It’s not polished. He’s often out-of-sync with his bandmates. But there’s still a certain pizzazz. 

Wayne Brown arrived at his gig still disgruntled about the drongos he has to deal with in his day job. Auckland’s mayor was booked to play some tunes at Eden Terrace’s The Corner Store as part of the city’s New Zealand Music Month festivities, but he’d been delayed getting there by a lengthy budget committee workshop. Some councillors have been getting cold feet about his proposed 7.9% rates increase, almost all of which is going to be spent on running the City Rail Link. Brown spent the brief time he had before going on stage nursing a beer and regaling all-comers with a story about deputy mayor Desley Simpson wringing her hands over her Ōrākei constituents having to pull their kids out of private school if the budget goes through unchanged.

The frustration dissipated on stage. Brown sings like he mayors. He’s not particularly polished. In fact, the performance can get pretty ugly. He’s loud, sometimes overpoweringly so. He doesn’t always listen well. Rhythms can be shaky. He’s often out-of-sync with bandmates.

But Christ, he’s confident. Brown arrived on stage after a couple of warm-up songs by his backing band, the Door Jambs, and launched into an almost unrecognisable version of ‘The Letter’ by The Box Tops with the kind of gusto he usually reserves for complaining about David Seymour. Enthusiasm makes up for a lot of musical sins, and Brown has it in spades. His performing style is a hybrid of singing and shouting, backed by workmanlike banjo playing, and it’s honestly pretty enjoyable if you set aside technical proficiency and focus on pure vibes.

A hint of self-effacement would have sent the operation spiralling down in flames. But Brown’s great skill is brazening through. He did it after the Auckland floods and he did it on stage in Eden Terrace. After the opener, Brown took out his frustrations at the daily barrage of fools he’s forced to suffer on the melody lines of ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and ‘The House of the Rising Sun’. 

When Brown was elected, he celebrated by singing ‘Hit the Road Jack’ with its chorus line amended to a jab at his outgoing predecessor, ‘Hit the Road Goff’. On Wednesday, he just sang the song as written. But he revealed he’s been working on a version titled ‘Hit the Road Act’, which will include the line ‘You like fake more than fact’. He’s hoping to debut it later this year. 

It was a listenable cover. The impromptu version of Willie Nelson’s ‘Seven Spanish Angels’ that followed was less so, threatening to spill over from lovably haphazard to just plain bad.

After the show, Brown acknowledged he was a bit rusty. His old band, The Hāngī Stones, split up a few years back when one of its members moved to Tauranga. The Door Jambs were perfectly good musicians but developing chemistry would take time. “We played together for eight years,” he said, slightly wistfully, of the erstwhile Stones. “The Beatles only played together for three.” 

That fact isn’t technically true, but it was delivered with such gusto it was almost enough to make you believe. In that, it’s a bit similar to the Wayne Brown musical experience and the Wayne Brown mayoral experience. Watching it can be uncomfortable. There are ropey moments. But the frontman has an odd charisma, and, in the end, he mostly gets the job done.