What happens when you take two Wellington musicians and translocate them to a cottage steeped in history, for six weeks of creative exploration?
HOLLY Jane Ewens and Andy Hummel of local band Rosy Tin Teacaddy, spent six weeks last year sitting in the shadow of Tarawera - one of New Zealand’s most forbidding mountains. The result is a new album filled with ghostly characters, dark imagery and twinkles of hope, called All Mountains Are Men.
“This album is more cinematic… it’s darker than our other stuff, because of the places and the stories we were telling,” says Ewens.
Ewens and Hummel were granted one of three annual ‘Wild Creations’ artist residencies, supported by Creative NZ and the NZ Department of Conservation. Ewens says they applied because the history of the Lakes District has always fascinated her. The band completed the album in three two-week stints, and everything was written, researched and recorded on site.
“We didn’t plan anything, we just wanted to respond to the site,” says Ewens.
The pair, who’ve worked together since they were teenagers, studied old newspapers, visited relics and historical heroes, and trekked to a spot from where the Pink and White Terraces used to be seen.
The entire album is based on stories like these.
“A lot of the lyrics in Telegrams and Ashes are lifted from old newspaper articles, from here and abroad, and from people who saw and heard the eruption. Roger Dansey was the postmaster at the time, and we imagined what it must have been like for him, while he had to stay put and put out telegrams when everyone else thought the world was ending.”
Ewens research led to an historical crush, and the man now has a love song dedicated to him.
“Alfred Patrick Warbrick was a real swashbuckling hero. He was gorgeous, tall, half-Maori with a massive moustache and green eyes. He was presumed dead after the eruption and walked in on his own tangi. He lived to be an old man, and he always believed the terraces were under Lake Rotomahana.”
Earlier this year, GNS scientists proved Warbrick half right, when they released images of the pink terraces still largely intact at the bottom of the lake. Last week, on the 125th anniversary of the eruption, they announced they’d found the white terraces too.  
The album is dedicated to the memories of those who passed in the eruption, and the memory of Ewens’ father – who passed away just before the Tarawera project began.
“There’s a lot of loss on the album, but it’s imbued with a sense of hope,” says Ewens.
Something tells us Warbrick would approve.
Rosy Tin Teacaddy: All Mountains Are Men, The Garden Club, June 18