Pōneke's newest music venue is nearly ready for business.

"We'll be ready ... we don't have a choice," promises the owner of Meow Nui, whose deadline is approaching fast.

On the footpath next to a busy inner-city Pōneke street, a flurry of activity is underway. Men in hard hats take turns unloading huge stacks of planks from a van, carrying them past a rubbish skip then through a set of bifold doors.

“Are you going to give us a hand?” asks one of the builders when he spots me staring at them. I umm and ahh, then stuff my hands into my pockets. Those planks look too heavy for me to attempt on my own.

He sees my reluctance and clears my conscience. “Just kidding ya,” he says. He nods towards the Vivian Street building and tells me I’ll find the man I’m looking for in there.

Under Construction: Work is underway to convert this old church into a new music venue.

Inside, things are even more hectic. The large, airy complex with high ceilings and stained windows is full of noise from hammers, drills and saws. Planks get dropped on the floor. A stereo blasts Outkast’s ‘Hey Ya’. Some sing along. Others occasionally yelp, a sound that echoes off the walls.

Damian Jones is the conductor of this cacophony. “I’ve got to get another load of timber before they close,” he tells one staff member. He passes a ring of keys to another. Those fresh planks will build a new stage right where he’s standing. “It needs to come up 200mm … maybe 300mm,” he says. “The easiest way is to pull it apart and start again.”

It’s not just the stage getting an overhaul. Jones, a veteran Wellington venue owner, is converting the Salvation Army’s award-winning and abandoned 1990 Citadel church into a brand new music venue. Everything needs to be ripped out and replaced to create Meow Nui, a bigger, bolder, grander version of Meow, his other Pōneke venue he’s been running with his wife for 15 years.

Pillars and posts: The view towards Meow Nui’s bathrooms and bar.

Right now, Meow Nui is a mess of wood, nails, dust, wires, ladders, tools, belts and empty energy drink cans. It doesn’t look like much, but come August 31, when Drax Project are booked for two shows, Jones says this will be turned into a music venue capable of hosting 1000 punters, putting it on a par with Auckland’s Powerstation. “We’ll be ready in time,” he says. “We don’t have a choice.”

A venue of this size is something Pōneke has needed for years. No one seems to know when the cursed Wellington Town Hall renovations might be complete. There’s the Opera House, and the St James, but they’re bigger, and are seated. There are smaller venues too, like Shed 6 and The Hunter Lounge, but their scope is limited. “None of them are plug-and-play,” says Jones. “They don’t have a PA installed. They’re not set up for gigs.”

Meow Nui will be different. It’s going to be a full-time, dedicated music venue with excellent views of whoever’s playing no matter where you’re standing. To prove it, Jones takes me upstairs. The brown seats that used to be there have been ripped out, leaving steep concrete steps and wooden railings looking down over the venue.

With the exposed beams above and the stage below, Jones is right: the view is breathtaking. “It feels like it’s massive,” he says, then wanders down the back, where more building work is underway. “We’re installing booths over here,” he says. “You’ll be able to order a bottle of champagne and still be able to see the stage.”

Upper deck: The view from upstairs down to where the stage will sit.

It’s not just for Pōneke. Jones believes Aotearoa needs Meow Nui too. That’s because of the intricacies of the Australasian touring market. Right now, touring’s tight economics mean we’re missing out on a range of mid-tier shows. “There’s a run of international shows that’s done Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane,” says Jones. “Sometimes they tack on Perth or an Auckland (show), but it’s expensive. You’re adding travel and an extra day.”

Having a Wellington venue of this size makes a New Zealand leg more economical. “You do an Auckland and a Wellington show. It adds more viability to doing a five-date tour,” he says. Jones points to the recent JPEGMAFIA show announced only in Auckland. “It should have been in Wellington (too),” he says. “It’s better for artists, better for promoters, better for everyone.”

He says he already has nine shows locked in for September, with more pending. Promoters are super keen to see it in action. The dream, says Jones, is to host three or four shows a week. “I can see a week where we have JPEGMAFIA one night, Cat Power the next night, then a band for older people, the Hoodoo Gurus or something like that, then an American soul singer, all in the same week.”

Meow Nui is opening at a time when big changes are underway around the country. Many venues struggled to stay open during Covid and needed a helping hand through the Save our Venues campaign. Now, Errick’s is helping revive Dunedin’s live music scene, a renovated Loons in Lyttleton is helping reinvigorate Christchurch, and Auckland is getting Double Whammy, a renovated space in St Kevin’s Arcade merging Whammy, Backroom and The Wine Cellar capable of hosting 450 fans.

Exposed Beams: The ceiling inside what will become Meow Nui.

Jones says Meow Nui is also his raised middle finger towards Live Nation, the touring behemoth that owns Ticketmaster and many of the country’s festivals and venues. He’s putting his money where his mouth is, investing his own money in the refurbishment. “It’s a DIY fit out, the bare minimum to open,” he says. Asked about the cost, he says: “I'm not expecting any change from $700,000.” Then he rethinks his estimate. “I'm hoping it will all get done for less than $1 million.”

Before I can congratulate him, Jones takes off. When I head outside, his van’s gone: the planks have been unloaded, and he’s rushed off to pick up the rest of them. I don’t get to say goodbye. But, earlier, I’d asked about the clear and obvious risks involved in opening a live music venue, of potential noise complaints from neighbours, of the growing Live Nation threat, of the financial pressures of the live touring market, of the cost of living crisis that is affecting everyone’s budgets.

He nodded his head as I spoke, chanting, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah … yes, yes, yes,” like he’d heard it all many times before. “I know what I’m doing,” he told me. Then he paused, surveyed his new venue, and sighed. “I don't care, to be honest. I really don't care. What’s the worst that can happen?” He mentioned the key quote from the baseball movie Field of Dreams and exhaled.

Pōneke needs this. But Jones has been dreaming about opening Meow Nui for years, and he needs it too. “We’ve just got to do it. It just needs to happen.”

Drax Project open Meow Nui on August 30 & 31; tickets are available here.

Everything you need to know.

• Ahh, Glastonbury, you big, rowdy, crazy thing. I’ve been working my way through all the livestreams over the past week – Little Simz, Sugababes and The Streets come highly recommended – and they give an idyllic view of England’s biggest music festival. So how was it from the crowd? Massively rammed, completely overcrowded and “so busy it proved actively impossible to get within 200 yards of many areas,” says this reviewer who believes it’s time to entirely rethink how Glastonbury functions.

• Shh. At a time when talking, yelling, and phone use at concerts is at an all-time high, local singer-songwriter Vera Allen has gone the other way. She tells The Spinoff she’s happy to tell her fans to shut up if needed. A quiet crowd creates a place where magic can happen, when a “tangible presence connects everyone in the room and the music together,” Allen says. It’s a big ask. Is she right?

• I watched the new I Am: Celine Dion documentary in bite-sized chunks, often through my fingers. It’s a brutal movie about someone who once used her paint-stripping voice to command stadiums but is now battling the debilitating neurological condition Stiff Person Syndrome. I reviewed the Prime Video doco for RNZ, and you should also read this piece from The Guardian about the intense process of making a movie that ends with Dion spasming on a gurney.

• In her wild remix of Charli XCX’s ‘girl, so confusing,’ Lorde reveals someone told her she “walks like a bitch” at the age of 10. Who would do this? “Have they heard the remix? Have they read the discourse? Have they reflected on their role in this defining pop culture moment? Do they still spend their precious time on this Earth accusing children of walking like bitches?” The Spinoff tries to find out.

• Forget about the Aotearoa Music Awards. Real music lovers know the Silver Scrolls is the ceremony that honours the best our local music scene has to offer. Browse the top 20 nominees on RNZ, then listen to Charlotte Ryan explain why it’s the awards show that really matters: “It's purely about the art of the song.”

• Summer’s heating up with a batch of big tour announcements: Northern Bass has revealed its first New Year’s line-up, and it’s a goodie; One Love is back with a reggae-heavy bill for its January 25-26 event; L.A.B will play three huge shows this summer in New Plymouth, Taupō and Whangārei; Marlin’s Dreaming will support their new album with six September tour dates; Troye Sivan is playing Spark Arena on December 2; and, finally, for all you 90s hip-hop heads, The Beatnuts play Neck of the Woods on August 7.

• Finally, on paper, a collaboration between the Atlanta rapper Quavo and the haunting Los Angeles singer Lana Del Rey really shouldn’t work as well as it does on ‘Tough’. This one-off single is all we have for now, but chemistry is chemistry and fans says the pair have so much of it they’re demanding a full album. While we wait and see if that materialises, this is my nomination for the Song of the Summer (in our winter).

Thanks for being here and supporting Boiler Room. I’ve been a little sporadic lately and there’s a reason for that: my mum has spent the past seven weeks in Wellington’s Hospital’s intensive care unit. If you liked what you read today, you can sign up to receive regular Boiler Room instalments below. Normal transmissions will hopefully resume shortly. (Come on, mum!)