How did Dave Dobbyn become our biggest music festival drawcard?

Promoters can't get enough of the bespectacled 67-year-old, who is booked on bills next to Ice Spice and Shapeshifter.

Scan your eyes across our current crop of New Year’s festival line-ups and you'll see some instantly recognisable names.

Ice Spice, the surging Bronx rapper known for her short, blunt, rump-shaking sets, is headlining Rhythm & Vines, the three-day party in Gisborne that also has EDM heavyweights Luude, RL Grime and Koven.

Down south, Rhythm & Alps has high-energy dance DJs Becky Hill and Andy C as the biggest names on its bill, alongside a 25th anniversary performance from festival stalwarts Shapeshifter.

And yet, just below those headliners, is another name announcing a bespectacled, genteel 67-year-old with a knighthood, a cheeky smile, a wardrobe of loud shirts and a catalogue of hits spanning back to the 1970s.

Can you spot him?

When Sir Dave Dobbyn hits the stage in Gisborne and Wanaka this December, it will, say organisers, be the highlight for many of the tens of thousands of young fans in the crowd.

Dobbo?

Really?

How the hell did this happen?

“He’s our most requested act,” Rhythm & Vines founder Hamish Pinkham told me recently, a few days after confirming Dobbyn will play his festival for the fourth time this year. “It’s a touch of nostalgic Kiwiana and the best way to close off the year at sundown before the party begins … 20,000 kiwis singing in unison is pretty special.”

I had more questions, but Pinkham had his hands full after the birth of his first child (congratulations!) and understandably didn’t have much time to chat.

So I asked Dobbyn himself if he’d like to tell me more. I wanted to ask him what he enjoys about playing to young festival crowds, what it is about his songs that has turned them into anthems for the ages, and what he might say to Ice Spice if he bumped into her backstage.

His manager politely informed me he hasn’t done any interviews in two years, so it seems unlikely we’ll find out directly from him.

Then I came across someone who did have time to chat.

“A hot artist is hot for a very brief period of time in 2024,” explains Harry Gorringe about the Dobbyn phenomenon. “We are so focused and concentrated on fast fire and changing fashions. They don't last. He does.”

Dave Dobbyn prepares to go on stage at Rhythm & Vines. (Image: R&V)

Gorringe, the general manager for Rhythm & Alps, has just booked Dobbyn to perform at his Wanaka festival for the first time. He’s been in a festival crowd when Dobbyn takes the stage, so he’s experienced the magic himself. “It just works,” he says. “It’s very hard to fail.”

Pushed further, Gorringe told me a story about how, when he used to DJ, he’d remix Dobbyn’s biggest songs into dancefloor-filling bangers. “There's something about them that resonates with a young Kiwi audience,” he says. “It transcends any sort of age demographic.”

He points to the Footrot Flats soundtrack song ‘Slice of Heaven’, to the Team America anthem ‘Loyal’, to Th’ Dudes’ hits ‘Bliss’ and ‘Outlook for Thursday’, and all of those singalong hits of his that reverberate around stadiums during All Blacks games, sparking mass singalongs.

Dobbo’s been there, always. “Many of his songs are national anthems,” says Gorringe. “He’s [the sound] of so many iconic New Zealand events over the years … so often there’s a Dave Dobbyn backbone to them.”

Festival bookers want a piece of that. Gorringe admits he tried to get him last year, but it didn’t pan out. So Dobbyn was the first act he booked for this year’s festival. He’s going to ask him to play in a 7.30pm slot, just before the headliners, so everyone can have a singalong “just as the sun's going down”.

Fans enjoy Dave Dobbyn’s performance at Rhythm & Vines in 2020.

Has anyone other Aotearoa act reached this transcendent status? Gorringe says Dobbyn occupies a unique position. He has tried and true anthems that have lasted the ages. He’s a solo artist, so he isn’t reliant on errant bandmates tearing it all apart. Plus, there’s the age factor. “We've got to make the most of these kiwi icons,” Gorringe says. “One day we'll turn around and they won't be there any more.”

So, when Dobbyn plays in Wanaka this December, Gorringe will be downing tools and heading into the crowd to watch his performance too. Recent setlists show his one-hour show is full of songs everyone knows and loves: ‘Whaling,’ ‘Be Mine Tonight,’ ‘You Oughta Be in Love,’ ‘Slice of Heaven,’ and, of course, the drinking anthem, ‘Bliss’.

But Gorringe will be waiting for one song in particular: ‘Loyal,’ the song he used to climb up onto the rooftop to sing alongside his flatmates at their old student flat. “That might be a poignant moment for me,” he says.

Next to him might be his mum, who, for the first time, has asked if she can come to his festival. “She called me up and said, ‘Did you book Dave Dobbyn? I'd love to see him live.’” Gorringe smiled and told her: “We can arrange this.”

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