creek Pumpkin Festival – and what can be worse than a predicament he found himself in?

There’s a huge amount to savour in this performance. Here’s a man in a cowboy hat with a guitar who just talks and sings. Ah, but such talk! And oh! such singing.

Dixon is used to full houses – and he’s in for many more.

P.S. Wanna know who plays Wilson Dixon?

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer